Breaking a Spiritual Sweat

Yet even now, says the LORD, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the LORD, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing.  (Joel 2:12-13)

The heart is usually the safest organ in the body politic.  We protect it as though it were the Holy Grail.  Ask me to change my clothes, rearrange the furniture or paint the walls, but please don't ask me to change me.  It has become a kind of truism that when a church recognizes the need to change it opts to revise the By-laws.  My guess is that the tendency isn't confined to churches.  "All of our problems could be solved," we convince ourselves, "if we could just hit upon the right marketing plan."   Or sign out front.  Or organizational structure.  Or fresh programmatic initiative.  This is the cosmetic surgery approach to transformation -- institutional Botox -- that views our only ills as superficial. 

I shouldn't travel too far down this cynical or condemnatory path without acknowledging that externals do have significance.  What we do matters.  But as Quaker writer and thinker emphasizes, the "outside" of us needs to be a accurate reflection of the "inside" of us, reflecting a wholeness that isn't intrinsically divorced.  It isn't enough to simply tighten up the wrinkles; we won't finally nip and tuck our way into spiritual order.  Better polling data and slicker brochures won't finally suffice.  Painting the nursery, for example, isn't nearly as important as more genuinely loving the kids who are brought there.  Posting "all are welcome" on the parking lot sign won't really matter if we don't, in fact, welcome all who come -- and "all" can turn into a rather colorful lot. 

That's why Jesus relentlessly called attention to the inside as well as the outside of human faithfulness -- how we pray in the closet, not just on the street corner; what goes on in our hearts as well as our hands; what we think as well as what we say.  Or as my favorite singer/songwriter David Wilcox once derided the misguidance of his parents, "you taught us well not to kick under the table; kick under your breath instead."  That wouldn't have flown at Jesus' table. 

And that's why the prophet Joel implored the people who were trying to get on God's good side not to tear their clothing as a sign of their repentance. It was their heart that needing tailoring, not their wardrobe.

But that, alas, is hard; and usually painful.  Couldn't we just sing cheerier songs or add some octane to the ceremonial flame and fizz? 

Not really.  Hearts, not garments; the very veins of my soul, not just my social veneer.  That, I think, is the message of which the season of Lent  -- and the ashes of this Wednesday that inaugurates it -- try to remind me; and why I begin it by taking such a deep breath.  As the garden is teaching me, growing anything I might be excited to eat requires care not just of the plant but of the typically less-than-perfect soil in which it is sown, and that usually requires breaking a sweat.