Pastor's Corner: Finding a new heart

There is a short story written by Nathaniel Hawthorne titled “Earth Holocaust.” People decide to destroy all objects of temptation to purge the world of evil by burning these objects in a huge bonfire. As the smoke cloud rises higher and higher into the night sky, a group of men who have made their living selling some of the very things people are burning are standing there, dispirited, because there will no longer be a market for their products. As they discuss and lament what is happening, a dark stranger with glowing eyes appears and says to them,

“Be not so cast down, my dear friends; you shall see good days yet. There is one thing that these wiseacres have forgotten to throw into the fire, and without which all the rest of this will come to nothing, even though they had burned the earth itself to a cinder.”

“And what may that be?” the group eagerly demanded.

“What, but the human heart itself!” said the stranger, with a portentous grin. “And, unless they hit upon some method of purifying that foul cavern, forth from it will come all the shapes of wrong and misery — the same old shapes, or worse ones — which they have taken such a vast deal of trouble to consume to ashes. I have stood by, this whole night, and laughed in my sleeve at the whole business. Oh, take my word for it, it will be the old world yet!”

Hawthorne was right. Jesus put it this way, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person” (Mark 7:20-23).

What comes out of your heart (the center of your will), that’s what defiles you. Evil thoughts. Ever have one? Sexual immorality. Dare I ask? Theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. That’s quite a list, isn’t it? Can anyone say that this list doesn’t touch them in some way? Where does all the evil in the world come from? From within you. Your heart is corrupted to the core by Sin. That’s what defiles a person.

Turns out that it’s not the world that soils us, unclean as the world may be. We’re prone to looking outside and blaming others for our condition. But the finger of blame and responsibility needs to be turned toward ourselves and our rebellious wills that want it our way instead of God’s way. Out of these hearts of ours come all of the things we hate in the world — all the murders, adulteries, deceits, you name it — they all proceed from sinful hearts.

A new heart is what we need — and it’s what God gives, a heart that beats with God’s Spirit, a heart that is free from Sin and Death, a heart that is not bent toward evil but toward God, a heart that is turned to God in faith and toward the neighbor in love. That’s the heart that Jesus died to win for you on the cross. That’s the heart each Christian received in Baptism. That’s the heart that is fed by God’s Word.

But the old sinful heart is still there, too. God didn’t do an exchange of heart transplant but a kind of side by side piggyback transplant, putting the new next to the old. That means Christians have to contend with a bit of tension until God calls them home. Good and evil lie close at hand, often in the very same act. It means living under the cross of Jesus’ forgiveness — forgiven, loved, and loving those around you with your new heart. It’s called the life of faith, a life held in tension until the heart of the sinful nature dies and the Christian is raised to life forever in the resurrection.

(The Rev. Mark Schultz, St. Paul Lutheran Church, Havre)