The Parish Church of St John-at-Hampstead

Readings:  Acts 4. 5-12, Psalm 23, 1 John 3. 16-end, John 10. 11-18
            Sometimes a preacher is confronted with a set of readings which requires several re-readings before a theme emerges; and sometimes a phrase stands out which demands attention though on other occasions it might be passed over. There is one such line in our second reading: ‘God is greater than our hearts and he knows everything.’  The sentence is a response to the experience of guilt and shame – the experience of our heart’s inner self condemnation. ‘When our hearts condemn us we must remember that God is greater than our hearts and he knows everything.’
           In Hebrew thought the ‘heart’ is clearly a psychological organ as well as a physical one. It is the seat of the intellect and the centre of will and purpose. The heart harbours  thought as well as feeling. It can be a place both of integration and chaos. So it is not surprising that self condemnation can have both psychological and physical consequences. Self condemnation can be physically debilitating.
            Self condemnation can also involve both shame and guilt. Guilt arises from a sense of our having broken a law or moral code. The offence may be real or imaginary. Shame is more complex. It is a feeling arising from a sense of unworthiness or disgrace. We feel shame when we feel a discrepancy between what we feel we are and what ideally we would like to be. In both cases our hearts condemn us.
            St John’s answer to these feelings of guilt and shame is to remind us that ‘God is greater than our hearts and he knows everything.’ How does that help us? Its helpfulness is not immediately apparent. To be reminded that God knows everything might exacerbate our negative thoughts. We might picture a judgmental God from whom there is no escape. Everything we would rather keep hidden is known to him. As Jesus said on one occasion, ‘What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered  in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the rooftops’.
            And yet John’s reminder that  God is greater than our hearts, seems meant to be helpful. A key feature of self condemnation is that it shuts us off from people and things. Self condemnation becomes a self enclosed habit. The only answer is for the heart to be broken into, to have its defenses pulled down. That is perhaps why Jesus sometimes refers to himself as a thief in the night – the one who breaks down our defenses, the one who breaks in when we least expect it. So John reminds us that God is greater than our hearts in order to break down our self enclosure.
            Another characteristic of self condemnation is that the heart is convinced it knows best. Perhaps only God can convince us otherwise, because only God is truly greater than our hearts. The first answer to self condemnation is to ponder the greatness of God. As in the hymn, “When I in awesome wonder’ and its refrain ‘How great thou art’. Or as in the Lord’s prayer, ‘Our Father, which art in heaven,’ or the Magnificat, ‘My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord.’ God is greater than our hearts – that is one definition of God   we must always  remember, since our hearts are so efficient at forgetting it.
            We are perhaps overly familiar with Psalm 23. ‘The Lord is my shepherd’ can be sung as  we heard it this morning or in its various versions in the hymn book. And yet those familiar opening lines are not exactly an accurate translation. It is not at all clear how we should translate the original. It would be perfectly possible to say, ‘The Lord!  My shepherd!’   Perhaps the psalm begins with a sense of startled recognition of a hitherto unexpected or forgotten possibility; ‘The Lord is my shepherd!’ Again we are forced to remember that God is greater than our hearts; it is his purpose to lead, restore, and guide us. Or as the prophet Ezekiel describes it, the good shepherd protects his sheep, brings them all together, leads them to rich pasture, watches out for stragglers, heals the hurt, searches for the lost and rescues them wherever they have got to, and leaves the healthy and strong to play.
           When we remember that, our hearts might begin to allow us to enjoy being God’s sheep.
            Because of the nature of their work shepherds don’t have much time for going to church. It Wiltshire it used to be the case that a shepherd was buried with a strand of wool in his hand so that the reason for his failure to attend divine worship should be at once evident to his creator. Perhaps we should carry around a strand of wool in our pockets to remind ourselves that God is greater than our hearts and, as our Good Shepherd, means us to feel free and forgiven and loved.