Heart Healthy

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
March 2, 2008
Fourth Sunday in Lent

Heart Healthy
1 Samuel 16:1-13
Psalm 23

Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar were talkative men.
They were the three friends who sat with Job,
the three men who came to comfort Job in his suffering,
in chapter after chapter of that rich and poetic book.

Read the words they spoke and it is clear
that the three felt confident of their understanding of God.
Some twenty-five hundred years ago,
when the book of Job was written,
humanity’s understanding of God was simplistic:
if you were well off, comfortable, living a good life,
it was evidence that you were a righteous person,
and that God was blessing you.
If you struggled in life,
it was evidence that you were not righteous,
and that God was withholding his blessings.
If things were bad,
it meant that was God was actively punishing you.

It made it easy to size up someone,
to look at them and their situation
and quickly conclude that they were either good, bad,
or …wavering in the middle.
Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar looked on the pathetic,
pitiful creature that Job had become and
they knew without question that Job was a sinner,
a sinner apparently of epic proportion
given his miserable condition.

Anyone with eyes could see;
Anyone with eyes would know.
So, chapter after chapter in the book of Job is filled
with Job’s friends urging poor Job to repent of his wickedness,
his sinfulness,
to confess whatever it was that he had done
because it was so clear he had done something awful
to have earned such punishment from the Lord God.

Job argued vehemently that he had done nothing wrong,
nothing to deserve the suffering that he was going through,
that what his three friends saw did not reflect his life,
his righteousness, his goodness.
For Bildad, Eliphaz and Zophar, though
the evidence lay before them,
right before their very eyes.
They could see that Job was a wretched sinner,
a man in desperate need of repenting
from his sinful ways and turning back to the Lord.

We see and we believe.
We see and we conclude.
We see and we judge
We see and we decide.
We see a person who is well-dressed,
well-groomed, poised and polished
and we immediately develop a good impression of that person.
We see someone who is dressed in torn or dirty clothes,
hair blown about, unwashed hands,
and we develop a different impression,…
a negative impression.

That’s just the trap the prophet Samuel fell into
in our second lesson.
When God called Samuel to anoint a new king
to replace the failure that Saul had become,
Samuel did as God told him
and went to the family of Jesse in Bethlehem.
And when he got there and his eyes fell upon Eliab,
Jesse’s oldest son,
Samuel knew that he was looking on the one
God wanted him to anoint.
But did you hear what God said to Samuel:
“Don’t look on his appearance,
or the height of his stature.”
“the Lord does not see as mortals see;
they look on the outward appearance,
but the Lord looks at the heart.”
(1 Sam. 16:7)

“The Lord looks at the heart.”

The friends of Job,
men who considered themselves to be faithful men of God,
judged Job’s sinfulness
by his pitiable appearance,
by what their eyes saw.
Samuel was a faithful priest and prophet,
a man of God,
but he too let his eyes lead him astray.

We judge by appearances all the time,
don’t we?
We’re no different from Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar.
We probably would have done the same thing Samuel did,
looking to the biggest, the strongest,
the one we thought looked right.
None of Job’s friends listened carefully enough
to Job’s anguished lament
to hear what was on his heart,
what was in his heart.
Samuel asked no questions of the young men
to discern what was in their hearts;
He simply let his eyes do the work.

Seven sons, each rejected,
and then a lanky, ruddy boy stood before him,
face dirty, skin burned from the sun,
his eyes darting about, wondering why his father
had called him in from the field,
the place he loved to be.
He stood before the strange old man,
fidgeting with his sling,
eager to get back out to the pastures,
even as he tried to be an obedient son.

God saw what Samuel did not see,
that this boy had heart,
a good heart, a big heart.
God saw that this young man would grow in strength,
in wisdom,
and in faithfulness.
His heart would lead him one day to write
words of such love and devotion to his Lord God
that 3,000 years later, men, women and children
would still be saying and singing the boy’s words,
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…”

It is what is in our hearts that matters most to God.
Jesus reinforces this lesson again and again.
“for it is from within, from the human heart,
that … intentions come…”
(Mark 7:21)
Good intentions,
bad intentions,
indifferent intentions.

As we do our spiritual housecleaning in Lent,
we should replace the clutter we are sweeping out
with new disciplines and practices
that are heart-healthy,
that will help us have loving, caring hearts.

In the same way we do physical exercises
for the muscle that is our heart,
in the same way we try to eat foods
that are good for our hearts,
and avoid those foods that are bad,
we need to have heart-healthy spiritual practices.

We’ve talked about some of them these past few weeks:
Participating actively and joyfully in worship;
Having an active prayer life;
reading the Bible;
Forgiving others as we have been forgiven;
Not judging others;
Serving others;
Our list could go on and on.

We have only two weeks until Palm Sunday,
only two weeks before Holy week begins.
I would like to challenge you in these next two weeks
to develop one new heart-healthy practice for yourself,
one new thing you are not currently doing,
one thing you can do each day
to help you grow in love and faithfulness.

Think about what you’d like to do
as you come to this table
and share in this heart-healthy meal
that’s set before us,
this heart-healthy meal to which
our Lord Jesus Christ invites us.
Come to this table
and be nourished in spirit and in heart.
Come to this table and be refreshed and renewed.
Come to this table and be restored
heart and soul,
Come to this table for this heart-healthy meal,
“for surely goodness and mercy shall follow each of us,
and we shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
AMEN