Slow of Heart

When the two disciples were on the road to Emmaus, they were processing. So much had happened in the past week and they needed just to talk about it. They were trying to understand what had happened to Jesus and how to reconcile the rumors that they had heard about his resurrection. They must have been the kind of friends who just need to get away together and talk and talk about the events that transpired. Two extraverts who trust one another, they hoped to bring each other clarity, or at least a sense of closure. Their minds were working furiously trying to catch up with what had happened, and their hearts were troubled.

When Jesus met them, they did not recognize him. They thought that he was a stranger, a fellow traveler, so they used this opportunity to spill their guts to him. They told him everything, about how they wanted Jesus to be the Messiah and how he disappointed them by being crucified. They told him about how confused they were, about how Jesus died but people were saying that he had risen. All of this just poured out of them for they needed someone to talk to, someone objective who could clarify for them what all of this meant. Someone who was capable of listening.

When they finished their story, the stranger spoke. Now, we would expect him to console the disciples or to reflect upon what they said. But Jesus responded in the strangest way. He yelled at them. He chastised them. You Fools! He says. You are slow of heart.

You are slow of heart.

What does Jesus mean, slow of heart? When Jesus expresses his disappointment, he does not talk about their minds or their intelligence. He does not call them ignorant or stupid. Instead he talks about the state of their hearts. He is disappointed with the state of their hearts.

What is so important about the heart and what does the heart have to do with recognizing God?

Sam Grinstead was a doctor. He came to Baltimore and found himself partnering with an older doctor who ran a thriving general practice out of his old Victorian home in a nice section of downtown. It seemed natural when Sam proposed marriage to the doctor's youngest daughter, Delia. She was her father's favorite, so pretty, newly graduated from college. She seemed content to be his secretary and his wife. She was fifteen years younger and seemed to adore her new husband. She never had to move out of her childhood home and when her father died, her husband just took over.

Sam and Delia had three children, two boys and a girl. They both worked hard to bring in new patients and send their children to private schools. Sam depended on Delia for everything. Delia busied herself not just with secretarial work but with carrying her children from one place to the next, filing medical insurance bills for the practice, telephoning patients, making lunches, volunteering in school.

By the time that their youngest child was 15, Delia felt as if she were suffocating. Her chest hurt and she could not explain why. Without being able to articulate anything, she left her husband suddenly, walking away on the beach at a family vacation and hitching a ride to a small town an hour away. She rented a room and went to work for a law firm as a secretary. Everyone thought that she was crazy. She left a good man, a doctor at that. And what about her three children? Even she thought that she What kind of a mother was she? Even Delia herself thought that maybe she was crazy, but something was hugely wrong with her married life. Her heart was just breaking.

The more she reflected the more she realized. Her husband did not even look at her. He did not know her. He did not know how she had changed and how she felt. He did not know when she was sad or angry. He never listened to her or asked her questions. They lived like two strangers alone in a marriage. And her heart was dying.

When she left, Sam began to realize what he had done. It hit him all of a sudden, late at night. He realized that he had never hit her or abused her in any way. But he had not seen her. She had become invisible to him because he thought that he knew her. He would have told everyone that he loved is wife. But in reality, he did not love her at all. He just cared for her. He did not really even know who she was.

When Peter steps out before a crowd of Jews in the beginning of the Book of Acts, he tells them that they missed the Messiah. He tells them that the man that they crucified, the man that they hated, this Jesus of Nazareth, that he was the promised savior of God. And they had not even recognized him. They thought that they knew who he was, but they were wrong. They were not listening. And they had made a terrible mistake.

When Peter says this, the Scripture says that the Jews were cut to the heart, just like Sam was cut to the heart when he realized the truth about his marriage. The heart often knows things that the mind cannot grasp or reason. And sometimes, when we say that we know someone, we made up our minds about this person and we really do not know them at all.

The Book of Acts is a story about a change of heart. The people who become the first Christians did so because their hearts are changed. They learned how to listen to God. They learned that God often does new and different things, things that we could never have guessed or predicted. They learned that we cannot assume that what we thought was right yesterday is right today. They learned to love God with their hearts and to live their lives by this love.

Love means never defining a person but being open to the fact that they are unfathomable, capable of surprising you and changing you. To love someone is to honor the mystery of God within them. Love is something that is always listening, always honoring, never fully comprehending. The moment we cease to listen to one another is the moment when we cease loving one another.

When Delia came home for their daughter's wedding, Sam asked to speak to her alone. He told her how sorry he was, how much he had failed to see her, failed to know her. And she came back to him. You could say that he departure jumpstarted his heart. And he learned to love for real.

When the disciples finally recognize Jesus, he disappears. But they remember how their hearts burned within them as he walked with them, how their hearts burned as he opened the Scripture to them.

Their hearts burned.

Every Sunday, we read the following prayer at the beginning of our worship…

Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known and from you no secrets are hid. Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts…

Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts…

It is as if we are asking God to clean our hearts, to make them a blank slate so that we are open to the newness of love and the ever changing revelation of God and of the ones we love.

If we are to love God with all our heart and soul and mind, we must learn to listen to God. We must realize that God is going to do a new thing with us every day, that God's love will live and grow within us. If we are to love God, then we must learn to love one another with the same kind of open devotion, realizing that the people we love are not stagnant creatures which can be defined but rather magnificent creatures who are ever changing and growing, who must be seen and heard each day anew, as if they were never known to us before.

- The Very Rev. Kate Mooreheadat 11:07 AM

Monday, May 02, 2011