Preparing
with Joy for the Paschal Feast
I
The Charge to Moses
and Joshua
II
The Story of
Creation
III
The Future Glory of
Zion
IV
The Conversion of
Nineveh
V
The Flood
Part VI of XV
Sunday 25 February
2018
Second Sunday in
Lent
A New Heart and a
New Spirit
Ezekiel 36:24-28
Say to the house of
Israel, Thus says the Lord God: I will take you from the nations, and gather
you from all the countries, and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you
shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will
cleanse you. A new heart I will give
you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body
the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and make you
follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. Then you shall live in the land that I gave
to your ancestors; and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.
In the name of the
Father, and of the Son,
and of the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
Today I want
to focus on the promise of God made through the prophet Ezekiel in which God
promises to give a new heart and a new spirit; a heart of flesh in place of a
heart of stone.
It's an
incredible promise that God makes to us and to all the people claimed by
God. It's a transformation that is filled with grace. It’s a gift that is necessary for our
salvation and that of the world.
Think for a
moment about those words. Remember what the heart does for the
body. The heart pumps life throughout the body. And if we have a
heart of stone, how well will that heart pump? We know the answer.
A stone heart, a hardened heart, cannot pump. And if it cannot pump, it
and what it is keeping alive will inevitably die. This is true not only
for our bodies. It is true also for our souls.
The prophet's
words call to mind that in the heart of God, it is not acceptable that the
people whom God holds there in love should die. God's desire is that we
shall live. And in that desire, God acts on us and for our behalf to
bring forth life. God gives us a new heart; a heart of flesh that is
capable of pumping and sustaining life.
The Scriptures
are filled with moments of transformation that reflect the giving of a new
heart and a new spirit to the people.
Today we have heard the story of Abram and Sarai who received new names
and found new life as Abraham and Sarah.
We have heard Paul reflect on this patriarch and matriarch of the people
of God. And could we find anyone else who
so greatly reflects a transformation brought on by God? Remember that the apostle who praises Abraham
and proclaims Christ as the hope and salvation of the world is the same man who
as Saul persecuted the Church and approved of the killing of the deacon and
martyr, Stephen. It was this Saul who
went to Damascus in the hopes of bringing others to the same fate as
Stephen. But on the outskirts of that
city, Christ appeared to this man and gave him a new heart and a new spirit, a
new identity that would cause him to be known by a new name.
Throughout the
history of the Church, this transformation has continued. As I thought on this, my mind went to the
story of John Newton, the author of one of the most well-known hymns of the
Church, “Amazing Grace.” This man was an
English captain of a ship that transported Africans to slave markets where they
were sold as property into slavery. At
some point in his life, a conversion experience brought him to embrace the
Christian faith and begin questioning everything he had known in his life. Because of that conversion, the giving of a
new heart and a new spirit by God, this slave trader turned into a great
advocate for the end of slavery and the respect of all persons, especially
those who were seen not as humans but merely as property. And when John Newton wrote the words of that
great hymn, he did so with a spirit of penitence, longing to be washed clean of
the sins that had marred him for so long, commending himself into the hands of
a merciful God.
If we were to
explore the history of our faith, we could find countless others like John the
hymnwriter and Paul the apostle whose stories reflect the promise that God
desires to give us a new heart and a new spirit. But the point of this is not that we would
merely reflect upon these others. This
promise of God comes to us as we journey through Lent, longing to be
transformed that we might be accounted worthy through grace to have a place in
the Kingdom of God and keep glad Easter forever. This promise is not merely for someone else! This is for us. God longs to transform us daily, to complete
in us what is lacking, to give us a new heart that is above all the heart of
God, a new spirit that is unmistakably the Holy Spirit at work in us.
The Lenten
question for us, then, is simply this: How is it that we need a new heart and a
new spirit? What is it that we need God
to fix and complete in us? And the
difficult part of this for us all is that I cannot answer that question for
you, nor can you answer that question for me.
The answer comes to each of us when each of us are willing to walk with
Christ and ask for the gifts of wisdom and discernment that we might know how
we need to grow in this springtime of the year that we call Lent.
As difficult
as that is, this is the easy part. If we
are to grow, we must change. If we are
to receive a new heart and a new spirit, we must submit to God and allow God to
transform us into the persons that God desires us to be. It means giving up control of our own lives
and allowing God to be God with us. It
means that we must allow God to remove everything that is sin and death from us
and replace these things with life and salvation. And as much as we might say we are willing to
experience that transformation, how often do we seek to tell God how to be God
and to act as we desire. But whenever we
do that, we are failing to submit to God.
And when we do so, we are in fact clinging to that old heart that is
dying and to our own spirit and wisdom, thinking that we know better even than
God what is right and good.
As we journey
through these Lenten days, remember that Christ longs to work in us and form us
to such a degree that when others see and hear us, they are encountering Christ
who through us reaches out to heal and to love all persons without
exception. And as we are shaped by
Christ to be like Christ, we might just be surprised at the growth that occurs
in us; a work that can be attributed to no one else than God. We might even find ourselves in a place like
John Newton, who having submitted fully to God and allowed God to transform him
to be a new person with a new heart and a new spirit, lamented his old ways and
strove with all the strength given him by God to walk in the light of God in a
way that is truly life-giving. May our
Lenten journey truly be so transformative, that when we keep glad Easter,
Christ will be proclaimed in our words and deeds not merely in this holy house
of prayer, but in our homes and workplaces, and in all the world.
In the name of the
Father, and of the Son,
and of the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
The Rev’d Timothy Alleman
Rector
The Church of the
Holy Cross
VII
Salvation
Offered Freely to All
VIII
Israel’s
Deliverance at the Red Sea
IX
The Valley
of Dry Bones
X
The
Gathering of God’s People
XI
In Praise
of Wisdom
XII
The Gifts
of Wisdom
XIII
The Three
Youths in the Fiery Furnace
XIV
The First
Passover
XV
Abraham’s
Sacrifice of Isaac
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