How is your heart?

Meu Coracao/My Heart*

   Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of our Lenten journey. Here at St. John our journey will be a little different than normal - since we are still in the throes of   The Story we continue to follow through the Bible rather than hear the usual Lenten texts given in the lectionary. Yet as has been the case in the last several months, the Spirit has worked and the themes remain the same.
     This Sunday we hear from Nehemiah, and it is the last chapter before we come to the New Testament in our journey. Nehemiah was one of the exiled, and when he asks after his home and his people the news he receives is less than comforting. The walls of Jerusalem have crumbled, the people are in 'great trouble and shame.'

     It is easy in this life to focus on one thing or another while neglecting something else. My suspicion is that the survivors, those who 'escaped captivity' are focusing on trying to rebuild what was taken. Remember that in war only the valuable are taken; those with skills, power, knowledge, and prominence are worth the trouble - which means that those left aren't used to being in charge. They don't have what it takes to just pick up and start where they left off before the invasion. The walls and gates of their city were probably low on the priority list of things to fix.
     Regardless of this fact, however, it doesn't change that Jerusalem, and the temple in particular, were seen as God's home; care for these things was a reflection on the relationship the people had with God, the God who had saved them. This is why Nehemiah, upon hearing the news of disrepair of the city gates and walls, immediately begins to fast and pray. While the 'great trouble and shame' are in reference to the state of Jerusalem, and how the survivors had cared for their sacred place, Lent offers us a time to reflect upon the state of our own sacred places, specifically on the state of our hearts.
     Fasting and prayer are two common disciplines taken up by individuals during Lent because of the ways in which fasting and prayer remind us that there is more to life than what we spend our time worrying about. Fasting and prayer call us into closer relationship with God, and they help us to examine our priorities, our relationships, and those important things which too often go neglected because some other, less important emergency comes up.
     The important thing to remember when reading Nehemiah is that God has already saved the Israelites. The salvation came generations before when God brought their people out of slavery in Egypt. The commandments and statues they follow are simply a relationship agreement of how these saved ones live with God and with each other. So Nehemiah fasting and praying, and then in subsequent chapters of the book calling people back to the commandments, is not about being saved but more about calling people back to their salvation in the first place.
     The same is true for us. We have already been saved. Jesus already died, our sins are already forgiven, new life is already ours for living. Except it is easy to forget this, and to live in ways which show the true state of our hearts: we forget that. This season of Lent is an opportunity for us to turn back, to examine our hearts and lives, and to engage in practices which bring us home again.
     After reading Nehemiah, I am left pondering the mystery of my own heart and my own sacred places. What is the state of yours?

*Meu Coracao/My Heart, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=54138 [retrieved March 4, 2014]. Original source: Amanda Vivan, Flickr Creative Commons.