John 12:2--33
Lent 5 / Year B
“Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and
renew a right spirit within me.”
These are, of course, the words of what we now know as the 51st
Psalm. The author invites us to ponder
the condition of our heart; not as a cardiologist would, but as God does – emotionally,
morally, spiritually.
Let me tell you about the heart of Morrieaux, a character in
Michael Christopher’s play The Black
Angel. It tells the story of Herman
Engel, a W.W.II German general who is sentenced to thirty years behind bars for
atrocities committed by his army. The
play is set after Engel has been released from prison and is living in a cabin
in a remote woodland location. There, he
and his wife hope to finish out their days in obscurity.
Waiting in the wings is Morrieaux, a Frenchman, whose entire
family has been massacred by Engel's army.
Morrieaux has privately vowed if he ever has the opportunity he will
take Engel’s life. His personal death
sentence is kept alive over three decades by the fire of hatred burning in his
heart. Now, with Engel free, the time has
come. Morrieaux stirs into a frenzy
nearby villagers who plot to go to Engel’s cabin by night and burn it to the
ground; the elderly couple trapped inside.
But even this is not enough to appease the hatred of the lead
character. As the play reaches its
climax, Morrieaux poses as a reporter and goes to Engel’s cabin. He grills the general about the details of
the village massacre. The years have
taken a toll on Engel and in his feeble humanity he seems to Morrieaux less
like the monster he had imagined and more like a tired old man. Beyond this, some of the details of the Engel’s
version of the story do not fit as neatly together as Morrieaux had imagined;
opening the possibility the general is not the villain he has been made out to
be. Doubt begins to contaminate the
place where only pure hate and vengeance have reigned for so long.
As the afternoon wears on, Morrieaux takes pity on Engel and
tells him of the villagers’ plans for that very evening. He offers to lead the general and his wife to
safety. “I will go with you on one
condition,” Engel tells Morrieaux, “You must forgive me.” In his fantasies Morrieaux has rehearsed a
thousand different ways in which he would kill this man, now he is willing to
cancel the execution, but not the hate. He
leaves the cabin and Engel, his hate-filled heart intact. As he walks away we hear the villagers
approaching who, with sacks over their heads, proceed to burn the cabin and
murder the general and his wife.
The play asks the question why is Morrieaux unable to
forgive? Why is it easier to save a man’s
life than to forgive him? Why? Because his hatred has been a passion too
long lodged in his soul. He cannot live,
he can no longer be the person he is, without his hatred. He has become his hatred. His hate does not belong to him, he belongs
to it.
Tell me about your heart.
What lies in its secret places?
Tell me about your heart. What
hides within its deepest recesses? Is
there hatred? Bitterness? Immorality?
Bigotry? Rampant pride and
conceit? Vindictiveness? Does your heart covet? Is it consumed with shame? Is it controlled by an addiction? Does it ever boil over into violence? Or perhaps your heart is mostly passionless
and indifferent; lacking hope and purpose.
Maybe it is broken and, to your estimation, wounded beyond repair. Tell me about your heart.
Our Gospel reading this morning records a one verse parable of
our Lord:
“Unless a grain of wheat
falls into the earth and dies, it remains
alone;
but if
it dies, it bears much fruit.”
The meaning of the parable then follows: “The person who loves
his life loses it and the one who hates his life in this world will keep it for
eternal life.” We don’t need the
character of Morrieaux to show us how difficult it is to disdain the present
condition of our heart. If we seek
validation of this truth all we need to do is take stock of the things which we
do not want to turn over to God’s creative renewing.
I think back to the Hebrew Psalmist. The text tells us he or she is lying close to
death. There is something about facing ultimate
consequences which affects the human heart.
Either it can make a person callused and closed, or it opens the heart –
often miraculously – to some new possibility; the vision of which is so overwhelming,
so beautiful it brings to the heart restoration and renewal.
The prophet Jeremiah, in our first reading, is at such a
moment. As he walks among the ruins of
Jerusalem and the Temple and surveys all that his people treasure is gone,
everything supporting them in their faith lost, he receives a breathtaking
promise from the Holy One:
“There
will come a day when My law will not be kept in a temple located in a holy
city. I will make a new covenant. I will write My law upon the hearts of the
people.”
With this promise of God’s internal presence, the Hebrew
religion, though it was in ruins, is reborn.
It is no simple task to keep your heart in this place, so says
our collect this morning:
…among
the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed
where true joys are to be found…
Tell me about your heart. Better yet… tell the One who recreates and
renews.
