The heart is a curious thing. Located right here in the center of the chest, beating roughly 100,000 times each day, pumping 2,000 gallons of blood in that same day, this muscle the size of an adult fist affects every other part of one’s body. Since ancient times we have attributed a special knowledge to the heart- as the seat of wisdom, intuition, a knowing that comes when thought and feeling join together.
Wandering Heart is the theme of this year’s Lenten journey. Each Sunday, we have traced Peter’s meandering path of discipleship. He is called from his fishing boat and follows. He is invited out of the boat to walk toward Jesus and he sinks. Peter is asked to confess Jesus’s identity and he does, emphatically. Moments later, he rejects the coming cross. Peter’s heart is a wandering heart- full of devotion, anxious to live up to Christ’s calling, also impulsive, afraid and hesitant to accept sacrifice. Sound familiar? Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, inclined to leave the God I love. Our paths to God hold belief, doubt, confident “yes”es and fearful, “I do not want to follow”s.
Matthew speaks into this wandering inclination when his gospel teaching outlines a path for addressing the harm that happens in community. These instructions – specific in their step-by-step plan of cation – were likely crafted as the earliest church formed. They sound harsh, strange, and perhaps unrealistic to out modern ears. Yet looking beyond the specific instructions to the values beneath it, we see what it means to be Christian, to be faithful, together.
The first value is community. Matthew’s instructions assume that Jesus’s followers are bound together. Anyone who believes in Jesus belongs to his body. Those who are searching for Christ are connected to each other. Our faith demands, as Bonhoeffer puts it, a life together.
Now the first disciples, and the earliest church, lived together, traveled together, ate together, and shared a common purse. Those early Christians did so out of necessity. Their faith was suspicious. The Roman Empire was brutal. The physical and practical togetherness of earlier eras is less likely today. We are more apt to share an hour of worship, or a few hours together of rehearsals, Sunday school class, and small groups. And yet the most common response to the question “what drew you to church?” is community. I want to belong to a community of consequence, a community where I am known, where I am changed by being loved by others who share my love of God? Like a heart that holds feelings and thoughts and sends its life-force throughout the body, belonging to one another – life together – sustains our faith.
It is tempting, though, to settle for something easier, safer, more comfortable. Drawing upon the work of psychiatrist Scott Peck, Jeremy Troxler notes how often churches idealize community while practicing a more pseudo-community. Pseudo-community projects the sense of belonging we all desire, without the connective tissue that makes the belonging real. It rests on the good intentions, good, happy feelings, but avoids the conflict, the bumpiness that comes when wandering human beings attempt to share their lives. In a pseudo-community, we answer, “How are you?” with “I’m fine” because it is scary to say I was up all night worrying. Or we answer, “I’m too bust to commit,” because it is uncomfortable to say, “I’m not sure where my life is going,” or “God is calling me, and I don’t know that I want to share that vulnerability with others.” Real community- the jumbling of diverse personalities, opinions, and needs, all placed alongside each other- is hard. If you have ever shared a household with others, navigated a decision with people holding competing opinions, joined a neighborhood association, then you know the intricacies of negotiation, the hopes and the hurdles of figuring it out together. So much of the world around us encourages us toward such a fast-paced, surface living, when deep down what we long for, what God intended for us, is for us to know and be known, to walk here and say “home.” I am part of the body formed by Jesus’s life.
Grace is a place of real community. I caught a glimpse of community last week, when I substituted as the teacher of our youth Sunday school class. The teenagers showed up. One set the table. Another cut the fruit. A third found the TV monitor and connected my computer to it. Each offered their role. Class opens with a sharing “highs and lows” of the week, and they risked answering the questions, volunteering about bad test grades or nights with friends; not an easy thing to do when you are thirteen. Here is an eucharistic rhythm: meeting over a meal to share their lives.
Community happens in other places at Grace- praying over Zoom, gathering to study around a table, praying as a choir before worship. Community happens in committees, technical as they may be- in the wrestling over budgets, paint colors, how best to help our neighbors. In a world where most of us, most of the time, can choose who we are connected with, the church is the place where any and all can enter, where Jesus moves among us to connect us, to join our hearts toward God’s greater life. So the questions to ponder are: Does my belonging here go beyond the surface? Do I offer a space of trustful knowing to someone else?
The second pillar of this communal process is accountability; the simple fact that what one person does inevitably affects others. How I act cascades onto you. Lives, like hearts, are interconnected. Just as the effectiveness of the heart’s beat matters for the brain and the toes, our words, our gestures, kindness, our prayers, our listening ears, matter to each other. Two siblings stop speaking and that divides spouses, in-laws, and cousins as well. It changes telephone calls, group texts, and who is coming to Thanksgiving dinner. It is in this context that the issue of forgiveness and reconciliation arises. Our text is assuming hurt, harm, misunderstandings happen and affirms the Christian task of forgiveness, reconciliation, and restoration of relationship.
Peter is integral to this community. He has been a part of this restoration conversation. He asks, “How many times should I forgive?” Maybe he is thinking of James and John arguing about sitting next to Jesus. Or of Judas, holding tightly to the money bag. How about seven times? Seven is the whole, perfect number; the totality of creation. Peter’s suggestion is a solid one; it reverses a seven-fold pronouncement of vengeance found earlier in scripture. It is generous. Seven times.
Jesus expands the number, multiplying it, offering an intentionally ambiguous answer that reframes what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is not an act to be counted; it is a decision to stand inside the river of grace and claim it for yourself and offer it to another. If you are counting up your acts to forgive or distributing them out with a tally on your bulletin board – an end number already determined – then you are not actually forgiving them. You are just waiting for the eighth mistake. We can read this text and focus on the number, but the 70 x 7 is a symbol of a change in heart, a new attitude, a practice that embraces commitment to confess, forgive, repair and begin again as a new way of life, a sign of faith.
Chaneque Walker-Barnes suggests Jesus’s answer reminds us that forgiveness is repetitive, cyclical in nature; it takes time. Jesus is saying, “You might have to forgive someone again and again” because your heart is continually repairing, your life is continually being restored, and we are always in the wandering paths of hurting, confessing, seeking one another and God.
Emily had been married for three years when she came home one night to an empty house and a note from her spouse, saying, “I have been lying to you. I have a gambling addiction, and I’ve lost nearly all our savings. I’ve gone away.” Over the next several weeks, she learned painful truths about their financial situation, her spouse’s addiction, and wondered where he was. Finally, he called, saying, “I’m sorry. I know this is a mess. And I want to come home.” She said, “Yes, I want you to come home too.” Over the next couple of years, they rebuilt their lives. He attended Gambler’s Anonymous. She took leadership on everything financial. It was towards the end of that time that I had a conversation with Dave, that went something like this:
“You know, Amy, I was involved in our church because it was important to Emily. I liked the people that I met there. I came to support her, because she wanted met o. But my own faith wasn’t that deep. But this long, painful, yet beautiful path has changed that. Emily’s ability to forgive me. My ability to own up to my mistakes and gain control over my addiction. Having a community that prayed for us, cared for us, loved us as we rebuilt our lives. A story that could have ended in more heartache and instead led to a stronger, joyous marriage- that has made me a believer; God has been at work in our lives.”
We are living in a time of war; war in Ukraine, Gaza-Israel, continent of Africa; battle cries between political parties, screeching of media, alienation from ourselves and need for belonging: real, seeing belonging. Beloved children of God, followers of Jesus, have this treasure ina breakable jar- treasure of love, grace, and mercy- all can be spoken, all can be grieved, all can be wiped clean.