A New Heart
a guest editorial by Pfarrer Dr Gottfried Martens
translated by Dr. John Stephenson
God says, “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you” (Ezekiel 36:26 RSV): comments on the ecumenical text (Losung) chosen for the year 2017, which happens to be the Five Hundredth Jubilee of the Reformation.
When we engage in electronic communication
with other people these days, we often employ so-called emojis, symbols that
aim to give non-verbal form to feelings. By this point there are so many emojis
that we can even find an Emojiwiki on the Internet where we can look up the
meaning of all the many emojis. We there find explanations of what a yellow
heart stands for in an electronic message; it stands for optimism,
encouragement, and joy in life.
We see nearby a yellow heart on the image with
which the artist Ulrike Wilke-Müller
interprets the Text for the Year (Jahreslosung).
And yet we would completely misunderstand this picture if we saw in it only an
emoji offering a brief and instantly comprehensible message that could be put
in words as “Hold your heads up high and think positively!” No, it would be
worthwhile to subject this image to a much more precise inspection.
Whatever may be the case with emojis, a
yellow heart is and remains unusual; we are much more familiar with a red heart
as a sign of love. And yet Holy Scripture makes it abundantly plain that our
human heart, that which stands for our inmost essence, that which pushes us on
and defines us, has a radically different colour. From our first heartbeat on it
is black, closed to God’s love, hard, and turned in on itself. And this black
heart has no future, it cannot endure before the eyes of God when He examines
and judges our hearts, our inmost essence, that which defines and stamps our
lives.
And yet in the Losung for this New Year 2017 we hear a
grandiose promise of God: He Himself removes this black heart and replaces it
with a new heart; with us as the patients, He undertakes a lifesaving heart
transplant. Let us pay close attention to what God promises here. He doesn’t say, “You must make an effort to
purify your hearts”! He doesn’t say,
“I’ll give you tips how to change your hearts”! He doesn’t say, “You have to take a decision for Me, and then I’ll
give you a new heart”! On the contrary, God Himself sees quite clearly that we
ourselves can do nothing to get a new heart and a new spirit; we can do zilch
to cooperate in our own salvation. He
Himself really must do the whole thing for us, He must turn us into people who
are open to Him and His Word, to Him and His love.
Yellow indeed, as a sign of God’s presence, as a sign of
something completely new that God creates. A yellow new heart bestowed by God
and suffused with His presence—what a
marvellous promise! And now it behoves us to look more closely at Frau Wilke-Müller’s artwork.
We see as it were rays that shine fom above into this heart
and suffuse it: God places His new spirit in us and suffuses it with His own
Spirit. Shades of blue surround the heart on the left side, a reminder of Holy
Baptism in which God carried out this heart transplant upon us, in which God
gave us a new heart and bestowed His Spirit upon us.
We see here how a Cross shines above the heart and reaches
into it. The new heart is determined by the love that God Himself has proved to
us by surrendering His own Son to the Cross.
Our heart only becomes luminously bright through the Cross, only through
the forgiveness we receive by the Cross do our black guilt and failure retreat
from the centre of our lives.
In the centre of the heart we see an opened door. The One who
has bestowed the new heart does not remain outside, but lives within us and
makes our hearts His dwelling. No, we must not “let God into our hearts”. God
already invites Himself inside and comes in. Shades of red dominate the right
side of the picture, a reminder of the blood of Christ that washes us clean
from our sin, the blood that we receive in the holy sacrament of the altar, the
blood in which Christ takes up residenc e in us and continually nurtures and
strengthens our new heart.
If we look closely, we see that the heart is formed by the
two Tables of the Law, by the Tables of the Ten Commandments. What a marvellous
image—as Christians we don’t need to adhere to thousands of discrete legal
prescriptions. On the contrary, God’s will itself is written in our heart, when
we have received this new heart. The way we follow God’s will is for God’s
Spirit to move us, the Spirit who makes us God’s children, people whose hearts
cling wholly to their Father and His Word.
And when we take a final look at the image, in the very
centre of the heart, where the two sides intersect, we notice a grain of wheat.
Yes, we already have the new heart, we can already live as new people. And yet
there is oftentimes so little outward evidence of this in our lives. The grain
of wheat is already planted in us, but everything that is still to develop from
this will only be fully perceived at the goal of our lives, in God’s new world.
And that we arrive at that point, despite all our failure, this is something that
God Himself takes care of, He who bestows the new heart upon us and places the
new spirit within us. This is the whole point of the Lutheran Reformation past
and present!
I wish you a blessed Reformation Jubilee Year 2017,