What the Heart Wants
Romans 7:14-25
Rev. David Germer
This is our second week in a sermon series leading up to our All Church Retreat in early October, at Montreat, where Eileen Gunther will lead us into a deep exploration of the history and context and theology of the spirituals.
Gunther says this, early in her book on the subject: “Slaves sang for every conceivable reason: to communicate, to express emotions, to establish rhythms for work or dance, as a method for memorizing, to worship, to relieve tedium, to make audible where they were in fields, to lull children to sleep, to get food or the occasional wage, to use code when they could not speak openly, and to keep themselves from utter despair”
Each week we’re looking at a different spiritual, paired with a biblical text, and asking the Spirit of God to be at work in this interplay, as it connects with our lives and draws us deeper into the good news of Jesus and into a life lived to God.
First, the biblical text.
Our second text is one that we heard, at least in part, last week. It’s in the thick of Paul’s letter to the Romans, in which he’s describing the depths of the good news… though Paul always has a lot of bad news to work through before coming around to the good news. I don’t think it’s just his demeanor; it’s his strategy to make us fully appreciate how needed and good the good news is.
Listen for God’s word:
“For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact it is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me. For I know that the good does not dwell within me, that is, in my flesh. For the desire to do the good lies close at hand, but not the ability. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me.” [Pause] (I want to say: ‘We get it, Paul! … but he goes on…)
“So I find it to be a law that, when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a captive to the law of sin at work within me. Wretched person that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with my mind I am enslaved to the law of God, but with my flesh I am enslaved to the law of sin.”
The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Paul frames slavery as something that can be the worst imaginable scenario… or as something that is actually good for us. The question is: who or what do we serve? Slaves to what?
In that light… Let’s hear a spiritual. [Walk to front]
Patrick told us that he wanted us each to sing the spiritual we chose for the day, so bear with me: [clear throat]
(I’m kidding.) I’m not going to sing, I wanted to see if Shannon would start sweating and squirming. [Ask her]
No, that’s Patrick’s gift. Not ours.
We are going to hear one spiritual after the sermon, and we’re going to sing together the primary spiritual that I want Romans 7 to interact with, in your minds and imaginations, to end our service today:
Both the title and the entire first verse are these words:
Lord, I Want to Be a Christin, in My Heart, in my heart.
It’s a prayer… but taken literally, at first glance, a bit of a strange prayer. How does one want to be a Christian? You are, or you aren’t.
At least, that’s what many think.
Paul’s words in Romans 7 help us see that it isn’t always so straightforward, and your experience as an imperfect Christian confirms this, doesn’t it.
The spiritual gives words to what we experience often, and what Paul wrote about: in our most honest, clear-headed moments, we want to live a certain way. And we don’t.
Here are the other lines – each repeated, as was common with so many of the spirituals – for easy memorization, or even varied call and response singing with a leader.
Lord, I want to be more loving in my heart.
Lord, I want to be more holy in my heart.
Lord, I want to be like Jesus in my heart.
I think we can all relate to this. I hope we can. This feeling of knowing God’s goodness and love, and knowing that it calls us to a certain way, a new way of living…
And then going on with our lives in the old way.
- Snapping at our kids.
- Tallying up grievances against a spouse and letting them burn and fester inside.
- Assuming the worst about people who think, or look, or vote differently than we do.
- Escaping the formation that God intends for us through the breadth of our emotions by numbing them with alcohol.
- Looking past our neighbors in need because truly seeing them would reveal more about the extent to which we benefit from the same society that dehumanizes them than we think we’re able to bear.
- Making agreements with the way things are, because we’re scared that if we try to change things we might fail, or we’re scared we might succeed.
Now I hope I phrased some of those things in ways that gave you pause, and make you think. But my guess is that none of those – those old ways of flesh and sin – are really new ideas to us, and I don’t imagine you’d refute or push back against the claim that many of those describe you at some point. I know that many of them describe me.
What you might be tempted to push back on, though, is the idea that slaves should feel these things. Here’s what I mean: In our desire for justice and countering oppression, for righting wrongs and advocating for reparations and owning up to the reality of our flesh… I think we sometimes inadvertently reduce slaves and their experiences to something less than human.
I know my reaction, when first thinking about slaves singing, “Lord I Want to be a Christian in My Heart,” was exasperation. “Really?” I thought. “Here’s Paul’s obsession with sin, and St. Augustine’s, rearing its head, making even the slaves feel like they weren’t following Jesus the right way.”
I think about John Jea, who was born in Africa in 1773, and kidnapped at age 2 along with the rest of his family and sold into slavery in New York, where he remained until he gained freedom as a young man in the 1790. Jea hated Christianity as a boy, because it was what his abusive enslaver preached – a selective Christianity, focused more on the guiding disciplinary power of the rod and “obedience to masters”, than on what Jea would discover to be the heart of Christianity, God’s love, when he learned to read and got his hands on a Bible. Once the violence and cruelty of his master was disconnected from Christianity, Jea was able to live a life fully devoted to Jesus and to proclaiming the good news. He because a writer, a sailor, a preacher, and an abolitionist. An incredibly accomplished, amazing man.
Yet listen to these words that he wrote, in his poem, “A Desire to Know our Characters,” while in his 40s:
“Lord, I desire for to know
How to serve my God below?
How to serve thee with my heart?
How to choose the better part?
Tis a point I long to know,
Oft it causes anxious thought –
Do I love the Lord or no?
Am I his or am I not?
Could my heart so hard remain;
Never to cry to God within;
Every trifle give me pain;
If I knew a Savior’s name?
When I turn my eyes within,
All is dark, and vain, and wild,
Fill’d with unbelief and sin; –
Can I deem myself Your child?”
I read that and I have this desire to go back in time and look John Jea directly in his eyes and say: “You were the victim of one of the worst things that can happen to a person! Don’t be so hard on yourself!”
Or I think of the tens or hundreds of thousands of slaves, singing “Lord I want to be a Christian, to more holy, to be like Jesus, to be more loving, in my heart,” and I think: “No! It’s the people who enslaved you who should be singing that and trying to actually live it!”
That spiritual was likely composed in 1750s Virginia by enslaved African-Americans exposed to the teaching of evangelist Samuel Davies. Davies was a Dutch Presbyterian minister who later in life served as the fourth President of Princeton University, then known as the College of New Jersey. Davies advocated strongly for all, including slaves, to have access to the Word of God, and therefore for their education so that they would be able to read. This was not entirely out of line for Presbyterians at the time, unfortunately different from most Baptists and Methodists… but before we swell with pride and think badly about our neighbors, I’ll add that Davies didn’t oppose slavery (which was also in line with Presbyterians of the time), and in fact had two slaves of his own – which he justified by his benevolence. He was benevolent. The African Americans who did know him did seem to vouch for his kindness and goodness and consistency in living out his faith… aside from owning slaves – other human beings, made in God’s image.
That was sin – missing the mark – his own flesh at war with the law of God… though he didn’t see it as such. But so too were the ways that the salves missed the mark, sinned. They were victims… and knew and owned their own sin – the ways that they fell short.
And their acknowledgment of that, in poetry and spirituals, upon reflection is not lamentable to me, but inspiring. It makes me want to take a hard look at my life, and sing those words, loudly, as prayer. Not because I need to do better to earn God’s love, but because God isn’t done with me.
God has justified me, through Jesus. That’s done. God is sanctifying me, making me holy, through the Spirit… if I partner with God in that work, which is not done.
One Romans scholar, summarizing chapter 7, puts it this way:
“Even in the best person there is an ugly residue of sin, and even in the worst person the ineffaceable image of God.”
Paul’s words level the field. All people struggle with sin. No person is beyond God’s reach.
The residue is not the truest thing about us, it’s not who we are or what we want, at our core, in our hearts… but it is something that is real, that God wants to wash clean.
I want to close by reading what one of the documents in our Book of Confessions says about all this. This is from the Confession of 1967.
“The Spirit brings God’s forgiveness to people, moves them to respond in faith, repentance, and obedience, and initiates the new life in Christ. The new life takes shape in a community in which people know that God loves and accepts them in spite of what they are. They therefore accept themselves and love others, knowing that no one has any ground on which to stand, except God’s grace.
The new life does not release one from conflict with unbelief, pride, lust, fear. One still has to struggle with disheartening difficulties and problems. Nevertheless, as one matures in love and faithfulness in his life with Christ, one lives in freedom and good cheer, bearing witness on good days and evil days, confident that the new life is pleasing to God and helpful to others. The new life finds its direction in the life of Jesus.”
I find that so refreshingly honest and realistic. We may be disheartened by the ways we continue to fall short, but what our hearts most truly want, is the fullness of the life that Jesus offers to us.
So may we live lives with eyes wide open – as open as our prophetic teachers who penned the spirituals, whom many of our ancestors enslaved – as open as they were to the reality of their own failures to live as God would have them live. They didn’t take their position in life, unjust and unimaginably awful as it was, to be an ‘out’ from living the radical goodness and holiness and grace of the good news of Jesus. They made it an even more powerful testimony to the work of God in their lives.
Thank you Jesus, thank you Spirit, for working in them.
Thank you, Lord, for working in us. Amen.