“A Clean Heart,” by Rev. Dr. Jay Marshall Groat, September 1, 2024, at Mount Vernon, Ohio, based on Mark 7:1-8, 14-15

So far in our service I’ve been fairly confident that what I want to happen is happening. As we’ve already touched upon, this is one of our lectionary readings, what we just heard, and my goal is to get us to think and to wonder, because if you look at this last Scripture from 30,000 feet it’s about religious ritual, religious purity, versus a more broad understanding of spiritual cleanliness. That’s what I’ve been wondering about and that’s what I want all of us to wonder about.

Should we wash our hands? Of course. And do we respect religious tradition, in this instance Jewish tradition of purity and cleanliness? Do we respect that? Of course we do. I was very active years ago in an Akron-area interfaith council, and I’ve sat down more than once with orthodox Jews to eat. I can assure you that they do things a lot differently than I do, and I celebrate that and I lift it up. What I’ve been wondering about, and as your preacher what I want you to wonder about this week – what does that mean when the psalmist asks, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me?”

You know, it’s fantastic when the scholars point out in the passage that we just heard that it’s actually making reference to the Hebrew word “bara,” which is translated “create.” The psalmist says, “bara in me a clean heart,” and guess what the first verb in the Bible is? It’s the first verb. “In the beginning God” – what comes next? Bara. In the beginning, it’s the first action of God. God creates. And that’s exactly the same verb that the psalmist uses when he asks God, “Create in me a clean heart.”

So today, even right now, in some dimension of our souls and minds, we can ask God to see us, see our souls, see our essence as the beginning, as a genesis, for a new beginning simply because God is the one who can turn the shadow of death into daybreak. Create in us, bara. In the beginning, September 1^st, 2024, a new beginning. We have a new music director to symbolize this for us. It’s new.

Now, there is inherently a problem, and the problem is this. The problem is my basement. That’s the problem. If you ever come to our house you will enter on the first floor, and you will be amazed at how clean and orderly it is, because that’s the way Vicki and I live. And if you would go upstairs you would find that the two bedrooms and the office space are orderly and clean. We would not permit you to go into our son’s room because everything else on that second floor is orderly and neat, and why? Because we’re in control. And you are forbidden to go into my basement. It’s not really a basement. Try to imagine a storage unit that looks like it’s been hit with a bomb.

The problem about being a human being, especially the longer you live, each of us has a basement in our souls where all that stuff is, that stuff that we don’t want people to see or know, and that stuff that will never go away. We’ve all got it. And that’s when we need to think of the psalmist, and step up the stairs, out of the basement, and shut the door. And let that stuff be and ask God for the miracle of a new beginning. Create in us a clean heart.

I’ll finish with this, and I’ll give you two choices. I think asking God to create in us a clean heart is a lot more art than science. We know when it’s happening, and we know when it’s not. And when somebody asks us how this new beginning happened, we struggle for the words, but we know when it’s happening. Here are two people from my life, and you get to decide which one fit the idea of creating a clean heart and which one didn’t. I’ll tell you the name of the second person but not the first one because it will be obvious to you why. I’m sharing this in a message that is available to the world via the Internet, but I’m going to forge ahead.

Many years ago, in a land far away, two states away, I had a regular barber, and he was a member of the church that I served. I went to him for years. And along the mirror where you get your hair cut this barber had knickknacks and stuff from his life sitting around, and there was a picture of family members of his, seven or eight of them. It was obviously from a wedding, smiling faces. I went to this barber for years, and I went one day for a haircut and noticed that one of the faces was darkened out with permanent ink. And then two or three or four haircuts later I noticed there was another face. And then five or six haircuts later, another face. You understand what’s happening here? He’s darkening out faces? Since I’m a pastor sometimes you can get away with asking personal questions. One day I couldn’t take it anymore, I called him by name and said, “What is that, what’s going on with this picture?” And the anger revealed itself. He went into specifics about all of the particular wrongs that those family members had done to him, and they’re out. Is this creating a new and clean heart? You get to decide. 

So, the second person, she’s long passed away. Same church, a member, she had the absolutely wonderful name of Gladys. I don’t think I even know a Gladys anymore. Gladys was what at the time we called home-bound. She was infirm, physically unable to leave her house, lived alone, had some assistance. It was a Presbyterian church, and in Presbyterian churches there’s a board of deacons and you’re elected for three years. That church broke the rules and made Gladys a deacon for life. You’re not allowed to do this, it’s illegal, we did it anyway. We called her the Sunshine Lady. She lived at home, alone, she was infirm, and she created her job, a volunteer. We listed her in the church staff directory as the Sunshine Lady. If anything at all happened in your life, a high school graduation, hospital stay, anything challenging, anything good, anything at all that happened, you would get a card from Gladys on behalf of the church. And it was a pretty big church. She sent out cards every week. It was my job as a staff member to go over and visit her in her house about once a quarter. She was a genius because every time I asked her a question about herself she absolutely refused to talk about herself. She just wouldn’t do it. She just wanted to talk about me, and how beautiful the world is.

Which one of these people figured out, through the grace of God, to create in us a clean heart and renew a right spirit within us? Wash your hands. And I really will end with this – all the answers about how to do it are correct. The most important one is prayer. It’s a state of being, and don’t worry about the words. A clean heart. Amen?