Hardness of heart is a treatable disease.

The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, October 3, 2021

Fr. Tom Seitz, Jr.

 In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

 Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce his wife . . . because of your hardness of heart.

 Hardness of heart: that’s the universal human ailment that Jesus came to treat and to heal by giving us a new heart. Jesus reminds the Pharisees that the best Moses could do was to make an allowance for divorce for those who suffered from hardness of heart. Jesus’ fellow Jews were of two minds on how hard a person’s heart had to be before divorce could be allowed under the law of Moses. For some, any amount of hardness of heart, even minor irritations, was enough to justify divorce. For others, infidelity, physical or emotional cruelty, or the welfare of the children were substantial and legitimate grounds for divorce. Jesus himself, according to St. Matthew’s version of today’s gospel, permitted divorce in the case of adultery, though even there, I would claim, Jesus never meant to imply that in the ultimate betrayal of adultery, God’s grace was incapable of healing such a destructive case of hardness of heart.

 As I said to begin with, hardness of heart is a universal human ailment that Jesus came to treat and to heal by giving us a new heart. We see another case of this disease in the response of Jesus’ disciples to the people who brought young children for him to touch. Their hearts were hardened. They tried to separate and divorce Jesus, if you will, from a relationship with young children. Jesus was very upset with them because their hardness of heart had the effect of separating them from him. I’m sure that some of his disciples thought they were protecting and preserving their relationship with Jesus by trying to prevent this intrusion and disruption, but as Jesus makes clear to them, quite the opposite was the case. Unless we relate to Jesus with same level of trust, like a child has for a loving parent, we miss out on the very kingdom of God our hearts were made for and long for.

 Though I didn’t explicitly point it out to the children in my homily, any resistance on their part to coming to church is also evidence that they are growing up, that they are no longer little children, that their hearts have been infected with a mild case of hardness of heart, an ailment which our weekly worship is meant to counteract, whether we are no longer a little child or have, in fact, become adults whose thoughts and words and manner of life have hardened into predictable patterns and pathways that lead us away, rather than draw us closer, to God’s kingdom. That’s why we get on our knees and say we’re sorry each week, as a way of renewing and strengthening the new heart that God has given us.

 When we offered the Marriage Alpha course a few years ago, one of my big takeaways, which reminded me how easily hardness of heart can creep into our most significant and intimate relationships, was the session that described the five love languages of gift giving, words of affirmation, acts of service, active listening, and physical expressions of love. The insight that I received was the fact that we often offer to others the form of love that we respond to the best, the language that comes most naturally to us, rather than putting ourselves in the place of the other person and determining which of the five love languages they respond to most fully. Speaking their language rather than asking them to understand and respond to our own, even if it’s a second language that they have acquired, is a sign that our hearts are especially flexible, pliant, and strong without any hardness of heart at all.

 I think this is the beauty and the reward of being faithful to one another in the common life of the church, of learning to love our fellow brothers and sisters who may speak another language or who may be suffering from a hardness of heart as much as we are, discovering that both of us need the grace of God that he offers us in our worship together. The exchange of the peace offers us the opportunity to be reconciled with a brother or a sister who has or who might otherwise provoke a bout of hardness of heart, thereby refreshing the new hearts we both have in Christ.

 God knows we Americans are suffering from hardness of heart in our current political life, talking past each other in languages that seem increasingly foreign and incomprehensible to one other. I believe this situation has given us through the fellowship of the church the opportunity to witness to the power of God’s grace to seek understanding and reconciliation with those who differ from us rather than exacerbating a growing separation and estrangement.

 As I said to the children, there is healing in singing together, of exchanging a peace which only God in Christ can give, of receiving the very Body and Blood of Christ as the ultimate tenderizer and healer of the hardness of heart that his death on the cross is meant to cure, of hearing in the gospel and in the preacher’s sermon words that offer both the clear correction, as we see with Jesus in his comments to the Pharisees and his disciples, as well as the genuine hope that God has provided the antidote for our common ailment in the sacrifice of his Son, whose heart was so compliant that he was obedient to his Father even unto death, but also so strong that he bore the tragic consequences of the accumulated hardness of the hearts of the whole world for all time and for every generation that we might have a new heart, a heart like his.

 Like those little children, let Jesus take each of us in his arms today. Let him lay his hands on us and touch us and bless us, renewing and refreshing a new heart for him and for the world for which he gave his life. AMEN.