How to Consider the Human Heart? (Feb 16)

Readings, Jeremiah 17:5-10 and Luke 6: 17-26
Image, Dora Chapman, Self portrait in brown hat, 1935

The ambition at the heart of much portraiture is to try and capture the human character of the sitter: their heart, their will, their history – in short, the fullness of the person. The aim is to evoke - through the many varied and studied choices – the fullness of the subject beyond simply a collection of shapes and tones. To ask and perhaps answer, who is this person, or even perhaps, delving further, what do we know of the human creature?

Because it is seldom the aspect we direct our primary attention, we can miss that the Bible contains astute and probing passages on human psychology and moral life. We tend to think first of the stories, or the proclamation of salvation, or the odes to God’s nature, but there is much concerning the nature of the human creature, our hearts, our will, our virtues and follies. Offerings, as it were, to Hamlet’s immortal question, what a piece of work is man?

Usually, my go to example of such is Paul’s famous quip: I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Who among us does not know this feeling, has not exclaimed years later in the car or shower, why did I do that? Who has not known the agony born of the gap between will and act, intention and execution?

But Paul also has, and I’ll use the King James here just to give it that appropriately Shakespearean flair: For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? Does this not run at the core of so much poetry and psychology? We are mysteries to one another and ourselves, and who can know the things of Jock over here except Jock himself.

In another way, I’ve always felt Cain’s response to the Lord’s question: where is your brother Abel, I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper? Speaks to the habit of the guilty, to fight question with question. This is perhaps the essential dynamic of discourse between parents and their teenage children. Asked where they were the night before, the nervously guilty jump to their own questions: I told you yesterday? Don’t you trust me? Is this a police state? 

Or, speaking of teenagers, there’s that line in Ecclesiastes which comes to mind as I walk through the shops and see those younger than me reviving mullets and other fashion trends which were buried in obscurity for good reason: Is there a thing of which it is said, ‘see this is new?’ It has already been, in the ages before us. 

With all that established, today’s reading from Jeremiah offers another such contribution to the understanding of human nature and will.
More crooked is the heart than all things,
It is grievously ill and who can fathom it?

This is perhaps a bleaker view of humanity than we might usually operate with, but there are plenty of times it appears accurate. It is helpful to remember that the heart was associated less with emotion (as we might today, when valentine’s day decorations are a sea of red hearts). The emotions were in the gut, kidneys, or bowels (all of which are slightly more complicated to render in the window of a florist). The heart was the seat of understanding, the loci of the will. Jeremiah’s diagnosis is that there is crookedness (or deceitfulness) in our understanding/will. That something in our instinct is ill and lies beyond our understanding, beyond our ability to fathom. As the wise and noble Olaf the snowman remarks (paraphrasing this very passage in Frozen 2), who knows the ways of men.

For this crooked or deceitful heart is the site of snap judgments, instinctual reactions, and first impressions – all of which on further interrogation, we know can be faulty. Because while we might often be advised to trust our gut, go with our instincts, and don’t overthink it - this is often far from advisable. It is not to say there are never times to do this, as we rely on our instincts and gut reactions for a million micro-decisions across the day. But we ought to be wary of believing that our will, our instincts, are automatically good (or even neutral). 

For any thorough self-examination reveals our instant reactions are often those we would be uncomfortable speaking aloud. Prejudices, stereotypes, judgments can spring to mind as we walk behind someone in the shops, hear a voice over the phone, or read a story in the news. And after a second or two of contemplation we recognise these judgments as uncharitable, and without merit; vestiges of inherited scorn. Because why should we see the unhoused person and assume they are the architect of their struggle, see the crying child and assume they are product of ill-disciplined parents, hear the person detailing the difficulties of losing weight and assume lack of discipline, hear the testimony of the victim and wonder if they also ought to shoulder some blame? Well, it is as Jeremiah proclaimed: 
More crooked is the heart than all things,
It is grievously ill and who can fathom it?

The gospel is in many ways, the great rebuff against going with your gut, of trusting our instincts as naturally virtuous, our understanding as untarnished. For the gospel asks us to trust that the one crucified by the State was not some degenerate or miscreant, but saviour and messiah. The gospel asks us to trust that the one who was pierced and buried, has been raised and ascended. The gospel asks us to believe that the last will be first, and first last. The gospel asks us to believe that the mighty shall be cast down and the lowly lifted high. In today’s very passage, when Jesus begins his sermon on the mount, the gospel – in full contradiction of our common understanding and instinct – declares:
Blessed are you who are poor,
   for yours is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are you who are hungry now,
   for you will be filled.
Blessed are you who weep now,
   for you will laugh  

Then, as now, common understanding and gut reactions attach wealth to personal virtue. The rich must be blessed, hardworking, noble, and trustworthy… the poor must be idle, shifty, cursed, and of loose morals. This is the deceitful will, the crooked heart, the corrupted understanding at the base of our instincts. Jesus overturns this time and again. Those who shall laugh are those we might see weeping and wonder ‘what have they done to improve their lot?’ Those who will be filled are those we hear ask for food and wonder ‘are they lying to me?’ Those who will inherit the kingdom of God are those we feel the flash of doubt when asked, ‘can they be trusted here alone?’
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To be a Christian is to open our heart to Jesus. To ask Jesus into the crookedness of our hearts so that its ways might be made straight. To ask Jesus into the deceitfulness of our instincts so that it may be judged by the truth. To ask Jesus into our ill understanding and so that it may be made well. We open our hearts to Jesus so that we might learn how to question our gut, to question those snap judgments, hidden prejudices, and unspoken assumptions. We ask Jesus into our hearts so that what we will see in the face of another is the fullness of a portrait painted by God. What we see in another is not defined by our initial and faulty instinctual reactions, but we recognise a deep inner life, a full story, a complex and evolving mystery. But more than this, we see the person in front of us in the shop, or on the phone, or in the news as  a neighbour, made in the image of God, who deserves dignity, love, and service. We ask Jesus into our hearts because he can fathom it. Jesus can search the human heart and uproot that which does not serve us, or our neighbour, or God’s kingdom. We say, come, Lord Jesus: reform, reshape, and repair our heart, let not our will be done, but yours.