'The heart is devious': the prophet Jeremiah's sober realism and practical wisdom
At Parish Communion on the Third Sunday before Lent, 16.2.25
Jeremiah 17:9
“The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse - who can understand it?”
The words of the prophet Jeremiah, from our first reading, may sound like one of those awkward, rather grim Bible passages that it is best to skip past.
On an overcast Sunday morning in February, with the world in a bit of a mess, a busy week ahead of us, and concerns about our health, or job, or family weighing upon us, we might understandably think that we can do without Jeremiah telling us that “the heart is devious above all else”.
It sounds so very pessimistic, an unwelcome call to wallow in guilt, an encouragement to engage in an unhealthy obsession with human flaws.
Part of the problem with this response, however, is that Jeremiah’s words are not unusual in Scripture. The Psalmist prays, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me”, a recognition that all is not well with the human heart, with our loves, our desires, our motivations.
And Jesus himself declares, “For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come”.
Jeremiah’s words, then, stand as part of an important pattern of thought and teaching within the Scriptures - a pattern of thought and teaching that we cannot easily side-step or conveniently overlook.
This wider pattern of scriptural teaching about the human heart - seen in Jeremiah’s words - is not a call to wallow in guilt, not an encouragement to an unhealthy obsession with our failures, and certainly not the faults of others.
It is, rather, an invitation to a sober realism and to practical wisdom: a sober realism about us, individually and collectively, our loves, desires, and motivations; and a practical wisdom to guide us in our own thinking, decisions, and reflections.
“The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse - who can understand it?”
They are words to make us pause and examine ourselves. In a world in which everything moves at a quicker and quicker pace, in which views on almost anything are constantly shared and our responses are expected to be made almost immediately, the words of the prophet Jeremiah call us to pause. To stop. To reflect. To examine ourselves.
My words, my actions, are not always good, true, or wise.
The confession at Morning and Evening Prayer in our Book of Common Prayer has a rather unfashionable but wise phrase: “We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts”.
It is a phrase almost certainly written with the words of Jeremiah in mind.
And so we pause, stop, reflect, examine ourselves. The words I am about to speak, the action I am about to undertake - are they motivated by anger? Pride? Selfishness? Malice? Greed?
We need to pause and examine ourselves precisely because we are very good at convincing ourselves that our loves, desires, and motivations are always justified.
It is often only afterwards, when we see the foolishness, hurt, and wounds caused by our words and actions that we wonder why we said those words or acted in that way.
It is then that we grasp the realism and wisdom of Jeremiah’s words: “The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse - who can understand it?”
To examine our hearts before we speak, before we act: this is the wise path to which Jeremiah calls us.
His words also bring us to recognise that relying on our own spiritual resources as we examine our hearts is neither realistic nor wise.
Because we are skilled at deceiving ourselves about what is good and wise for us … we need spiritual resources outside of ourselves to guide us, challenge us, aid us.
We need the teachings of the scriptures, the Ten Commandments, Jesus’ Summary of the Law (love God, love neighbour), the parables of Jesus (the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal), the example of the grace and mercy of Jesus to guide, challenge and aid us.
And so, when we pause, stop, reflect, and examine ourselves, we are not left to our own devices, our own resources, which too often allow us to simply justify our words and actions.
To guide us away from place of anger, pride, selfishness, malice, greed, we need the teaching of scripture, the Commandments, the Summary of the law, the parables, calling us to walk in the way of love of God and neighbour; in humility, in love, in generosity, in grace, after the pattern of Jesus.
We can see, then, that the sober realism and practical wisdom of the words of the prophet Jeremiah call us to examine our hearts and follow the way of love of God and neighbour.
They also set before us our need for forgiveness.
It takes considerable self-deception to hear Jeremiah’s words - “The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse - who can understand it?” - and not recognise ourselves and our own experience in those words.
This is why in all our services in the Church of Ireland, we together confess our sins. It is why we confess in the Creed that Christ died for the forgiveness of sins. It is why in the Holy Communion, the bread and wine are the signs of God’s forgiveness in Christ: ‘my body given for you, my blood shed for the forgiveness of sins’.
And here too is sober realism and practical wisdom.
To know that I stand in need of God’s forgiveness, that God’s forgiveness is given to me in Word and Sacrament, is to say that I cannot be a spiritual busybody, poking around in and judging the hearts of others.
C.S. Lewis said, “Those who do not think about their own sins make up for it by thinking incessantly about the sins of others”.
To know that I need God’s forgiveness because my heart, my loves, my desires, my motivations are flawed and fall short of the command to love God and neighbour, is to move me to recognise that the hearts of others are flawed like my heart; that I am then to be merciful to others as God is merciful to me; that I am to extend forgiveness to others, as God forgives me.
“The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse - who can understand it?”
On this Third Sunday before Lent, as we prepare for the penitence of Lent, we recognise that the words of the prophet Jeremiah are echoed throughout the Scriptures, not a grim pessimism, not urging us to wallow in guilt ...
But sober realism and practical wisdom for the Christian life; calling us to pause, reflect, and examine our hearts;
To walk in the ways of the Commandments and of the teaching and example of Jesus;
And to know that, rather than being spiritual busybodies judging the hearts of others, we are called to forgive as God forgives us in Christ, to be merciful as God is merciful to us in Christ.
In words we often pray in our services:
Almighty God, to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hidden: cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy name, through Christ our Lord. Amen (3).
__________
(1) BCP 2004, A General Confession at Morning and Evening Prayer, p.86.
(2) C.S. Lewis 'Miserable Offenders' in God in the Dock.
(3) BCP 2004, p.201.
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