The Head & The Heart

By: The Rev. Pete Martin

The Sufi mystic Rumi once wrote “The only lasting beauty is the

beauty of the heart”. Helen Keller wrote “The best and most beautiful

things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt

with the heart and Albert Einstein stated “Never let your brain interfere

with your heart”. In today’s gospel reading, we have a profound but

not uncommon, difference of opinion between the Pharisees and

Jesus. It is a difference of opinion between rituals and one’s motives.

Between the head and the heart.

As we have seen elsewhere in scripture, the Pharisees are

vigorous of rituals. Part of this is a desire to preserve history and

some of this is a belief in what is clean and unclean. Let me say

upfront that there is nothing wrong with washing your hands before

eating. Heck, we follow this principle in our house. I suspect 9 out of

10 doctors would probably recommend washing our hands before

eating. However, what Jesus is speaking of is very different.

It is best to start with what Jesus says to the Pharisees in

response to their criticism of the apostles. Jesus quotes Isaiah and

says “This people honor we with their lips but their hearts are far from

me.” Jesus is saying the extreme adherence to rituals at the expense

of searching the person’s heart is not drawing them to God but

pushing them away from God. In other words, the Pharisees are

preaching that what rules the believer adheres to is more important

than what is in the believer’s heart. Jesus is flipping the script and

telling the Pharisees that they have it the wrong way around. It is the

believer’s heart that matters to God.

Jesus, then, discusses what does defile a person. Since the word

defile is so prominent in this reading, it is important to have a

understood meaning of the word. Merriam-Webster defines the word

defile as “to make unclean or impure”. If Jesus says that it is what

comes from inside us that defiles us, then what is he speaking of? In a

broad interpretation, we could say sin and I believe there would be

truth in that statement. Giving license to our sinful thoughts and

actions would certainly defile us in God’s eyes. If we wanted to be

more specific, then we could look at what we call the seven deadly

sins. How often has greed, envy and pride entered into our lives and

cause harm both to ourselves and others? Has it defiled God’s

creation (each one of us), I suspect it has and I include myself in that

assessment. People who we have hurt, lives that have been effected

by our actions and our inaction in helping others have all played a part

in our own defilement.

All of these things cause us to defile ourselves in the eyes of God

and yet, there is always grace. That wonderful gift that we neither

earned nor deserve and yet, God gives his grace to us anyway. When

we defile ourselves, we need only ask for God’s love and mercy and it

is there. Put another way (and excuse the double negative) God can

never not love us. No event illustrates this better than when Jesus

was suffering on the cross. One man was mocking him while the other

asked him for forgiveness. One man demanded that Jesus take them

down from their crosses while the other man demanded nothing and

asked for nothing more than mercy. One man defiled himself while the

other was redeemed.

Getting back to the gospel reading, notice that Jesus never said

that cleaning one’s hands was wrong. He did not say that the apostles

should never clean their hands. Instead, it was a matter of priorities. In

the eyes of God, rituals have their place but not to the exclusion of

love and mercy.

So how is this relevant to us today? Let me answer that in the

form of a story. Once I was in a shopping mall on a hot, summer day. I

was on the second level and I looked down on the first level. What I

saw was a man who looked like he did not belong there. To say he

was disheveled would be an understatement. He was very dirty and

sweating profusely. In fact, he was sweating so much that he was

dripping sweat on the floor of the mall as he walked. I saw security go

up to him and ask him what he was doing in the mall. As fortune

would have it, the muzak system was turned off and the mall was

mostly empty, so I could overhear what was being said. It turned out

that this man was going to the mall to buy his wife some perfume for

her birthday. As he was walking towards the mall, he saw an elderly

lady with a flat tire and offered to change her tire for her. The security

guard shook the man’s hand and wished him a good day. This is what

Jesus is talking about in today’s gospel reading.

In closing, I encourage each of us to let our hearts be the home

where Jesus dwells. Let us prepare a home inside of our hearts where

we can offer compassion and mercy to a world that desperately needs

them. Jesus looks beyond the outer appearance and desires an

authentic relationship with each of us so we may grow as believers.

Compassion and grace are the central themes in today’s gospel

reading. We are all on a journey and Jesus will meet us wherever we

are and invite us to a deeper understanding that can live forever in our

hearts. Amen.