Feb. 16-17, 2008 - ... Change of Heart

Twenty-two days after you were conceived, a tiny little electrical pulse stimulated the heart muscle, causing it to contract. It is called the “atrial kick”. It forced blood into your ventricles. The impulse is so faint that it can’t be detected even with amplification. But it was the first beat of your heart and since that day, your heart hasn’t stopped. It pumps 70 milliliters of blood with every contraction, 14,000 pints every day, 100,000 beats every day from that first atrial kick to this day.

Well, there might have been a few days when your heart skipped a beat or two. Maybe it happened when you first saw that very attractive person you are sitting next to right now. You might want to lean over and tell him or her that your heart skipped or give them a little squeeze of the hand to let them know. Call it a post Valentine’s Day gift. Maybe your heart skipped today when you sat down next to a very attractive person that you never saw before. But if that is the case, please wait and tell him or her on your own time.

God gave us this amazing gift called a heart and if we take care of it, it serves us well. It beats every second without us even thinking about it. It’s incredible. It works automatically. Do you have moments of absent mindedness? Have you ever forgotten where you put your car keys or someone’s name? Imagine if our heart only beat when we remembered to tell it to beat. We’d be in serious trouble. God created the heart, the physical core of our bodies, to operate automatically, without thought. There is no way for us to make it beat on its own. It’s automatic. Our physical heart is a wonderful gift.[1]

We are studying our hearts but we aren’t studying this wonderful gift. We are studying the other heart. When the Bible speaks of the heart, it seldom talks about the physical heart. It talks about the spiritual heart, the center of your spiritual being, your inner core. This heart is mentioned over one thousand times in scripture and is described as the “wellspring of your life.” (Proverbs 4:23b NIV)[2] On the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says that where your treasure is, you’ll find your spiritual center, your core being, your heart.

Your spiritual heart is different than your physical heart. While we can’t tell our physical hearts to beat, the way our spiritual hearts beat is ultimately our responsibility. They need to be developed, shaped, even changed in order to become who God wants us to be. Jesus actually tells us exactly what our spiritual heart should look like. It’s our theme verse for this series and as we did last week, I want you to repeat it with me. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27) This is who we are to be, at our center, at our core, at our spiritual heart. This leads to the questions of this sermon series. Who are you at your center? What is the condition of your spiritual heart? Do you have a heart for God and a heart for people? Just like it is possible to be deceived about the status of your physical heart, the same can be true about your spiritual heart. We see this in Nicodemus.

Nicodemus is a complex man. He is a Pharisee, which was the ruling Jewish party of the day. They emphasized separation from Hellenistic influences. They thought of themselves as purists who preserved the Law of Moses. As a member of the Sanhedrin, Nicodemus is a political leader. We also know he is wealthy.

John tells us that “He came to Jesus by night.” (John 5:2) Many make a lot out of that little verse. There are sermons out there, and I’ve preached some of them, that suggest that Nicodemus was sneaking around at night to avoid being seen by other Pharisees. These sermons imply that Nicodemus might get in trouble visiting Jesus. While this makes a great angle for a sermon, it doesn’t make very much sense. There are many occasions in scripture when Pharisees approach Jesus. They invite Jesus into their homes. But if you look at the proceeding verses to this story, Nicodemus sneaking around makes no sense.

Jesus is in Jerusalem for his first Passover. The gospel of John tells us that he experienced three Passovers in Jerusalem instead of the one trip that the other gospels report. Immediately before Nicodemus’ nighttime visit, John writes “When he was in Jerusalem during the Passover festival, many believed in his name because they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus on his part would not entrust himself to them, because he knew….what was in everyone” (John 2: 23-24a, 25b) People believe in Jesus but not completely. Something inside was missing. In John’s way of telling the story of Jesus, Nicodemus represents this group which is why his story begins “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God” (John 3: 2b) The exchange after this statement leaves Nicodemus confused and religious seekers a little scared.

Do you remember what it was like to visit this congregation for the first time? It may be your first time today. Almost every visitor wants to be somewhat anonymous. You don’t want a spotlight on you which says, “Visitor here, first time person. Look at him.” If this is your first time, we aren’t going to put a spotlight on you and we certainly aren’t going to say, “Oh I see you are new today. Why don’t you stand up and have a dialog with me about the sermon. Ask me questions about what you don’t understand. We’ll see what you know and don’t know. We’ll rate how spiritual you are.” This is everyone’s fear because when you visit a church, you don’t want to be put on the spot.

This is what’s going on with Nicodemus. There he is at night, visiting Jesus and as a first time visitor, he’s under the spotlight. Maybe that’s what Nicodemus wanted because Jesus doesn’t say, “Stand up and introduce yourself.” Nicodemus just starts talking to Jesus.

Ouch, wow. How many of you would return to worship if that was your first experience at Geist Christian Church? I don’t think there would be very many. Nicodemus reveals that he believes in Jesus but he believes in his head, not his heart. He knows that there must be something more but he is confused, literally in the dark. Jesus tells him he needs to be "born again." Nicodemus needs a spiritual rebirth, a personal transformation, literally a change of heart. His core identity, his heart, needs to be reborn and if we let this story speak to us, so does ours.

Your heart, my heart, our hearts need a change. We need a change of heart. There is a reason. Ours hearts aren’t fully and completely God centered. Our central core being, our spiritual heart tends to be self-centered. In order to love God and love neighbor as God, we need a change of heart. There is a wonderful story that will help you understand more fully this need.

The story is about a three year old girl. She was the firstborn and only child in her family. When her mother became pregnant again, she was very excited about having a new brother or sister. Within a few hours of her parents bringing a new baby boy home from the hospital, the little girl made a request. She wanted to be alone with her new brother in his room with the door shut. Her insistence about being alone with the baby with the door shut made her parents a bit uneasy. But since they had installed an intercom system in anticipation of the baby’s arrival, they knew they could hear if anything strange was happening. So they let the little girl go into the baby’s room, shut the door and then raced to the intercom. They heard their daughter moving in the room, imagined her standing over the crib. Then they heard her say to her three day old baby brother, “Tell me about God—I’ve almost forgotten.” [3]

In her childhood innocence, she reveals this deepest truth. We come from God and when we are very young, we still remember this. We know this. But the process of growing up, of learning about this world and receiving messages from this world, we forget from whom we came and in whom we live. Like Adam and Eve, we fall away from our connectedness with God. As we become more self-conscious and self-aware, our heart changes. What becomes important to our core being is our identity rather than our God centeredness. Or, to use the language of Frederick Buechner, we live our lives from the outside in rather than from the inside out. [4]It creates this gap between God and us.

This gap breaks God’s heart. God cannot stand being separated from us. Every parent understands. God wants us to be connected again so much that “….he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3: 16) God so had a heart for us that God sent Jesus, so we can return to God. We’ve come from God and we return to God. God had a heart for us so that we will have a heart for God.

Jesus is explaining this to Nicodemus. When Nicodemus begins talking about his belief in the signs of Jesus’ ministry, Jesus changes the subject, changes it from the head to the heart. He talks about the wind and the spirit, about the change of heart needed to see the kingdom of God. It’s one thing to believe in your head what Jesus is doing. It is something else to have a heart for God and a heart for people. Nicodemus needs to be born again, to have a change of heart.

Just as it is possible to be deceived about the status of your physical heart, the same can be true about your spiritual heart. You can think that your spiritual heart is healthier than it is. You can think that you are committed followers of Jesus because in your head, you think about him or you believe his teachings. But if your core being is still self-centered, you don’t have a heart for God and a heart for people. You need a change of heart or to use the language Jesus uses, you need to be born again. When it comes to being born again, most of us are like Nicodemus asking, “How can this be?”

For some, the born-again experience is sudden and dramatic. This was the case for Saul on the road to Damascus. It was a dramatic conversion experience where instead of being centered on the recognition he received for persecuting the first Christians, his heart was changed. He was born again and had a heart for God and a heart for people.

For most of us, being born again is not a single intense experience. It is a gradual, incremental process. It is a series of changes of heart which cause our spiritual heart to beat differently. In fact, the apostle Paul knew that most of us have to have a lifetime of change. He wrote about it often using the language of dying to an old way of living and rising to a new life in Christ. The great church leader Martin Luther believed this happened daily and had an interesting expression. He said that “daily put to death the old Adam.” This is certainly my experience. Daily I need to consider the condition of my heart and daily I find that I have “almost forgotten God.” When I realize this, it allows me to have a momentary correction, a quick change of heart. Then, the Spirit lifts the burden of self-preoccupation and I can begin anew to love God and love neighbor.

I think this is good news for almost all of us. Changing the way our spiritual heart beats is a lifelong process. I can honestly say there are few that I have known who were truly, dramatically transformed. Even Nicodemus’ experience was a slow, incremental process. We see him later when Jesus makes a second visit to Jerusalem and some come to the Sanhedrin and ask that Jesus be arrested. Nicodemus is described as one of them, one of the insiders of the Sanhedrin. But he urges caution saying, "Our law does not judge people without first giving them a hearing to find out what they are doing, does it?" John 7:51) But he eventually makes it. At the end of Jesus’ life, there is Nicodemus. He helped Joseph of Arimethea take the body of Jesus off the cross and he provides the spices for its initial anointing. At the foot of the cross, we see Nicodemus had his change of heart; he was born again.