The Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost (Mother Marisa)

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. 

“She wears her heart on her sleeve.” Not so long ago, that was a bit of a dubious compliment. People who fit that description — and this really could be men and women — were seen as wildcards, all sense and no sensibility. A good time, perhaps, but also quite likely to get themselves and their friends into trouble.

Within the last decade, though, wearing one’s heart on one’s sleeve has become a good thing. A badge of pride: He’s authentic. She’s genuine. He really does speak his mind. 

Such a development is in keeping with the natural progression of our particular brand of individualism, where, in the words of one philosopher, “Everyone has a right to develop their own form of life, grounded on their own sense of what is really important or of value. People are called upon to be true to themselves and to seek their own self-fulfillment” (Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity, 14).

Which doesn’t sound too bad, does it? But he was writing before the Internet. And before Facebook. And before smartphones. What he and many others identified as problematic has become what we all experience now at a much higher level. 

The individual reigns. We hear about it. We see it. We subscribe to it. On Twitter, on TikTok, on Taylor Swift’s every album, the individual stakes her claim, bares her soul, reveals her heart. And we hit “repeat.”  

One must wonder, though, what that kind of “authenticity” does — to the people we admire and to us. What happens when the thoughts of the heart are given total complete command? When anger and desire drive us, and we just go along for the ride? What happens is that we all discover, sometimes in 160 characters or less, just how conflicted and chaotic and capricious a place the human heart can be. As Jesus said in our Gospel reading today, “it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come.” 

Evil does come from within, no matter how hard we try to ignore or explain away that fact. Some sickness, some malady grips us, and we are unable to break free; and in our society we don’t seem to want to break free. Even Christians, of every stripe, find plenty of justification for the vitriol we express toward our neighbors. “I’m sorry but I just have to speak my mind,” we say. “I just have to say what’s true,” or, really, “I just have to say what I think is true,” which may very well not be the case. We cannot see the heart. Only God can. 

And he knows what he’ll find there. God knows the terrain. He knows the shifting emotions, the racing thoughts. He’s familiar with the good and evil that lay side-by-side in each one of us. God is no stranger to the wilderness that is so often characteristic of the centre of our being. He’s been there before, and he will go there again — for God would make of our hearts a heaven, a Promised Land, where we might dwell together in peace.

Think of that old Evangelical prayer: “Would you like to ask Jesus into your heart?” It’s sweet and simple and means so much more than most people realize because our heart is exactly the place Jesus longs to be. 

Walking with his disciples, gazing at the crowds, speaking with the religious leaders, Jesus saw that they were all harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd, forever confusing the way of death with the way of life, forever trying to find a shortcut to happiness, a one-way ticket to rest, and forever failing to do so. 

We need help. We are lost on our own. We need someone who knows that evil comes from within and who will nevertheless not run away. We need someone who will stay with us past the bitter end, until the light of resurrection dawns in our lives, which is what the Word of God, what the Love of God, has done and will continue to do. 

He makes the blind to see. He sets the prisoner free. He raises the dead. 

Entering into our hearts, welcomed into the core of who we are, God begins his work: tending, keeping, healing the heart that ever so slowly begins to recognize him and his grace. Like a master craftsman, like a skilled surgeon, Jesus identifies what is sick within us. He reveals what is bruised and broken. He binds up our wounds and refines what is good. God transforms us from the inside out — and keeps on doing so until our heart looks like his heart and our voice sounds like his voice and our hands work like his hands. Until we become whole and holy, perfected in the splendor of our own unique personhood. 

We are that precious to him. God so loved the world that he sent his only Son to save it. To save us. To renew all of creation, one heartbeat at a time. And he will. He does. God is with us now, on our lips and in our hearts, speaking softly, knocking gently at the door, ready to transfigure the one who desires him. AMEN.