a recent sermon on Haiti and the Heart

THE HEART OF THE MATTER

Haiti has been in the news a lot because of the earthquake. Consequently it has been on my mind a lot too, especially because of Wilma’s involvement and the global fundraising for the island nation. Something about the whole situation bothered me so on a lark I did some research on Haiti. Here’s what I discovered:
* Did you know that Christopher Columbus discovered the New World on Dec. 5, 1492, and that today it is known as Haiti? Columbus claimed the island in the name of Spain and called it Hispaniola (the Spanish Island).
* Columbus left a colony on the island but when he returned in 1493 the settlers had disappeared. They had been massacred likely by the original inhabitants. A new colony was established and with the arrival of European diseases and revenge on the native population, the islanders were nearly killed to extinction. Today there is no such thing as an original inhabitant of the island. (Most are the descendents of slaves)
* With the discovery of the New World, Hispaniola was not as attractive to Spain as it once was. Except for pirates who found the island made a great base for attacking ships. British, Dutch and French pirates established bases all over the island. You have heard of Tortuga in the Pirates movies? That’s Haiti.
* By 1664 the French took over settling the island and began to grow tobacco, cotton, sugar and coffee. Because this was back-breaking work African slaves were brought in to work the crops. Over a hundred years later the island produced 40 % of all the sugar and 60 % of all the coffee consumed in Europe. The labor for these sugar and coffee plantations was provided by an estimated 790,000 African slaves. Slave rebellions were frequent and many people died.
* Those slaves came from hundreds of different tribes in Africa and as a result they spoke different languages, and eventually mashed them together with French to form their own language of sorts. African culture remained strong and their folk religion combined with Catholic liturgy gave rise to Voodoo, which is still strong today.
* Over the centuries Haiti has experienced countless armed conflicts. The British threatened to invade at one time and Napoleon did send 40,000 troops to seize the island. At various times the slaves tried to gain independence and fought many bloody battles that cost the lives of thousands. There were terrible atrocities committed by slave owners and slaves alike that I cannot tell you about here.
* Eventually Haiti did gain a measure of freedom but France refused to recognize the new country for the longest time. Then in 1825, France agreed to recognize Haiti as a nation if they paid 150 million gold francs. This was for lost revenue and property, slaves and so on. Haiti agreed to pay the price to lift a crippling embargo imposed by France, Britain and the US – but to do that they had to take out high interest loans. The debt was not fully paid until 1947.
* Internally the nation has had leadership problems from its inception. Over the last 180 years its leaders have been deposed, assassinated and kidnapped regularly. In 1957 after trying to establish democratic elections, Doctor Francois Duvalier (Papa Doc) declared himself President-for-life. Tens of thousands die under his regime and the hands of his Tonton Macoute (police named after a voodoo monster). When Papa Doc dies, his son Baby Doc takes over and is even more ruthless.
I could go on but you get the picture. Haiti has been bathed in blood for the last 500 years. They have known genocide, economic oppression, spiritual bondage and brutal dictatorship. Haitians have known only murder, theft, deception and immorality for so long that they know almost nothing else.
So an earthquake hits the tiny nation and the world says “We’ve got to do something.” Aid pours in and millions of dollars are committed to help Haiti. Certainly money and education are needed, economic recovery and a stable infrastructure, the ability to build homes and businesses that don’t fall down in a tremor – I don’t begrudge them any of that- but something more is at stake here. None of this is going to make a world of difference if their hearts are not attended to. The earthquake is just a surface issue….

1. Hung up on Surface Issues

We all get hung up on surface issues. It is easier to react to the symptoms than to identify the problem. Surface issues are easier to identify.
Mark tells us that some Pharisees came from Jerusalem to find Jesus. They were looking for trouble really, looking for something to critique Jesus on. What they pick on is very foreign to us. These Pharisees catch Jesus’ disciples eating food with unclean hands.
Now this is not some hygiene issue. We all need to wash before eating. Their conduct was not just unhygienic, it was fundamentally anti-Jewish. We are talking about ritual cleansing in this case. You see the disciples had been in the marketplace touching foreigners perhaps, sick people, and dead things. Jesus, when he healed people, was definitely touching the unclean, lepers and the like. But they didn’t wash afterwards. Jews always wash.
“This washing had nothing to do with cleaning dirty hands but with a ceremonial rinsing. The ceremony involved someone pouring water out of a jar onto another’s hands, whose fingers must be pointing up. As long as the water dripped off at the wrist, the person could proceed to the next step. He then had water poured over both hands with the fingers pointing down. Then each hand was to be rubbed with the fist of the other hand.” (John MacArthur)
The tradition of purity was a powerful idea: the Jewish people could be the only clean people of the world, the one people whose worship was acceptable to God. That was their point. Only the ritually pure were acceptable to God, they said. That meant keeping the minutest laws and adding laws to make sure those laws were kept. And so this washing was invented to maintain godliness.
What made Jesus and his disciples’ not washing controversial was that Jesus healed. If Jesus did not heal people they might just frown and leave it. But if Jesus healed and people followed him, listened to him and believed him, the Pharisees were convinced that they would lose control over the people and their traditions would be lost; their religion which is their identity would be dissolved.
The goal was to avoid sin. What the Pharisees were doing was trying to solve a problem (sin) by addressing surface issues. Was it a sin to eat pork? Was it a sin to touch dead things? Was it a sin to work on the Sabbath? Their law said so but they missed the point of it all somewhere in their law keeping and law making. Only the surface issues remained.
What problems are we trying to solve by addressing surface issues? Wearing a tie apparently gives me more authority. We wear our good clothes to church…why? What is the real issue? This is one example among many.

2. When our Reality collides with God’s

Whenever we put our traditions on the same level as the Word of God our reality, our worldview (how we look at life) will collide with God’s. They will clash. Obsession with surface issues will cause us to miss the heart of the matter.
This is what happened with the Pharisees. Jesus answered their accusation, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teaching are but rules taught by men.’ You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men” (6-7).
Jesus calls them hypocrites. This is a Greek term used of actors on a stage. They used to have different masks to portray feelings like sadness or happiness. That depended on what part they were playing. Jesus called these Pharisees religious play actors. On the outside they looked the part but nothing had changed on the inside. When you follow a tradition or ritual simply for the sake of tradition it is like you are just playing a part instead of living it. Do we think that God sees only the surface of our actions and not the intent?
It was as if the Jews were claiming that God had only told us what he wanted us to do but not how to do it. Traditions and rituals are a man-made answer to that question. This is the script we follow when we want to look holy. And the script to keep themselves from breaking laws and sinning before God sometimes turned into an unintended comedy.
One writer shares the following script for Sabbath created by the Jews. “… looking in the mirror was forbidden, because if you looked into the mirror on the Sabbath day and saw a gray hair, you might be tempted to pull it out and thus perform work on the Sabbath. You also could not wear your false teeth; if they fell out, you would have to pick them up and you would be working.
But Jesus gives an example of a scandalous nature: they sidestepped the commandment to honor father and mother by using one of their traditions. When mom and dad are in financial need, the Jewish son who has lots of money replies, “Sorry, mom and dad, this money has been devoted to God and I can’t use it for just anything.” They called that “Corban” and it was a sneaky way of setting aside money for personal use. It’s like telling your mom and dad who raised you, fed and clothed you, that you don’t have any cash because it’s earmarked for MCC (maybe).
Traditions and rituals are a good thing. We need certain structures for making life orderly. Where we get Pharisaical is when we say that our tradition is on par with the Word of God and we refuse to question our methods and motives. We need to be humble about our convictions and allow for questions about our interpretation of Scripture. Do our principles align with what Scripture says? If we don’t make this distinction our view of life will clash with what God really intended.

3. Going beneath the Surface

It is true that there were certain laws the Pharisees were attempting to keep. The Law of Moses commanded Jews not to eat certain things and to avoid corpses and lepers. The intention is a good one, to keep pure and sinless. But as Paul later says the law was powerless to do that. Now Jesus has come to bring the fullness of the kingdom to us and with his arrival the purity laws are done.
Now Jesus goes beneath the surface of these issues and addresses the heart of the matter. Jesus said, “Nothing outside a man can make him ‘unclean’ by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him ‘unclean’” (15).
The disciples go “huh?” They even call this a parable and ask Jesus to explain it. Jesus replies, “Are you so dull? Don’t you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him ‘unclean’? For it doesn’t go into his heart but into his stomach and then out of his body” (18-19).
The key word here is “heart.” Earlier Jesus had quoted Isaiah saying “they honor me with their lips but their hearts are far from me.” When the disciples ask for an explanation Jesus says, “Are you so dull?” which is another way of saying their hearts were hardened and could not understand plain truth. Back in ch. 6 when Jesus fed the 5000 and walked on water, they were amazed because as Mark explains it, their hearts were hardened. The issue is the heart.
You can wash your hands all you want but your heart is still dirty. You can wear good clothes to church but your heart is still naked. You can throw money at a problem but you are still impoverished spiritually.
“What Jesus is saying here is truly radical, so radical that some Christians don’t believe it. He’s saying that our problems with sin aren’t caused by our environment but that they’re caused by what’s already residing within each human heart. It’s not the way we were raised, or the culture we’re in, or anything else outside of us” (Timothy Peck).
Jeremiah pointed to the trouble long ago when he said, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jer 17:9). And Jesus said, “What comes out of a man is what makes him ‘unclean.’ For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man ‘unclean’” (20-23).
The Pharisees tried solving the problem of sin by outward religious rituals and that was their mistake. By dealing with surface issues we think we can change our world. If we could get a good Christian politician in office we could legislate morality. If we could remove certain shows off TV there would be less sex and violence. If teenagers didn’t play Halo and other war games on PS3 there’d be less violence in schools. But even if we change all these things the human heart is still the same. You can change your environment but these are the symptoms not the cause.
That is why I led you through a quick 500 year history lesson on Haiti. The world is looking at the symptoms of this desperate people but is so hardened of heart that the global community cannot see the real issue – their hearts; the hearts of Haitian people. And not just their hearts, all our hearts.
We need the transforming power of the gospel to change hearts. Money cannot fix the ills of society. Education enlightens only so far and then runs out of answers. Medicine and food aids can preserve the body but cannot transform society. It is good to send help to Haiti or to whoever is in need, but the real need remains – a transformed heart. And that is why Jesus came.
Jesus told Nicodemus, a teacher and a wealthy man, no doubt, what was needed. One night when the air was cool and the stars twinkled with the glory of God’s creation, when all was still in the city below, Jesus shared this remarkable truth with a so-called wise man, “…unless a man is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3).
I’m sure you could have knocked Nicodemus over with a feather. How can a man be thrust back into his mother’s womb? Jesus wasn’t talking about that kind of birth, but a spiritual birth that comes through the death of self on the cross with Christ.
Paul understood this new birth when he said, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Cor 5:17).
Why is it important to tell this to a church full of believers who know this already? I believe that with all the resources we have as North American Christians we have forgotten the one resource that no one else has. We have the good news of Jesus Christ, which as we have just read is the radical power of God to transform the human heart – Haitian hearts or Kleefeld hearts.
You may think me daft for saying this: when a marriage is struggling we send the couple to a counselor, and that’s good, but maybe they need to be sent to the cross first. What’s wrong with their marriage may be communication issues, or maybe face to face with Jesus they realize that they have never died to self.
What I’m asking is this: Do we believe that the good news of Jesus Christ is the answer for the human heart? Do we believe that Jesus can transform the hardest heart into a new man or new woman? If we believe this then we have gotten to the heart of the matter where our world is concerned!!

AMEN