The Need for A New Heart

Jesus Come. We find ourselves again in a moment of clarity for the future of our nation, a time of grieving and reflection on who we are and who we want to be as humans as well as citizens within a unique nation that stakes its own claim in our bylaws to value and protect all life equally. As citizens, we are all processing this is different ways and acting out in those convictions through different mediums, some physical (protesting, speaking out loud, mobilizing for voting), some emotional (grief, conviction, denial), and some spiritual (prayer, fasting, lamenting). As we move into this season ahead of asking questions and working out our future path towards justice as a nation, please, please as followers of Christ, let us never forget that we are first and foremost citizens of a new Kingdom and our King is justice, He is Peace, He is Hope, and He is Reconciliation. 

To be fully honest, I’m at a loss for how to see any change happen in our country as probably lots of you are. I’m a white male living in a predominately white community and know some of you reading this could be in the same scenario, trying to live like Christ in a broken world and address this hurting of our brothers and sisters who have been marginalized all while knowing you most likely have blind spots and need to learn more, listen more, and address this whole situation in humility. I say this because it’s important to be transparent in saying a lot of people in our community and beyond probably feel the same helplessness staring into the face of having been blind and removed from much of the pain that exists in our world and not having it be a part of our daily life. Maybe you are a part of our black community that’s hurting and navigating this cultural moment in your own way, I can’t speak to your feelings and experience, I can only speak to you as a brother in Christ trying to grow through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Regardless of who is reading this, it’s crippling as a whole because the magnitude of the problems facing us feel so big and it’s easy to immediately feel small. Let me humbly suggest as brothers and sisters that our first move is always to dive into prayer and dive in the Word of God, not to the narrative of our culture. So I’ve been diving into the word and trying to receive guidance in the story of our past since history repeats itself (didn’t all of our high school teachers say this?). I’ve been reading through the Old Testament in this season and am continually struck by how much hasn’t changed in the world. For all of the people out there who might think “how does the Old Testament even apply to me today?”…I get it, believe me, I resonate with this feeling and have had the same questions in the past, discarding it as an ancient book filled with strange things I don’t understand. In this time though, I encourage you to dive in again, read the history of the people of earth in relation to our loving Father trying to live in context with one another…it’s mind-blowing how much the struggles, issues, fears, and actions of all people has remained absolutely the same over the last 3,000 years. We are the exact same people they were back then, struggling with the exact same things just in different cultural contexts today. There is a lot to learn from this as followers of Christ. 

I feel as if it’s serendipitous that I happened to have been reading through Jeremiah and Ezekiel this last month. If you are unfamiliar with those books, they are prophetic announcements through chosen men of God to warn and call out the people of Israel for their sin and hypocrisy and announce God’s judgment on His people. Sounds encouraging right? Hang in there, it is. You see, the people of God, the same ones He rescued out of 400 years of brutal captivity and slavery in Egypt and guided through miracles into a land to call their own were now backtracking on everything God had given to them to guide them as covenant partners. It’s as if they got into a good place and then just slid into worshipping idols, oppressing the poor, shedding blood of innocent people, enslaving both foreigners and their own people (as former slaves themselves), and the list goes on and on. In both narratives, God isn’t going to stand for this evil anymore. He is over it, and He says idolatry and injustice in His chosen people can’t continue and He will stamp it out. This is our same God now, injustice goes against everything He is and everything He desires of us as His children. So as both Jeremiah and Ezekiel proclaim the sins and pending judgment of God on Israel, what is most beautiful is the HOPE that they finish all of the impending messages of doom with. Yes, God will judge us but He will always finish His work with purpose and redemption. This is the real King and the sort of justice we cry out for.

Towards the end of Ezekiel (34-37) the prophet’s words give us a modern roadmap for how God redeems His people, how all of us can have hope for real change. The answer for Israel wasn’t new legislation to be created, God has LIVED with them and given them the 10 commandments (although new laws to protect the vulnerable are good and necessary), it wasn’t new leaders (although leadership matters), it WAS and IS only the arrival of a new Messianic King who will come and heal hearts. The answer was that hearts of stone needed to be exchanged for hearts of flesh and the ultimate hope would be manifested by humans in a new world animated by God’s own spirit. – “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” This is the only solution for the people of Israel, people just like us in 2020. As we seek justice and change, we need to recall that in the past these same struggles happened in a different context throughout all of history and the same God we serve now is the God in Ezekiel who spoke “I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them in justice.” He saw it then and He sees it now and injustice and idolatry will not have a place in His coming Kingdom.

Perhaps the most moving piece of the story of Ezekiel in relation to our time now is at the very end, when Ezekiel sees a vision of a valley filled with dry bones (ie everyone is totally dead). He then declares over this field of death, “O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord”, and if talking to dead things isn’t strange enough…those dry bones come back to life again. CRAZY. Even more, these new bodies with flesh will now have the spirit of the living God within them. This is the key difference between the past dead bodies and the new living ones – “I will put my spirit in you and you shall live.” Living in this new context isn’t just physical existence, it’s a life to the full, it’s life that has new purpose and meaning because of the spirit of God. This is to LIVE not just to live. So what is the result of this new life breathed into what was a dead people? Unification. In chapter 37 God tells Ezekiel that He will unite his people again from two tribes with deeply rooted animosity and differences going all the way back to Jacob and Esau, and he will heal them with this new heart of flesh. As Ezekiel holds up two sticks and makes them into one in a physical metaphor for this prophecy, God is in one moment declaring that a centuries-old feud between Israel and Judah is now over, this changed people can and will be remade into one people after the exile is over. God’s heart for unification and peace is manifested through this people whose hearts are now new, animated with His own Spirit. This is the new human and this is our only hope. 

I don’t have any answers, I don’t pretend to know any more than any of you about anything, but I do know that the scenario of pain, suffering, bitterness, and injustice we see now is nothing new, it’s centuries old. The story of the Old Testament is filled with people like you and me trying to live in peace with one another and the earth, and nothing has changed since then. The ultimate hope and constant narrative throughout the Old Testament are that God will redeem, restore, and rebuild the earth and his people and it will be through the vehicle of Jesus and changed hearts who experience Him. As brothers and sisters in Christ we must attack the issues of our time on our knees and in our communities as the hands and feet of Jesus and cry out for the changing of hearts, this is where God does the work of redemption, restoration, and reconciliation that our world is so desperate for. 

-Sam Larson