How Hearts Get Hard and Why In God’s Name It Matters
Hardness of Heart
a sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey
Audio from worship at 10 AM Worship Service October 3, 2021
at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Carson City.
I am wearing a mask so the deep breathing is not a sign of illness
but a sign of caring for others.
edited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions all errors are mine.
Sermons also available free on iTunes
I want to talk to you about hardness of heart. Hardness of heart. Now, forget what you know about being hard-hearted because that is probably society’s definition of what hard-hearted is: someone that is not kind, not generous, not compassionate. Kindness, generosity, and compassion are all good things. But in the Bible, the lack of them is not what makes one hard-hearted. To find out the Bible’s meaning of hard-hearted, we have to go back to the Hebrew Scriptures. There’s a lot of hard-heartedness going along in the Hebrew Scriptures.
The most common place where there’s hard-heartedness is the story of – anyone? Anyone? Bueller? No? Nothing? Anybody on Zoom chat? The Exodus story with Pharaoh. That Pharaoh guy was always getting his heart hardened. Right? And every time there was a plague; Pharaoh’s heart was hardened. And it wasn’t because he wasn’t kind or generous or compassionate or understanding. Hard-hearted in the Bible means you can’t see what God is doing in the world. This comes from not caring why things are happening only how. And Pharaoh lived for the how, never the why.
Remember the first plagues that came up, the frogs, the Nile turning to blood-red, all these things? Pharaoh was focused on how. Because he turned to his magicians, and his magicians did the same thing. Oh, well, that’s not anything special. My magicians can do that, as well. I know how you did it. I know the secret. I know the trick. I know the magic. And he completely missed why God was doing it. For that he was called “hard-hearted.”
Hard-hearted is when we don’t see what God is doing in the world and instead focus on how we are in the world. Don’t we do that a lot? In the beginning of our Greek scripture reading we hear more about how. In fact, all through this chapter it’s about the hows presented to Jesus, and Jesus going, why is God doing this in the world?
The Pharisees come up and say is it lawful – how – for a man to divorce his wife? And Jesus asks them, what does the law say? And they answer with a how. Well, you give her a certificate of divorce, you go to a notary public, you get it stamped, you do all the things and that. And Jesus calls that “hard-hearted.” Not because of the lack of compassion or kindness, the meanness of divorce, but because, as he goes on to explain, it’s not what God intends.
You see, Jesus isn’t here giving some moral rules for divorce. He isn’t here outlawing divorce. He isn’t tell you how to live your life. He isn’t telling you a bunch of reasons. We don’t have to go back and break out the scarlet letter “A” and put it on people so we know not to marry them. He’s telling us the why. And I know you all are a little titillated, maybe, about that word “adultery.” Can we say that in church? Have the children left?
But you know, adultery is not just what we usually think of it in culture. Adultery means to water down; right? If you have adulterated milk, that means someone put some water in it or some other things, watered it down. If a food or anything else is adulterated, it means it’s not the way it should be. If you think about that, the why of the adultery, instead of the scandlous how, it’s obvious today whoever does these things isn’t living the way God wants us to live. Every time in this chapter, and it’s three stories in one chapter, but we’ve only have two this week because as Father Jeff says, the lectionary elf says oh, no, only two, only two.
Every story, one, marriage and how a man owns a wife. That’s the way it was back then. Then there was children, another thing that a man would own. Leads up to, with the author of Mark, the story that we’ll hear next week about the rich young ruler although you have combined different gospel accounts to get the complete description. The story is about a man with great possessions that comes to Jesus with a how question. How do I inherit eternal life? How do I do it? And Jesus looks at him and loves him and answers with why are you living your life? Give away all that you have to the poor, and follow me.
And the answer to the how do I get this eternal life, Jesus tasks the rich young ruler, examine why you are living. Why are you living? Are you living to serve others? Are you living to help others? It’s the why question you should be looking at, not the how. Do we do that today? You know, we really, really are encouraged to ask the how questions and stop there. Now, I’m not going – the how people, need them in my life. I need them. I love them. That’s what I need, some people to tell me how to do stuff. But we can’t stop there. We’ve got to examine the why are we doing even what we know how to do.
I quote Hélder Câmara, Archbishop in Brazil. A famous quote about how and why.
When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why are they poor, they call me a communist.
When I focus on how we’re going to feed the poor, well, that’s good. That’s safe. That’s acceptable. But when I ask why are there hungry people, why are there poor people, oh, now you’ve gone from preaching to meddling. You’re being a communist if you ask the why questions.
I love signs. I’m a big sign guy. Have you see the signs of the pandemic? I love reading them and considering them. The ones about masks. I know how you voted in the last election, just by the sign on your door. You know that? How did that happen? But can you see those? And some say “Due to government mandate, because of the Governor and the CDC, you’ve got to wear a mask.”
I don’t know about you, and we can take a survey later about how you feel about the Governor, but I’m pretty darn sure the Governor did not kill 700,000 Americans. I’m going to go out on a limb and say he didn’t do that. So that sign on the door saying the Governor makes us wear a mask, I’m saying, you know, that’s a how. That’s a how. How do we get masks on? We had the Governor say that. But have you seen others? Not many. Maybe I’m not going to the right places. It’s just occurred to me that, that maybe I need to go different places. But some say something like, “Due to the pandemic, you have to wear a mask.” Or a couple I’ve seen, “To protect you and others, you have to wear a mask.” Now, there’s someone that gets the why, and not just the how.
It’s been a bad year for the hows. Awful year. I’ve gone over and over about how are we going to meet as a Presbytery. That’s like my one job is to have a Presbytery meeting. I have a job. My job is to have a Presbytery meeting. That’s it. That’s all I’ve got to do. Oh, my lord has it been hard to get a Presbytery meeting. I’m halfway through my term. I’ve had 28 minutes of Presbytery meeting in a year and a half. And that was only to have a meeting so we could pass a by-law change so we didn’t have to have meetings. It’s been a bad year for the how people.
But you know what? It’s going to be even harder coming back because I’m telling you, at least half of the people, maybe more, stop at the how. For them, church is all about the hows. How do we do worship? How do we do coffee hour? How do we do fellowship? How do we do communion? And that’s all they know, and that’s where they stop. And when you take away those hows, you’ve taken away their church. When you take away the how, you’ve taken away their faith and their identity, and they don’t have anything left. And they say, what? The ritual phase? I didn’t sign up for this. This is not how it’s done.
And I’m not picking on you church folk. It’s throughout the churches, all the churches. It’s also through the clubs. I’m a member of a social club, service club. We lost half our members. Half our members are gone. Our president was in tears our last meeting. Why? Because we’re not doing how it’s supposed to be done. And for some people that’s all their membership means, how we do things. That’s not how we do things. They forget the why. Or they never got to the why. We’re not there to meet together, shake hands, tell jokes, have our masks off, talk to one another, give hugs, all these things that people object to we can’t do anymore.
We’re there, and we say this, “To serve the community, one child at a time.” (see Why Kiwanis.) That’s why we’re meeting. That’s why we have a club. It’s not to meet together. It’s not to have lunch together. It’s not to talk together. It’s not to handshake together. It’s not to have fun together. It’s not to joke together. It’s to serve the community, one child at a time. That hasn’t changed. Pandemic does not stop the whys. Crisis does not change the why. Challenges does not change – oh, it wipes out the hows. And if that’s all you’ve got, you’re going to lose your faith, the how-to faith. But why God faith goes on.
You look throughout Scriptures through this lens, where we continue to come to God with how do we do something. And those are important, and those are good and helpful. But it is deadly if we stop there. We’ve got to continue on and say why are we doing things. Even Job, which is a huge sermon in all itself and story. Our little sermon from Job, our little Scripture from Job. How do you live? But Job, when everything went a terrible way, worse than the pandemic, and it gets worse for Job, he knows why he’s there. Shall we take the good from God, but not the evil? Why are we there? To serve. To be in a relationship with God, in good times and in bad. That’s why I’m here. That has not changed, even though everything else has.
Friends, as difficult as this last 18 months have been, it’s been so difficult, you’ve even got Presbyterians up preaching to you. Oh, my God. Lord almighty. When will it end, Lord? Even though the hows are broke away and changed and discarded, I’m telling you this is an excellent opportunity to remember the whys. Why are we here as a church? Because the hows have gone away. The things we used to do, the rituals we used to fund, the calendar, the cut-and-paste events. All gone. And we’re like Job, scratching ourselves with Zoom mics, hoping the itch would go away.
Shall we take the good from God, and abandon him when things aren’t so good? We will if we only focus on how we are supposed to live and how things are supposed to be and how others are supposed to be and that darn governor mandate. But if we focus on we’re here to help one another, to keep each other safe from pandemic, from death; we’re here to keep the hospitals less than full so that when people have a heart attack or a stroke there’s actually a hospital bed for them and not filled up with some COVID person from the pandemic. I don’t know about you, but it’s a lot easier for me to wear a mask for that reason than because the Governor told me so.
So I’m telling you, you want a way out, don’t be asking Jesus the how questions. Always look for the why, why questions. The how will lead you to a hardness of heart where you will not see God’s work in the world. You totally miss it. But looking at the why and the intentions of God will lead you to a blessed, contented, and maybe even, yes, the answer to the rich young ruler’s question: eternal life. Amen.
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