Where Is Your Heart?

What follows below is a fuller version of the sermon I wrote for this last Sunday. I am currently unable to post sermons to my church website, so am posting it here instead. Later this week I will post sermon thoughts toward this next Sunday’s  sermon, which will be entitled “The Heart of the Matter, or The Matter of the Heart.”

"Where Is Your Heart?"

Sermon, July 24, 2011

Luke 12:32-40

Craig S. Strobel

A visit from Maxine 

Thirteen years ago, Maxine showed up on our doorstep. We had not advertised, we had not even inquired around, but she showed up anyway. We weren’t quite sure what to make of her, but after intense negotiations we allowed her to stay. And she then proceeded to win over our hearts. You see, Maxine was a puppy, possibly a Rottweiler, Shepherd, Labrador mix of unknown parentage. And out of the blue, she appeared on our doorstep. I was reticent at first, but then I recalled the Bible saying something about entertaining angels unaware.

But there is a twist to this story. Maxine was the lost one, who chose us. We did not choose her. We did not seek her out. We did not leave the 99 in order to find her. She found us, and moved in. Or at least set up camp. 

As I contemplated the arrival of Maxine, I was reminded of the figure of The Hound of Heaven - made famous in the poem by Francis Thompson (1859-1907) - who sniffs us out of our hiding place, who searches high and low for us, the one who hunts us down. 

Of course, Jesus is the Hound of Heaven, who pursues you relentlessly, finding us out of our hiding places, working his way through all the subterfuges and dodges and barriers we erect. 

But why? Why does Jesus hunt us down like some great spiritual bloodhound? Perhaps it is to say, “I choose to live here.” Jesus is like Maxine, the dog, who seeks us out, and says, “I choose to make this place my dwelling place.” And where is this place he chooses to dwell? Of course it is the human heart. Any kindergartner can tell you that. But if he hunts us down, will our hearts be available for him to find? 

There used to be a slogan that went around when I was younger. It roughly went something like this: “It’s 10:00. Do you know where your children are?” When I was in college, the dorms on campus were hit with a rather bizarre rash of thefts where someone was stealing the furniture out of the dormitories. Pretty soon signs went up all over campus asking, “It’s 10:00. Do you know where your dorm furniture is?” Today’s Gospel lesson is asking, in part, “It’s 10:00. Do you know where your heart is?” Of course, Jesus doesn’t quite ask it in those words. Instead he says: “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” 

“Do not worry, little flock...” Today’s Gospel lesson is set in the immediate context of Jesus’ comments to us concerning worry and anxiety: “Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them...Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these...” 

Jesus then goes on to say, “Do not be afraid little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” 

Anxiety and worry are related to where the heart is. This is because the human heart is basically restless and seeks satisfaction. Augustine put it pointedly: “Our hearts are restless, O Lord, until they rest in thee.” 

Because our hearts are restless, we seek some sort of resting, some sort of satisfaction. This takes many forms. Some people become obsessed with money and material comforts. Others are incessantly busy, working on that project or helping with this cause, not because it is an expression of what they are drawn to do, but because they are so uncomfortable with themselves that they hide from their restlessness in a blur of frenetic activity and busy-ness. Others seek the adulation of others or seek to become the envy of their neighbors. Others may drift from job to job, or community to community, never quite finding their niche or place. Still their hearts are restless and yearn for satisfaction. 

Buddhism has a very striking image for this sense of restlessness and insatiable desire. This is what Buddhism refers to as “hungry ghosts.” You can always tell a hungry ghost in Buddhist art. They are depicted as having normal bodies, with the exception of their necks. Their necks are pencil thin, rendering them impossible to be satisfied, and so they wander the earth perpetually hungry and perpetually thirsty. 

When Jesus, the hound of Heaven, searches for our hearts, will he have to look in the land of the hungry ghosts? Are our hearts invested in things that cannot possibly satisfy our hearts? Abba Poemen, one of the Desert Fathers and Mothers from the 4th century, puts it simply, “Do not give your heart to that which does not satisfy your heart.” (Saying 80, Benedicta Ward, Sayings of the Desert Fathers, p. 178.) 

This is why Jesus assures us: “Do not be afraid little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Your yearning, your deepest hungering and thirsting will be satisfied.” 

This search for that which satisfies the human heart is an important part of the Jewish tradition as well. Nowhere is this search more poignantly and joyfully embodied than in the traditions of the Hasidim. 

Martin Buber is one of the great religious and philosophical thinkers and writers of our century. He is particularly famous for his interpretation of Hasidic stories, “examining and explaining the basic tenets of a way of life which lies near the center of Judaism.” In his book, The Way of Man: According to the Teaching of Hasidism, Buber explains the centrality of searching the human heart in Hasidism by means of a Hasidic story: 

Rabbi Shneur Zalman, the rav [Rabbi] of Northern White Russia (died 1813), was put in jail in Petersburg, because the mitnagdim [adversaries of Hasidim] had denounced his principles and his way of living to the government. He was awaiting trial when the chief of the gendarmes entered his cell. The majestic and quiet face of the rav, who was so deep in meditation that he did not at first notice his visitor, suggested to the chief, a thoughtful person, what manner of man he had before him. He began to converse with his prisoner and brought up a number of questions which had occurred to him in reading the Scriptures. Finally he asked: "How are we to understand that God, the all-knowing, said to Adam: ‘Where art thou?’"

"Do you believe," answered the rav, "that the Scriptures are eternal and that every era, every generation and every man is included in them?"

“I believe this," said the other.

"Well then," said the zaddik, "in every era, God calls to every man: Where are you in your world? So many years and days of those allotted to you have passed, and how far have you gotten in your world?’ God says something like this: ‘You have lived forty-six years. How far along are you?’"

When the chief of the gendarmes heard his age mentioned, he pulled himself together, laid his hand on the rav’s shoulder, and cried: "Bravo!" But his heart trembled.  

(The Way of Man, pp. 9-10.) 

Buber explains that in effect, the rabbi’s answer means “You yourself are Adam, you are the man whom God asks: “Where art thou?” (p. 11) 

“The decisive heart-searching is the beginning of the way in (human) life; it is again and again the beginning of a human way. But heart-searching is decisive only if it leads to the way” (p. 13). Hasidism teaches that each person has a way, or a path, that is unique for them. 

Buber, p. 16: “Every person born into this world represents something new, something that never existed before, something original and unique…. Every (person’s) foremost task is the actualization of his unique, unprecedented and never-recurring potentialities, and not the repetition of something that another, and be it even the greatest, has already achieved.” 

The story of Rabbi Zusya: “In the world to come I shall not be asked, ‘why were you not Moses?’ I shall be asked: ‘Why were you not Zusya?’” 

Jesus and Hasidic dogs 

It is this sort of heart searching, when we ask ourselves, “Why am I not Craig? Why am I not _________ (your name here)?  Buber reminds us, “The decisive heart-searching is the beginning of the way in (human) life; it is again and again the beginning of a human way. But heart-searching is decisive only if it leads to the way.” (p. 13). 

When Jesus begins his ministry, he turns to the world and says “Repent and believe in the Good News.” Repentance is metanoia, a turning of one’s heart, or more accurately, a re-turning of the heart to one’s path, one’s way. So, He is saying, “Where are you going? Where is your heart leading you? Where is your treasure? What is the treasure that is calling out to your heart? Where are you going?” Repentance means to return to searching the heart, realizing that the purpose of searching one’s heart is not to berate oneself for failures or for getting off the track, the path, but rather to get back on, that it is possible to return to the path, to the way. But it requires that searching, that asking of Who am I? Where am I going? Where is my heart taking me? Where is my treasure? 

Perhaps the arrival of Maxine, the stray dog was to say to me, “You are a stray dog, Craig. Where do you belong? To whom do you belong? Where is your heart? Is your home where your heart is? Will thieves rob and time mold the treasure-house where you have placed your heart?” Perhaps Maxine was a great Hasidic teacher, a rabbi in a puppy’s clothing. 

Or perhaps Maxine was standing in for the great Hound of Heaven, who asks me those same questions, who is searching out my heart to see if it is a fit dwelling place. 

And how about you? Do you have any stray dogs wandering unannounced and unexpected into your life? 

Invite them in for a bit. 

Be courteous and hospitable to them. 

Don’t be too quick to put them out, for you might be entertaining angels unaware. 

In fact, you just might be entertaining the Hound of Heaven Himself. 

And He has something to ask you.  

“Where is Your Heart?”

(Image sources: http://www.insidesocal.com/valleyofthedogs/glenda_cu.jpg;   http://covers.openlibrary.org/w/id/2689865-L.jpg;   http://www.meijer.com/assets/cms/images/SEO/img-college-dorm-furniture.jpg;   

http://spiritrealmtruths.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/jesusandsparrows.jpg;   http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_fseHZVwmags/TGDWCfD8VLI/AAAAAAAAK3c/D0LMaMJQGi0/s1600/gaki1.jpg;   http://solzemli.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/saint_poemen_the_great.jpg;   http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/evil/Buber200.jpg;    https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKExhqH0gj_g0tdE5RTnMa3NBXxYKyS-KMsNB7oSQ-gzUym7pm-1QWGhDO2vhUCLip89ckZ_tE_qpXUtxHI_5NsxRNcdmFO-CaYzKHTrL4WN1qSeA71McfA6lgi3KXggrGOyJ5lrJElWE/s1600/the-hound-of-heaven.jpg)