Written On Our Hearts

October 29, 2023

Reformation Sunday

Rev. Mary Erickson

Hope Lutheran Church

Jeremiah 31:31-34; John 8:31-36

Written on Our Hearts

Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.

Many of our metaphors involve the heart. For instance, you can learn something by heart. When you learn something by heart, it means that you’ve repeated it so often that you absolutely know it. It’s deeply embedded in you, like the words to the Pledge of Allegiance. You just know it.

Some of the things we know by heart are very, very significant to us, like the Lord’s Prayer. We know the Lord’s Prayer by heart. But there are also some really silly things we know by heart. For instance, if you were born before 1970, then you know that “two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun” are the makings of a Big Mac. I know that by heart, I can even say it backwards, but it doesn’t edify my life in any way!

So we may know something by heart, but that doesn’t guarantee it’s something worth knowing. However, if we say that we take something to heart, now, this is much more significant. When we take something to heart, we’ve embraced it deeply. It touches us, not just intellectually, but emotionally, too. We feel it through and through.

In our reading from the prophet Jeremiah, he writes about the new covenant God will establish with God’s people:

“This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.”

This covenant will be written on their hearts.

I’m picturing God doing the equivalent of carving a true love heart into the bark of a tree. God carves this covenant of love right into the hearts of Israel! They will carry it with them and there will never any doubt about God’s everlasting commitment and love.

Jeremiah looks to a day when Israel will take to heart God’s covenant love for them. They’ll never have to teach one another, they’ll never have to say, “Know the Lord.” They just will because it’s written on their heart.

Something like that goes on with faith. We can have book knowledge about our Christian beliefs. But faith goes beyond mere knowing. Faith isn’t something we LEARN by heart. It’s something we TAKE to heart. And when that happens – when we take to heart the message of God’s unending love – then that love becomes written on our hearts.

When our faith remains merely as something we’ve LEARNED by heart, then it resides only as intellectual knowledge. We know about God’s love, we know the narrative of the Bible, we understand the concept of salvation.

But KNOWING something BY heart doesn’t mean that it has anything at all to do with our heart! It’s merely head knowledge. It’s only when we TAKE faith TO heart that faith enters into the heart. And when it enters your heart, that’s when it has the power to transform.

Up until then, we can only operate out of the world’s covenant with us. What lies in our heart is the notion that we are what we do. We are what we’ve accomplished. Our value and worth are deemed by what we have, by the success – or lack of success – we’ve achieved. We view ourselves based on what other people think about us. We judge ourselves by the benchmarks of performance that we deem to be the acceptable standard.

So we continually have to prove to ourselves that we’re good enough. Even if we’re currently okay, there’s always the danger that something could shift the balance. We’ll be exposed for the phony we are. We’ll make a total mess of things. We live just one slim criticism away from failure. The house of cards we’ve so carefully constructed could come tumbling down at any instant.

But God’s covenant of steadfast love is not grounded in the fickle winds of worldly whims. It’s based on the one thing of lasting value and unshakable truth. And that is the character – not of ourselves – but of God. God’s character. And God’s character is love. This is the truth, the north star, that will never lead us astray.

And this divine love has chosen US. Not because we’ve measured up to a standard of divine acceptability, but because that is what flows from the heart of God! Love comes from God. It’s this love that prompted the Son to take on human form and dwell among us. It’s the heart of divine love that led him to take on all of our worst enemies, from everything that separates us from the love of God. He came so that the eternal love of God could reach across all that separated us. And in his dying and raising again to new life, he demonstrated that there is nothing in heaven or on earth or under the earth that can separate us from the love of God.