An Affair of the Heart
First Congregational Church – Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
Pentecost Sunday – May 15, 2005
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[Texts: Acts 2:1-21/John 7:37-39]

“As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’”

            I believe that the heart is an important metaphor for human relationship. When we talk about an “affair of the heart” most people think about “falling in love.” And that is not a bad thing, is it? I think about an affair of the heart and I think of God’s love for us and our love toward God. I think about an affair of the heart and I think about the church, which was born on this Pentecost day long ago. I know this much, when I ‘Googled’ the phrase “affair of the heart” it surfaced more than four million hits! So, there’s got to be something to this idea if so much ink, or so much memory, has been devoted to it!

            One of the things I discovered through my internet search was an article on educational leadership. The author, Rick DuFour, addresses the scramble by educators to increase student performance, especially on standardized tests. The title of the article is telling, “Leading Edge: Leadership is an Affair of the Heart.” DuFour says that, “Leaders who are most effective in generating results will appeal not only to the bottom line, but also to the heart. In fact, one of the best strategies for improving results is connecting with people's deepest, heartfelt hopes.” [Journal of Staff Development Winter 2004] He does an explanation of those human hopes and lists first that we have the need to achieve and to feel successful. Second, there is the need to be connected, to be in relationship, and, third, the need to feel that we make a difference. I may differ here and there with Mr. DuFour, but I think he points to a reality that goes beyond the educational establishment to the very fabric of our life together in American society. I think, I believe, that we need to recover, to reawaken our sense of life as an affair of the heart and it begins with how we relate to the One who made us and sustains us.

Jesus first declared this affair of the heart at the feast of Booths, Sukkoth, one of the three great feasts of the Judaism. It is the feast of the greatest merrymaking and it has been said of it, “Whoever cannot perceive the joy of this feast does not know what joy is.” The joy is that of our Thanksgiving, it’s a harvest feast. It served not only to remind the people of the goodness of God in what they had received from the good earth, but also of God’s protection during the Exodus, when they lived in tents on their way out of Egypt and into the land of promise.

            Part of the Exodus ritual that was brought into the celebration involved symbolically re-enacting the ‘marvels’ that brought about the people’s release and sustained them on their journey. So each day the priests in Jerusalem went to the pool of Siloam (the name meaning “sent”) and brought water back to the Temple. There they would pour it out at the base of the altar. What it represented was the living water that Moses had summoned from a rock in the desert (Exodus 17:6) to slake the people’s thirst. It also reminded the people of the vision that Ezekiel the prophet had of water flowing from the threshold of the Temple. The flow grew and grew until it became a torrent, feeding the whole country, descending into the Jordan valley all the way out to the Dead Sea, it purified those waters (Ezekiel 47:1-12). Elsewhere Ezekiel heard the Lord speak, “I will sprinkle clean water upon you to cleanse you from all your impurities, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit with in you, taking from your bodies your stony hearts and giving you natural hearts. I will put my spirit within you and make you live by my statues, careful to observe my decrees. You shall live in the land I gave your fathers; you shall be my people, and I will be your God” (Ezekiel 36:25-28).  As one author has said, “Full of so many memories and themes, the feast of Booths also points to the fulfillment of all promises, the full realization of what is proclaimed by the great deeds performed by God in the past: the new Exodus of joy and glory, the definitive purification of the people, the coming of the Messiah, the effusion of God’s Spirit, and its manifestation on the last day.” [Days of the Lord, p. 265]

            Jesus’ words were spoken out of the context of the last day of this joy-filled feast, with all of the symbolism and memories attached. Now he tells the people that the fulfillment of what they’re celebrating is found in a new relationship – a relationship which will well up within the human heart and flow out into all of life. When Jesus makes the statement about living waters flowing from the heart, he’s making reference to the Exodus event and Moses’ drawing water out of the rock so that the people’s thirst might be quenched. One could go through all sorts of other allusions to the water that God gives in times of drought or even siege, as in Psalm 46, but what is important is to remember that Jesus is telling us that all of the things for which we long – the parched nature of our existence, be it intellectual, spiritual, or emotional – can now be quenched in relationship taken to a new level of intimacy with the living God.

            What Jesus declares, and what the Church continues to declare, is the “leading edge” that Rick DuFour talked about. The gift of the Spirit, the breathing and awakening of new life into the believer is what enables us to know what it means to be successful, to experience the fullness of relationship, and to know that we’re making a difference. Part of our problem is that the Church – and I include this particular “outcrop” of it, as the great Congregational theologian P.T. Forsyth would say – is that we’ve forgotten the affair of the heart. We’ve been more concerned with institutional survival than with the essence of who we are: we’re people who have been touched by the presence of the living God, whose hearts have been spoken to by the heart of God and drawn into a love relationship which binds us to God and to each other.

             The believer comes to share in Christ’s very life, death and resurrection and, as a consequence, is made a true participant in Christ’s body. The church, the body of Christ, actually continues the reality of the incarnation and constitutes the living presence of the living Christ in the world. This is the communion or mutuality of relationship that comes as a result of the believer’s response to God’s call issued in Christ, “Come to me. . .and I will give you rest” [Matthew 11:28] and the promise of presence is continued, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them” [Matthew 18:20] Jesus also promises that the one who responds to his invitation will be given peace and “not as the world gives.” [John 14:27] The gift of peace was seen as synonymous with communion by the early church and the terms were often used in tandem.

Believers, then, are drawn into the church through Word and Sacrament, incorporated into life in the Body and thus become the living members of the Body, with Christ as its head. Communion is continued through the church and re-presented to the world through its members who, in themselves, become a sacramental re-presentation of Christ to the world. All of this is to continue the presence of God’s love uniquely expressed and lived out through Jesus the Christ. The same Jesus who stood up at the feast on that long ago day and said, “You never have to be thirsty again. The water to quench your thirst is in your heart!”

What is more what flows in your heart, and what flows in my heart, flows for each other. Remember, today is the birthday of the Church and we Congregationalists have a way of understanding it. The Cambridge Platform of 1648 described a Congregational Church in this way:

A Congregational Church is by the institution of Christ a part of the militant visible church, consisting of a company of saints by calling, united into one holy body by an holy covenant, for the public worship of God and the mutual edification of one another, in the fellowship of the Lord Jesus.

Note that what makes up the church are “saints by calling,” that would be us. Thus, the church comes into existence in response to the call of God made through Christ. Also, it consists of “a company,” that is it is an association of individuals who have been drawn together as the result of this call and now are to build each other up in faith.

            The church covenant that binds us together is simply a formalized extension of the covenant of grace whereby God continues to extend the promise of presence and of unity/oneness. The church covenant grows naturally out of the response of the believer to God’s call. As Gordon Wakefield has observed, “Union with Christ is not the end, but the beginning of Christian life” for the Puritan. One comes into union with Christ and becomes a “saint” and then, having responded to the “gracious dispositions of Christ’s Heart towards us,” is drawn into communion with others who have shared in God’s love. This covenant relationship is what makes the church a visible, living reality. God’s continued assurance of presence is made visible through the lives of those who have responded to God’s gracious self-disclosure and, in the process, have become “visible saints,” who have entered on this affair of the heart that is the church.

            How does one do this? One may become a “saint” through profession of belief, but this profession implies more than an intellectual assent to a series of theological propositions. (And I would hasten to add, that it has no waiting period – you can become a saint right away!) I like what William Ellery Channing, the nineteenth century American theologian said in his discourse on “The Church” in 1841. He told the people of the Congregational Unitarian Church in Philadelphia:

God heeds not what we say, but what we are, and what we do. The subjection of our wills to the divine, the mortification of sensual and selfish propensities, the cultivation of supreme love to God and of universal justice and charity toward our neighbor – this, this is the very essence of religion . . .

What Channing identifies is the essence of spirituality. Our spirituality is genuine when it brings our faith into lived experience and provides the venue for visible sainthood if you will. The end is, as William Ames described the practice of theology, “living toward God,” which implies living toward others in the process. Thus, Channing also describes the practical nature and purpose of the church, in other words that it is to put into practice that which it preaches. In other words, saints show themselves by their attitudes, their words, and their actions.

            I’ve referred to Channing’s description of the church as it meets for worship before, but want to remind us of it again. What he describes about the worship experience – which is when the church is most truly church – testifies to the relationship or communion of human hearts with the heart of God in Christ revealed in “warm hearts. . . beating on every side.”

We come together in our places of worship that heart may act on heart; that in the midst of the devout a more fervent flame of piety may be kindled in our own breasts; that we may hear God’s word more eagerly knowing that it is drunk in by thirsty spirits around us . . . . I see the signs of Christian affection in those around me, in which warm hearts are beating on every side, in which a deep stillness speaks of the absorbed soul, in which I recognize fellow-beings who in common life have impressed me with their piety.

As “high church” as I am, I will tell you that what I just read to you is the affair of the heart that is the church. Whether we’re in a silent Quaker meeting, a glorious choral evensong in an Anglican cathedral, or an African-American Baptist Church, whatever, the essence of worship is still the same – heart speaking to heart. The heart of God is open to our hearts and we, in our turn, open our hearts to one another.

            To hear Jesus’ words spoken not into the air long ago, but to us right here and right now is what draws us into this affair of the heart that is Christian faith. To begin to love God and love neighbor as Jesus did is what makes this affair of the heart, which is the Church, something real and something that does succeed and does make a difference. Ultimately, it’s about opening ourselves to allowing our thirst for wholeness, self-fulfillment, success – name it – to be slaked by the long, cold drink of God’s Spirit who waits to flow within each of us. As on that feast day long ago, Jesus stands among us and announces again, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’” It’s an affair of the heart and we’re invited. Now, will you enter it?  

For more material on this point see Hans Kung The Church (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1967), especially pages 107-150 and 203-262 and Johannes A Vanderven Ecclesiology in Context (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996) pages 283-300. I also address this in a paper available through the NACCC website, entitled “Fellowship: The Neglected Focus of the Congregational Ellipse” (www.NACCC.org).

Cambridge Platform Chapter ii, par. 6 in Williston Walker The Creeds and Platforms of Congregationalism (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1991), p. 205.

Gordon Wakefield Puritan Devotion (London: Epworth, 1987), p. 160. That union with Christ should be at the core of the Puritan/Congregational approach to faith and church life should not be surprising given its Augustinian-Calvinist foundations, see Dennis E. Tamburello Union with Christ: John Calvin and the Mysticism of St. Bernard (Louisville: Westminster-John Knox Press, 1994).

Thomas Goodwin The Heart of Christ in Heaven towards Sinners on Earth quoted in Louis Bouyer Orthodox Spirituality and Protestant and Anglican Spirituality: A History of Christian Spirituality volume III (New York: Seabury, 1986), p. 140. It is interesting to see that Bouyer, along with others, points out that the notion of “the heart of Christ” or the “sacred heart” was found in the writings of Puritan authors like Francis Rous, Thomas Goodwin, and Richard Baxter forty or more years before Margaret Mary Alacoque and the visions at Paray la Monial.

For more on the church covenant see, William G. Wilcox New England Covenant Theology: Its English Precursors and Early American Exponents (unpublished dissertation: Duke University, 1959) chapters six and seven; also John von Rohr The Covenant of Grace in Puritan Thought  AAR Studies in Religion no. 45 (Atlanta Georgia: Scholars’ Press, 1986).

William Ellery Channing “The Church” in The Complete Works of William Ellery Channing (Boston: The American Unitarian Society, 1891), p. 328-29.

Channing, p. 434.