A Sermon by Pastor Tom Lacey . . .

Gotta Have a Believer’s Heart

Romans 12:11, Preached at the Congregational Church of Boca Raton, January 14, 2007

A woman called a local hospital and asked about Erma Stockburn in room 302. She was relayed to the nurses’ station, where the nurse there said they really couldn’t give out a lot of information but would take a little look at her records. “Ms. Stockburn is doing very well. In fact, her blood pressure is fine, she is to be taken off the heart monitor in a couple of hours and, if she continues this improvement, Dr. Cohen is going to send her home in a day or two." The woman said, "What a relief! Oh, that's fantastic. Wonderful news!" said the caller. The nurse said, "From your enthusiasm, I take it you are a family member or a very close friend." "Neither! I AM Erma Stockburn in 302! Nobody here tells me anything!" Jesus did say we are to be innocent as doves but wise as serpents. It also doesn’t hurt to have a sense of desperation.

The woman in Scripture who sought Jesus’ help with her sickness—she had been bleeding for twelve years it tells us—was willing to believe in him: “If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.” Mt. 9:21 All of life’s niceties and charms had been stripped away. Her strength was gone, finances dried up, her appetite withdrawn. But what remained inside her weakened body was the strong beating of a believer’s heart. Capture a person, blindfold him, imprison him, and refuse him anything but a meal a day, and he will return to his heart of faith: “God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid.” Is.12:2 We have so many blessings that we often misplace the greatest treasure we have in our possession—our believer’s heart. Turn to your heart of faith. It is there that God speaks to you. As scriptures says, “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary.” Is. 40:31

What we want to see this morning is that basic Christian faith requires a return to the heart of the matter, almost continually. The heart of the Christian faith is God’s grace, which plants in our hearts the seed of living faith, which is to love the Lord and to share our lives with him. This belief in God and in God’s goodness is the Lord’s gift that takes some watching over and caretaking. If we don’t take care of our faith, we can lose the spirit and get burned out. Faith may be “the assurance of things hoped for” but it’s an assurance that starts to gather moss if it just sits around. It’s sort of like a car, which, when we first own it, gets washed once a week, then after six months, once a month, then after two years, once a year, then “Aw, the rain’ll clean it good enough.” The difference is that you can replace a car with a different car and no worries, you just keep on driving down the road. But you can’t replace God with another god and keep going down the same road.

In Clint Eastwood’s, Pale Rider, the plot centers on a conflict between a group of simple poor miners and the rich miner LaHood, the most powerful man in the nearby town. A drifter (Clint Eastwood) rides in and defends a miner from a gang of LaHood’s ruffians with unexpected skill wielding a hickory axe handle, then compounds this surprise by wearing a minister's attire when invited to dinner. At this point, LaHood comes back from being out of town, and gets a report on his mine activities as well as his attempt to scare off the tin pan miners to get their claims. His son and another man tell him that a stranger came and pulled them together. LaHood is incredulous that one man could do this and tells his boys to go back and explain to this man who they are, so he will pack up and leave. Then the son drops the bomb, “Yeah, there ain't much for a preacher to do here, right?” To which LaHood thunders, “You let a preacher into Carbon Canyon? When I left, those tin pans had all but given up. Their spirit was nearly broken. And a man without spirit is whipped. But a preacher, he could give them faith. (Heck!) One ounce of faith, they'll be dug in deeper than ticks on a hound.” In other words, they will believe and then they will have heart, and what a difference this will make.

This is what Paul makes his second in command when it comes to Christian faith. He tells us not to “lag in zeal, (instead) be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord.” A different version of the New Testament, The Message, says it like this: “Don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master.” Not just any old faith will do, but only a faith that has some heart in it. Think about it: Even a person of a different religion or an atheist could recite the Apostle’s Creed, read the bible, perhaps even explain to you in an intelligible manner what the Trinity means, but that doesn’t mean the person has faith. This is fairly obvious. Now the thing is: the same is true of those who do have faith: We believe, but help our unbelief, as Peter said, at one point, before he became the true leader of the Ancient Church. We may know something is true, but may be just as willing to leave behind the enthusiasm for that truth. But sometimes, life throws us into a situation where we can’t avoid facing our faith. The story of Black Hawk Down is that of a small group of Army Rangers who flew into Mogadishu, Somalia, to capture a warlord who was stealing American food shipments from the starving Somali citizens. One of the young men whose life was changed by this brutal battle was Sgt. Jeff Struecker, who now serves as an Army chaplain. Sgt. Struecker claims that as bullets whizzed past his head and grenades exploded all around him, God called him into the ministry. As he said, “In the middle of that firefight, I had to decide whether I believed what I say I believe. And when I finally answered that question, my faith became so strong it gave me the strength to fight the rest of the night.” It’s like this: you can be at work but not working, or perhaps working but not working hard. You can care about someone but not have it make a spark of a difference in what you do for or to that person. Reminds me of the true but sad story of Walter Monckton, who for 20 years served as a faithful unpaid servant of the Duke of Windsor (the former Edward VIII). His reward for this service was an engraved cigarette case—on which his name was misspelled. The fact is we have all kinds of tricks up our sleeves, when it comes to what and whom we will give our heart, and for how long and to what extent.

So how does God deal with this? The Lord keeps putting options in front of each of us. There goes a poor person. There goes an opportunity that I would be good at. There goes a time for prayer. There goes someone who needs me to forgive him. There goes someone whom I am supposed to love. There goes a situation I could make better. There is a place I should volunteer at. There goes a chance to support a worthy, God-based cause with my money. Serve the Lord. Take your faith out of your brain and place it in your heart.

We sometimes have a tough time figuring out what it means to serve the Lord. It seems as though Christians have a tendency to believe that God needs protection, and instead of helping a person in need, whose life may just be bending the rules in order to survive, we turn against them. I think it has to be better to face God on that day not worrying so much about protecting God’s holiness, but advocating for one of us his children. After all, this is exactly what Christ did throughout his life and by his death. A 5 year-old girl loves her Sunday school, loves listening to her parents harmonize on the old gospel hymns, even loves the fire-and-brimstone preaching antics of Brother Munroe, loves everything about her church. In Mrs. Nichols’ class she is memorizing the books of the New Testament, eagerly anticipating her reward, a gold necklace with a tiny glass bulb containing a real mustard seed, just like in Jesus' story. But then everything goes wrong. Her father becomes so sick her mother must support the family by waitressing, which includes serving drinks. To the First Church of God, serving alcohol means “breaking the covenant.” Hands of friends and neighbors are raised to vote the family out of the church. As Kate Young Caley writes in The House Where the Hardest Things Happened: A Memoir about Belonging: ‘And so I, who loved the church ... I, too, was out.’ Former friends now ignore them. Even Mrs. Nichols turns her back when little Kate runs into her in Ellen‘s General Store. Her family walks away from church and never returns. Richard P. Hansen, “Is a mustard seed enough?”

Let me ask a simple question? What Would Jesus Do? Do we really believe Christ would kick a family out the church for this? We can only serve the Lord by doing so in a way that is in accord with his character and the nature of his personal faith—because in fact this is more than just his personal faith that we see in the Gospels. This is God in human flesh. This is the very image of God in action. As goes Jesus, so goes God Almighty. As Jesus did, so did God the Creator. As Jesus spoke, so God the Father spoke. Our faith should give us a heart of compassion for others, should resemble Christ’s heart for those who were like a sheep without a shepherd. Forgive wrongs against you. Don’t judge others, but in kindness consider your own weakness and failings. Let the Spirit of Christ lead you as you face countless times the question of whether you will find room in the inn of your heart for this misdirected world. God needs not another strong man, but one who is humble, seeks peace, and loves mercy.

A number of times, Jesus said something to the effect: “According to your faith let it be done to you.” Mt.9:29 When it comes down to it, the size of your faith will determine the size of your life. It is the believer with a heart that God can bless and does bless. “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?’ Actually, who are we not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world.” Nelson Mandela 

Have the faith that you deserve. It is a gift from God to the family of God. It is worth more than gold and silver. It is the treasure of heaven poured into your hearts.  

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