Walking for Heart Health
“Walking for Heart Health”
Acts 2:14a, 36-41 Psalm 116:1-4, 12-19 1 Peter 1:17-23 Luke 24:13-35
Third Sunday of Easter, Year A, April 26, 2020
First Presbyterian Church of Sandpoint, Idaho
Andrew Kennaly, Pastor
Covid-19 has affected the social landscape, from daily routines and work patterns, to how organizations are structured. Each group seems to have a statement on their response to the pandemic. Even the electric company sent me an email which states, “As the impact of the Coronavirus continues to unfold, we’re here for you, and our hearts go out to all those affected. We understand that due to this unprecedented situation customers may find themselves facing financial difficulties.” (Avista Utilities, email)
The message continued but what struck me about that first, introductory part is the intention to express care and concern. Saying, “we’re here for you” is a relational statement intended to give encouragement, very similar to that slogan you’ve probably heard in other places, “We’re all in this together.” Even as we are told to stay in isolation and keep distance to prevent spreading the virus, we cannot deny that human beings are created as social creatures and community is an essential part of life. No one on earth lives totally independently; everyone is interdependent. Even those who perceive they are independent are still making life choices based on their relationship with other people, and they rely on systems manages by others.
“We’re here for you, and our hearts go out to all those affected.” What exactly does that mean, to have “hearts go out” to others? It’s a loaded statement, a dynamic phrase, to have your heart go out to another. The term heart would likely imply not only feelings, but empathy or concern. Hearts involve more than minds, and thinking thoughts doesn’t capture the fullness of heart language. Heart realms are deeper, more central to lived experience.
Another aspect of hearts going out to others is movement, from inward to outward, from one to another. Put in relational terms, this involves transformation, expansion, and recognition of a movement from the I to the we, from an individual or specific group to a collective or larger body. “Going out,” like most relational aspects, involves giving, generosity of spirit, opening of hearts, and intentionality, all of which involve vulnerability.
So on one hand, this email shares heart language and caring for the customer. On the other hand, it involves the mind, knowledge, concepts and ideas. “We understand that due to this unprecedented situation customers may find themselves facing financial difficulties.” They “understand” this, and judge this time as an “unprecedented situation,” that business as usual is not going to help in these circumstances. Exploring other options is part of the give and take of this relational dance that finds its source of energy from loving concern, care, and the desire to serve one another. Certainly there’s an element of self-interest; it would not help the electric company to lose customers or simply cut people off, especially such large numbers of affected people. “We understand” are words of mental process, cognitive, brain-centered recognitions involving ideas and interpretations of situations.
In just a few sentences, this letter involves the dynamic of mind and heart, showing that there are depths below a surface level reading, and relationship is dynamic and not two-dimensionally static. And that’s from an electric company, from an email; all the more when the Bible shares stories of the Risen Christ appearing to his disciples on Easter. Today’s story of the walk to Emmaus is infused with dimensionality, mind-heart-soul conversations, revelations and recognitions, and life-changing transformation, all grounded in dynamic movements of love. “Our hearts go out to others” resonates with this morning’s text as Jesus comes alongside disciples who are troubled, fearful, and confused. Their expectations have been totally derailed as Jesus was crucified, died, and buried. Their grief even stops them in their tracks. Yet Jesus shares with them in ways that burn within their hearts. He meets them in the midst of their struggle, and teaches them to move beyond one-dimensional experience limited to their five senses and rational thought, which keeps us all trapped at surface level feelings, and holds ingrained biases and fears.
The Risen Christ walking with them introduces a multi-dimensional experience of trust and love uniting various realms of reality. This is Easter, this is resurrection faith, trusting the power of life beyond death, that both life and death are held in the larger care, or providence, of God. Jesus teaches them how their own tradition reveals these mysteries, and he listens to them as they share their story and what they have been trying to navigate through as life’s drama plays out.
Yet even as they tell Jesus what happened, you see they can’t get their story straight, which only reveals their lack of insight. When Jesus asks, “What things?” they say, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people…” Naming Jesus as a prophet shows their limited understanding and inability to fully see the Reality before them, a reality that affects far more than just people.
But this is reflective of the human situation in our Anthropocentric Age. For fifty years, for example, Earth Day has promoted a proper relationship between the human species and the planet, and yet we are now facing catastrophic climate disruption, the sixth mass extinction, and other planetary issues caused by human activity. To paraphrase Bill McKibben of 350.org sharing in many of his interviews, the human mind has done well at getting us to this point in history, but it is not a sustainable situation, and now the question is whether the human heart will grow in ways to help us survive as a species and a planet.
That’s one of the dynamics of the walk to Emmaus, showing the longest journey in the world; the movement from the head to the heart. Our hearts go out to those affected by the virus. We see mass graves being dug and the caskets lining up. We see disruptions to peoples’ livelihoods as businesses suffer and a consumer culture bumps up against limitations to the model of perpetual growth and expansion. Our hearts do go out, especially when things become personal. This virus is unprecedented.
But the fact that half the Great Barrier Reef off Australia has died in recent years doesn’t seem to have the same culture-bending affect. That the Amazonian rain forest continues to get deforested for extraction industries, cutting off the lungs of the planet, doesn’t seem to bring about the empathy needed to change this dynamic. How do we as a species grieve the loss of half the wild animals over the last 50 years, and a 30 % drop in the population of birds in North America since 1970, which equates to 3 Billion birds? Does this not stop us in our tracks and make us feel sad, as individuals and a culture? (https://youtu.be/cdzU84AyCdI, for a short video summary, https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/bring-birds-back for a webpage resource, https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/DECLINE-OF-NORTH-AMERICAN-AVIFAUNA-SCIENCE-2019.pdf for the actual study paper).
How do we develop the heart capacity to see more deeply than human-centered, self-referential blinders have allowed us up to this point? How do we move beyond the limitations of the mind into a more comprehensive experience with reality, with God’s creation at multiple levels or dimensions, in ways that develop resilient, dynamic qualities, rather than fragile economies and limited, judgmental thinking?
This is when the art of letting go, of learning to die before we die, of practicing contemplation, comes in. Inviting the Living Christ to transform our hearts, burning from the inside, helps connect mind and heart in a new way, becoming a whole new organ in our body. Practicing spiritual disciplines that move us from I to We, that quiet our relentless thinking and our striving for productivity and opportunities, claiming the importance of simply being in the Living Presence of God. Quieting our mind, centering our hearts, praying without ceasing, not with lists and without counting or measuring, but by releasing each moment and raising awareness.
The disciples felt a burning within their hearts as the Risen Christ walked with them, revealing ancient Wisdom. Notice they had stopped, stuck in their sadness. Also notice Jesus is moving; walking, teaching and revealing. One image is static, defended, guarding positions held by the mind, judging and blaming. The other image involves moving, participation, interaction. The disciples are reacting, Jesus teaches them how to respond, for reaction and responding come from different sources, depths, or intention.
“Burning” is an interesting word. Burning within our hearts…burning is a cleansing, a renewing, a de-cluttering of what once worked but no longer does. Burning is a feeling word, and within our hearts shows centrality, how this involves the core of our being.
The disciples change on their journey to Emmaus, moving from I to We, from limitations of the mind to depths of the heart, from fear to greater faithfulness, from isolation to the interactions of community. This archetypal, resurrection appearance invites us to live our lives focused on God’s Presence. Christ is in all things, and all things are in Christ. May our hearts expand in capacity, especially to grieve, to transform our lives during these unprecedented times as the world waits for humanity to awaken to the divinity which burns within our hearts.
And may the humble, vulnerable love of God lead us to greater awareness to what Christ is doing in our midst, even as we are held by grace that knows no end, both NOW, and forever. Amen.