The Heart of Pentecost

Over at the URC today we celebrated Pentecost, the celebration of the events described in Acts 2, and the celebration of the Holy Spirit still enlivening, leading, and comforting the Church. I was struck by the rhetoric not only of the sermon, but of the whole service. The word heart was used a lot. Now I think this is often the case, when we petition God we sometimes are said to "lift up our hearts," but this being Pentecost Sunday, and the presiding pastor being a Baptist, heart was used many times. She talked about Jesus filling our hearts with love, we asked the Holy Spirit to enter into our heart, she exhorted us to open our hearts to Jesus. In short the word heart was used quite often.

Why do I find this so interesting? I was born with a severe heart condition, I’ve had 4 open-heart surgeries, and my heart murmur is so loud that the doctors say it sounds like a basset hound in my chest. So, when I hear all these heart words I start to think, "how the hell do people who haven’t had heart surgeries hear these words?"

When you life up your heart do you not think of some Egyptian god weighing your heart, heavy and heaving with sin, cut and threaded back together with micro-filament, against the weight of a feather? When your heart is filled, what does it feel like? Does it slosh around with blue, yellow, and red dye on some ultra-sound type machine? When the Holy Spirit enters our heart does it do so like a branding iron, snaking up around from valve to valve, probing with flame through contracting bits? When the heart is opened does the chest have to be opened too, broken ribs and months of healing?

Seriously, please tell me how you relate to all these metaphors of the heart, because for me all this language is very, very concrete.

Peace,

Chris