The Meditations of My Heart
3/3/24 ~ St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Encinitas, CA
Lent 3 (B): Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; John 2:13-22
Last week, while all of you were being blessed with Robert Vivar’s inspirational message, your vestry, also worshipped together as part of our retreat. We used the same scripture readings as you did in honor of Saint Matthias. In my sermon, I talked about how each of us are called by God into our personal ministries.
Like Matthias, none of us were tapped directly on the shoulder by Jesus, because Jesus was no longer physically present. Instead the story of Matthias serves to remind us that Jesus now calls us into ministry through our community, and that—as last week’s Gospel proclaimed—this trust in Jesus is called “abiding in God”. Robert referred to this as “trusting that God will not let go of our hand” as we live into our discipleship.
This morning, I'd like to move us from our hands to our hearts, because the phrase that stood out for me in this week’s reading is “the meditation of my heart.” That is directly from Psalm 19, so now you know where one of our sermon intros comes from: "May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you, O LORD.”
As we take up the phrase, “the meditation of my heart,” we slide that up next to one of our primary practices during the season of Lent, which is to acknowledge our sins, and do our best to repent. Here, at St. Andrew’s, we do that each Sunday during Lent with the Litany of Penitence. Essentially, that litany (which simply means long prayer) helps remind us of the many ways our focus on God gets lost.
The Litany of Penitence is built on the Ten Commandments, which were listed in our reading from Exodus. All of this can seem heavy. It’s a lot to be responsible for. There’s so much to keep track of; so many things on the Christian path to remember.
On the other hand, it can be a handy checklist, right? If I’m not doing X, Y and Z, I’ll have fulfilled my job as a disciple of Christ. But, is that really all we need to do? Check off the list of behaviors to be avoided: “Murdered anyone lately?” Nope. “Coveted my neighbor’s wife?” Nope. Calling us back to that key phrase: “the meditation of my heart,” we begin to understand that the checklist is only part of the equation.
You all know this by having been in relationships, or through teaching your children to be good friends. You can check off all the things that are required in a relationship: give a gift now and then, show up when you say you’re going to, apologize when you’ve hurt someone’s feelings. But you've probably also heard someone close to you insist, “You say you're sorry, but you don't really mean it.” Relationships are so much more than a checklist. Our words and actions have to be grounded in the meditation of our hearts.
Which is where Jesus’s problem with the money changers and those selling animals, in this morning's gospel reading, stems from. Scholars suggest both had a vital roles in temple life. Men coming to worship had to pay a tax when attending. But the tax had to be paid in coinage that was different from what people used on a daily basis. So, the money changers, would make the exchange, charging a fee to do so. Likewise, those wanting to make sacrifices would by animals in the temple courtyard.
It wasn’t that these folks didn’t belong there. More likely, they were guilty of price-gouging. Jesus throws their tables, because they failed to bring the meditation of their hearts to their business. Like so many greedy companies today, they, too, were putting profits above people.
Our Lenten book study features the book: The Difficult Words of Jesus, written by Amy-Jill Levine, who is a New Testament scholar. The author brings an interesting perspective to her studies, because she is Jewish. In the way that I’m talking about “the meditation of our hearts,” Levine explains that the Torah (or the Ten Commandments) is so much more than a checklist. She states that keeping the Ten Commandments is “a lifestyle”.
Levine uses the parable of the guy who comes asking Jesus how to obtain eternal life to illustrate her point. Jesus tells him to follow the commandments, and the guy replies, “Yeah. I’ve been following all of them my entire life.” But Jesus pushes him further.
He doesn’t use these words, but Jesus, essentially, points out that this guy might be committed to checking off the list of activities, but that his heart isn’t in the process. The guy isn’t technically sinning, but he also isn’t living a Christ-centered lifestyle.
Maybe a simpler example will help clarify what I’m getting at. Most of us have a driver’s license. We took both written and driving tests to demonstrate we know and understand the laws of traffic. So, there’s a checklist to follow when we drive. We stay within our own lane; we drive the speed limit (within reason, of course); we stop at red traffic lights, etc.
But the question is, what’s our attitude while we drive? Do you cut people off? Do you madly honk at someone who’s going slower than you’d like? Do you zip back and forth from one lane to another, trying to get into the faster lane? And, if so, what would it be like to bring the meditation of your heart even to your driving?
A Christian lifestyle is much harder to maintain than a checklist, so when pressed, Jesus suggests we boil down the ten commandments into two: 1) love God and 2) love your neighbor. Pretty straightforward, right? But, not so easy to live into.
Fortunately, we are given some tools—a Litany of Penitence, for example. Other prayers, like this morning’s collect help us refocus. You might want to tear it out of your bulletin and tape it in a place where you’ll see it in days to come. This is the prayer: “Keep us [O, God] both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls.”
In other words—whether our endeavor, in the moment, is to be a good citizen or a good disciple—we pray that God helps ensure our outward words and actions are grounded inwardly with the meditation of our hearts. And, so we cry out, “Please, God, don't let go of our hands, nor our hearts!
-AMEN
