Wellspring UMC; Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost; September 30,2007:

-Isaiah 55: 1-13; Luke 6: 43-45

“Out of the Abundance of the Heart”

In Christ’s day it was believed that the heart was the seat of the soul, responsible for human thought and reason. The heart was believed to be the center of one’s life, and as such, that which went into the body went to the heart, which processed everything, and that which came out of the body came from the heart.

Today, we know that there are many more organs involved in the processing of information, food, and environment, and yet there is something about the heart that perpetuates this idea of it being the seat of the soul and emotion. It was Blaise Pascal who wrote, “The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.”

Our hearts leap for joy, and they also ache in grief. It is our hearts that seem to give off clues to our stress levels, and it is our heart upon which we rely when we fall in love or have our hopes dashed. The heart, and our perceptions of where our hearts are, is integral to the fabric of life.

Today we come toward the end of a sermon series based on the Sermon on the Plain, and it is fitting that Christ ends this by talking about the heart. After speaking about the blessings and woes – blessed are the poor, the hungry, those who weak, and those who are persecuted...woe to the rich, the well-fed, those who laugh and those who are well-respected – it is only appropriate that he hones in on the heart. After flat out calling on us to love our enemies and stop our judging, it is only right that Christ invites us to examine our hearts, for all of these things, all that leads up to these two verses are intended to stop us in our tracks and examine our true selves...examine our hearts, examine our lives.

Anyone here ever been in love? It doesn’t even have to be love for a person but could be love for an ideal or even a hobby. When one is in love, nothing else matters but the object of their affections. One goes out of their way to be with, connect with, share with the one they love. There is a connection that fuses lovers and that connection draws the energy of both together, into a kind of symbiosis where both lives are enhanced. There is this free flow of communication, action, and experience in life, and at the core of that love is the heart.

When love enters into our lives, it is as if a switch goes off in the heart, and we connect deeply with the other. Then once that connection is made, the heart grows or changes in such a way, that the desire to give and to satisfy bubbles to the surface. We want to give away the self, our core, the soul, so that the other will be fulfilled. It’s as if we realize that we are not complete without the other, and so we give ourselves, our time, our emotion, our vulnerability, our lives to the other, and in true love, the other reciprocates.

This experience results in a build up of joy and a taste of the fullness of life. Insights are gained, changes come about, our thoughts, hobbies, ideas rub off on one another, and we find ourselves changed, truly changed...forever. For when love enters in, we can no longer focus on ourselves, our desires, our own needs, for there is another who needs us, just as we need them.

I had been married a few years, when my best friend from college met his wife. As soon as he met her, I received more phone calls than usual, and that number only increased the closer they got. At first he was excited to be with someone like whom he’d never met before. He spent as much time with her as possible, but then in spending that time with her, he questioned his own ways of doing things and thinking about the world. This at first scared him, but it soon became a means by which he learned about himself. And over time, he started to do things that she liked to do, like watch football and exercise, and at the same time she had begun to take an interesting in gardens and reading genre’s which he loved. I was privileged to journey with and unite in marriage these two who fell in love, and when they did, they found that they each gave up aspects of themselves, took on aspects of the other, and ultimately completed each other. Falling in love becomes a uniting, a symbiosis of two into one.

As I contemplated today’s message, I began to have revealed to me that there are aspects of falling in love that seem contrary to how we usually think or ways we do things, and yet at the same time, when in love we realize that if we would take the risk, our lives might be greatly enhanced and made complete.

As we’ve been working through the Sermon on the Plain, what is stark and obvious is that Christ’s call seems so contrary to what we usually think, and yet at the same time we can see that if we all lived in such a way, then the world might be enhanced and made complete.

These words of Christ, lead us to see that maybe what Christ is really inviting us to do, is to fall in love. “Fall in love with the world that God has created. Fall in love with who God is. Fall in love with God, for when we do, we receive God’s love, and we are changed.”

“Fall in love with a God who loves enough to bless those who are unlovable in this world. Fall in love with this God, and allow ourselves the joy of seeing life through His eyes and being changed.” Just like in human relationships, let God wear off on you, so that we might see the world differently.

Fall in love with this God who came to earth and loved his enemies and did not judge. Fall in love with this God, for in doing so, we begin to see that all of life is a gift, and so are all who receive the gift of life. Just like in human relationships, let God reveal who God is, and be bold enough to share who we are with Him.

“Fall in love, open your hearts, live like me...live in me,” Christ is saying, for in doing so, our hearts are changed, our lives are changed, and the fruit we bear is fruit of love, hope, joy and peace.”

“Fall in love with me,” Christ is saying, “for I have an overabundance of love to give, and I want to plant that love in your hearts to bear fruit. Fruit that will last, and fruit that is vital to the building of my Kingdom.”

Have any of us fallen in love? The true message of the sermon on the plain is found in an invitation to fall in love and give ourselves over to that love, so that we might be transformed into disciples who transform the world. Such is Christ’s message, and such is Christ’s call.

If you’ve fallen in love before, you’re invited to do it again. If you’ve not fallen in love, then you’re invited to take the risk with Christ. Whatever the case, know that there is an abundance of God’s love stored up for us, and the great Good News is that when we accept it, when we listen, learn, and follow, when we put our trust in Christ, when we risk love...our lives bear fruit, and out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks...and life is lived.” Thanks be to God. Amen.