The heart of the matter

.”We’ve all heard the phrase: “We need to get to the heart of the matter.”

When people say this they are referring to the central or most important part of a situation. The essence. The core. What really matters.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus gets to the heart of the matter. He tells us what matters most to God and what is most important for humans to be concerned about.

Just before our Gospel passage begins, the Pharisees had approached Jesus and criticised his disciples for not following the traditions of their ancestors by practising ritual hand washing before meals.

Jesus’ response is scathing. He berates the Pharisees for focusing on unimportant things. He calls them hypocrites and says they are people who talk about God a lot but their hearts are far from Him.

Jesus tells the crowds around him that the Pharisees are more focused on traditions and legal issues than they are in carrying out God’s Will.

He tells them that God is more concerned with what is inside their hearts than anything else. Evil intentions, murder, slander… “These are what defile a person,” Jesus says, “but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.”

Yes, it is wise to wash the germs and dirt from your hands before eating food. Noone wants a sickness and diarrhoea bug.

But God knows that the body is a temporary home for us. He is most concerned with the part of us which is eternal: our soul and spirit. He cares that the core of us is clean. That we allow God’s presence, His words, to shine on our hearts and reveal the things that defile us so that we can repent and clean it out.

Jesus tells the crowds that for God, the heart of the matter is the matter of their hearts.

And he tells them that what is inside their hearts can be revealed by what comes out of their mouths.

So what does this morning’s Gospel passage tell us about what is in the heart of the Pharisees, and what is in the heart of the Canaanite woman?

First let’s take a look at the Pharisees.

The Pharisees were a religious group who followed their ancestors traditions and interpretations of God’s law. They saw themselves as pious, devout and holy but each of their encounters with Jesus throughout the Gospels reveal a truer picture of them.

When they engage with Jesus we see that they are critical, judgemental and self-righteous. They are easily offended by Jesus’s words because they believe they are right and everyone else is wrong.

The Pharisees thought they knew God more than others because of how much they studied God’s laws, but they didn’t see God even when he was right in front of them. That’s why Jesus describes them as blind guides of the blind. They were leading people down the wrong path, focusing on the things that are unimportant to God, and neglecting what is most important to him.

The Pharisees kept their hearts far from God. They disguised the ugliness that was in their hearts with pious rule-following. Every time they were in in Jesus’ presence he exposed them for their hypocrisy and sin. Yet the Pharisees were not convicted, or perhaps they were, but having their true nature exposed didn’t lead them to repent and change their behaviour. Instead they doubled down on the evil that was in their heart. Until eventually their murderous thoughts, slander and jealousy led them to become false witnesses at the trial of Jesus that led to his crucifixion.

We see that Jesus gave the Pharisees many opportunities to see what was in their hearts and do something about it but their religious pride and self-righteousness stopped them from recognising their need for salvation and their need for a clean heart.

And now we come to the Canaanite woman? What do we learn about her in the passage? Who was she and what was in her heart?

The Canaanites were seen as a people under God’s judgement – They had been the previous inhabitants in what became the land of Israel. They were the nation that the Israelites were told to remove because their evil practices had corrupted their land and needed to be judged. The Canaanites had worshiped a fertility cult, they practised sexual promiscuity and child sacrifice as part of their worship to false gods.

So, you can imagine what the disciples and the Pharisees would have thought of this Canaanite woman when she came to Jesus. They would see her as an outcast, a foreigner, someone who didn’t count, someone who was undeserving.

But what they saw was not the heart of the matter. Her background, her nationality, her history, these were irrelevant in God’s eyes.

Because when this Canaanite woman encounters Jesus and speaks with him, her words reveal her heart.

She calls out: “Son of David, Lord…” and reveals she knows who Jesus is. In Judaism, the term, Son of David refers to a coming Messiah who would be chosen by God to reign. At a time when many, even his disciples, saw Jesus as a good teacher and rabbi, this foreign woman, outcast from Israel, knew who Jesus really was.

In the passage she asks Jesus to “Have mercy on me” – and this reveals the humility in her heart. Unlike the Pharisees, she wasn’t self-righteous but was all too painfully aware of her need for God’s mercy.

She calls out: “Help me” – because she knew, in her heart of hearts, that only God had the power to help her and her daughter out of their desperate situation.

Yet despite this, when we read the conversation between Jesus and the Canaanite woman it can feel uncomfortable. Is Jesus calling her a dog? Why is he being so dismissive? Why is he appearing to try to deter her?

But I see in Jesus’s intense challenging conversation, that he is shining a laser light into her heart. This back and forth between the two of them reveals to the crowd, what is really inside this woman’s heart. Her persistence in asking for help despite being discouraged, reveals the Faith at her core that impresses Jesus so much.

Jesus commends her. He says: “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish” He delights in blessing her and healing her demonised daughter.

This Canaanite woman didn’t flinch from the challenge – she gave as good as she got - because she was confident in what she had learned from scripture about her God. Her confidence came from her knowledge of what is inside God’s heart.

So, what did this Canaanite woman know about what is inside God’s heart? What do this morning’s scriptures tell us?

This Canaanite woman knew that God’s Heart is filled with love for everyone, for all of his creation. Just as Jesus says that our hearts are revealed by what comes out of our mouths, all of the scriptures we read today, all of God’s words, reveal what is in his heart.

Isaiah tells us that God welcomes the foreigner, invites them into His presence and offers them joy in his house of prayer. He promises that he will listen to their prayers and accept them. That God’s house is a house of prayer for all peoples. He tells us that He is the God who gathers the outcasts and the outsiders to himself.

Our reading from Psalm 67 reveals the mercy, blessings, and fair judgement in God’s heart. We see His desire to guide all peoples and nations to His truth and righteousness,

In Paul’s letter to the Romans we see that God doesn’t look at people as we do: He doesn’t put them in categories of worthy and outcast. God knows that all the people he created are equally in need of mercy, no matter their background. Paul reminds the Romans that God hasn’t rejected Israel but calls all disobedient people to his house of prayer for all nations. Not just the lost sheep of Israel. The Gentiles too.

And the Gospel passage confirms that what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart.

Jesus – the living Word of God – is the one who proceeds from the Father – and reveals the Fathers heart. Jesus is the human embodiment of God’s heart. A heart that loves all of his creation.

In Jesus, we see the sacrificial love in God’s heart that causes him to die for all of us, the people who he created in His image but whose hearts are contaminated by sin and disobedience. In the cross we see God’s heart that is willing to be broken for us, to face judgement for sins in our place, so that he can be merciful to all of us who disobey.

So, in light of all this. Knowing what is in God’s heart for us, perhaps we can ask ourselves today what is inside our hearts?

Psalm 139:23-24 says: “Search me O God, and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.”

We come to the light of God’s presence today. We’ve read His words. His Holy Spirit is here with us as we listen to what he is saying to us.

Will we let him shine his spotlight on us and examine our hearts? Or will we choose to keep our hearts far from him like the Pharisees did?

As Jesus advises, we can examine our hearts by thinking about what has come out of our mouths recently. Have our words been positive, loving, full of mercy, forgiveness? Or have we been judgemental and quick to criticise?

What have we been feeding our hearts with? What are we consuming – is the news and social media we consume putting negativity and fear in our hearts? Are we spending time in prayer and Bible reading so that our hearts are filled with God’s truth to counteract the other messages and voices we are constantly exposed to?

The news cycle is focused on the Stop the Boats campaign, on the fear and suspicion towards asylum seekers. Is this fear causing us to say hateful things about these people? Is the dehumanisation of asylum seekers in the news and the valid fears about our struggling economy leading us to have hate in our hearts? To not feel compassion at the deaths of people drowning in small boats, because they are viewed as law breakers. Or do we share the heart of God for all people, for the outcast and foreigner, even, the lawbreaker and disobedient?

When we look at our hearts this morning what do we see?

Maybe there is heartbreak and pain. Maybe there is bitterness and unforgiveness. Perhaps there is self-righteousness.

We need to ask ourselves what God is revealing to us about the true condition of our hearts.

And if we see things we don’t like the look of this morning we have a choice of what we do.

We can decide, like the Pharisees did, to close our eyes to it. We can choose to focus on being self-righteous; to focus on our traditions and our perceived worthiness. Or we can choose to repent from the evil intentions, murderous thoughts, adultery, fornication, lust, theft, slander, lies…that might be hiding in our hearts, all the things that mar God’s image in us.

We are made in God’s image. And if we have given our lives to him. If we have accepted the sacrifice of His Son and call ourselves His children. We must bring our hearts close to him.

We must choose to expose our hearts to his Word, his light.

God calls us to clear out the rubbish that shouldn’t be in our hearts. He calls us to stop feeding our heart with things that contaminate it.

Yes, we live in a world, in a reality, that is full of things that can harden our hearts. God doesn’t want us to be in denial of this. We look around and see horrific acts of evil, like the recent case of NHS nurse Lucy Letby who murdered and injured the most innocent and vulnerable among us. We see the evil that humans do and our hearts can be overwhelmed and in despair. But it is because of the reality of sin and evil in our world, that we must try even more to feed our hearts with the good things happening in our world. To focus on the hard work and dedication of the majority of workers in our National Health Service, the people who have supported the bereaved families and victims, the many acts of human kindness that take place every day.

We can choose to feed our hearts with the things that are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, things that are of good report, things that are worthy of praise.

Today, we are here in the light of God’s countenance. We are in the presence of the Holy Spirit.

Will we choose to bring our hearts close to Him? Will we look into our hearts and – if we see things inside that defile us in the eyes of God – can we be honest about that to ourselves? Can we repent, can we turn around and choose to follow God’s way?

If you, like me, have seen things inside your heart that you know shouldn’t be there, then will you join with me in reading David’s prayer to God? We can come before God with confidence like the Canaanite woman because we know God’s heart. He has revealed His Heart that longs to be merciful to us because he knows all peoples are in need of his mercy.

God wants to show us what is inside our hearts today and He wants to forgive us, deliver us and give us clean hearts.

So please pray Psalm 139:23-24 with me:

“Search me, O God, and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.” Amen.