e down the Grant County roads, past nothing more than corn and soybeans and more corn. I came back and it was time for pumpkin pie.
And when it came time for a meet, when it was race day and we’d warmed up and eaten our bagels and drank our water and stretched our calves, we’d line up at the starting line, our fingers on the start buttons of our watches, and wait for the gun. We were a line of anxious, nervous, overly-carbohydrated girls, ready to endure the pain of the next seventeen to twenty-four minutes. And the gun would go off and we’d run. We’d slap through mud and up hills, cut each other off at the turns, stick our elbows out to catch a competitor’s rib or two. And then, after the laps around the baseball fields and through the narrow trails between cheap high school landscaping, we’d see it. The finish line. And with our lungs on fire and sweat dripping behind our knees, we were then expected to kick it in to high gear. Give it our all. Accelerate through the pain, even though our tank was on empty, and pass one more girl, shave off one more second, “leave it all on the course,” as we used to say.
And yet, it was such a fine line between keeping a little bit in reserve, just in case, and then having that to accelerate to the finish line, and finding that extra something that you didn’t know you had to push you to the end.
Do you pace yourself? Or do you go all out, right away, and hope against hope you get to the finish line before you collapse?
Were you doubting your workouts, your strength, your preparation, your very self so much that you felt like you had to be conservative, pace yourself, take it easy in the beginning, just in case you tripped on an exposed root or got a cramp in your side or spent too much energy in the beginning and had nothing left at the end? Or do you start the race with your whole heart, with the throttle wide open, with only the hope that somehow you can sustain it, somehow you can make it to the finish line before you collapse from exhaustion?
Do you keep some in reserve?
Or.
Do you let it all go and hope that somehow you’ll still have enough to make it through?
Do you keep your heart tucked safely behind your ribs, or do you wear it on your sleeve, vulnerable to anyone with a knife or a stick or an active email account or a twitter handle or just a really sharp pencil?
In our reading today, Paul has opened his heart wide. He’s risking making a fool of himself, resorting to begging, and even violating societal rules of boundaries and humility. One commentary says, “Whatever may be his fear of appearing foolish, of violating decorum and going “too far” [Paul] does not scruple to open his heart wide.” In the words of my therapist, he is “oversharing.” In this pleading, vulnerable petition to the Corinthians, Paul doesn’t have anything left in his tank. He gives them everything he has. He leaves it all on the field. A wide open heart.
I think this text makes us a little squirmy. A little squeamish. Seeing Paul be this emphatic, this emotional, this over-the-top. It’s like you’re eavesdropping on your neighbors’ domestic dispute, or watching the nerd profess his love for the cheerleading captain. It’s like you’re in the next aisle while a bewildered and exhausted mom is doing everything she can to appease her temper-tantrumming two year old so she can grab the groceries and go. It’s like Paul is on the Maury Povich show trying to woo his girlfriend back and convince her that even though it’s not his baby they can still be a family, they can make this work.
Paul is almost boasting about how much he’s given up for this community. Boasting about how humble he is. This isn’t the clearly articulated argument Paul. This isn’t the logical, reserved, pharisaic Paul. This is a passionate, wild, no holds barred, everything but the kitchen sink Paul. Paul at his wits end. Paul throwing everything he has at the church in Corinth to make them understand, to help them “get it.” Paul with his heart, open wide.
And I think we’re all a little scared of passion. We’re all a little scared of emotion and vulnerability and revealing our need. We want to keep that in reserve. We want to put it in canning jars and keep it in the basement just in case we need it someday. We want to be sure we have enough to get us through retirement. We want to be careful, practical, never, ever wasteful.
And I think that’s ok. It’s good to plan. It’s good to conserve and be frugal and not waste. It’s good not to spill your messiest, germiest, deepest darkest slobbering feelings all over everyone you meet. I mean, we don’t want to scare them away. But most of the time, I don’t think that’s the reason why we hold ourselves back. I don’t think that’s the reason why we hide from each other. I think we close our hearts because we’re embarrassed by our passion, by our hearts open wide. We don’t trust that we’ll still be loved if we reveal all that mess inside of ourselves. And we’re worried that if we do, if we give it all away, if we open our hearts wide, we’ll have nothing left.
And here Paul is, revealing his mess. Laying it all on the line. Cashing in his chips and prying open those dusty jars of pickled cucumbers.
I think the Corinthians were very comfortable with their 10% tithe. They wanted to love God with 10% of themselves, 10% of their time, 10% of their resources, maybe 10 and a half percent of their love. Any more, and people might look at them like they’re freaks. People will think they’re being counter cultural, they’ll think they’re in a cult and drinking the kool-aid and they’ll have to start letting in the hungry folks from the street and the lonely folks from the retirement homes and the over-sugared kids with ADHD.
No. 10% is good. 10% is manageable. I can make it to the finish line if I just use 10% at a time. If I pace myself. If I only stay home and write checks to food pantries but don’t share a meal with someone with broken teeth and a stutter. If I only dish out the meals in the kitchen, and never venture to talk to the homeless man in the dining room.
The Corinthians wanted a gospel of reason and moderation. Something logical, practical, reasonable. Something they can put in a box and take out and polish on holidays and pass on to the kids when they die. Something that is orderly and makes sense and is simple and understood and doesn’t ask more from us than we think we can reasonably give. They’re holding back, just in case. You never know.
But Paul says no. Don’t keep it in reserve. Use it. Use it now. Open wide your hearts. Lay it all on the line. Be vulnerable. Be real. Show your mess. Take risks. Let others in.
You know, the whole, “When someone hits you on your right cheek, give him your left also. When someone takes your cloak, give him your coat as well. And when someone forces you to walk one mile, walk with him two.” When you’re asked to run the race, kick it in to high gear as soon as the starting pistol goes off. You may not make it to the end. You might use it all up in the first mile. But do it anyway. See what happens. Trust that you have enough.
Open wide your hearts.
Start a ministry where you serve free food to anyone, and you worry about funds and sustainability and practicality later.
Open your doors to folks who will probably use your bathrooms to bathe themselves and will fill their coat pockets with sugar packets and steal the toilet paper right out of the dispensers.
Share a story you’ve never told before with someone who feels ashamed all the time.
Go beyond signing facebook petitions and giving lip service to the atrocities of racism and ask hard questions of special interest groups, of our capitalist system, of our white majority.
Start uncomfortable conversations.
Refuse to accept that violence is the norm of our day.
Listen to those living on the margins. Try doing something their way.
Let yourself feel the pain of all the really tough things you have suffered in your life.
And then share that pain with someone else.
Give up your desire to please and to keep this false sense of “peace” and challenge the status quo, explore and learn something new, follow your bliss and do that thing you say you’ll do when the kids are grown, when you retire, when you finally land that job or pay off that debt. Step out of the boat, walk on water.
Because when you open wide your hearts, then, then you can receive the messy stuff of grace. If you hold back, if you keep some in reserve, you’re never going to need the grace. And grace only comes when you really, really need it.
And then when you get it, you can give away all that messy, gooey, sticky grace.
Let your heart be a mess of intake and outtake, a traffic jam of inbound and outbound, a thunderstorm of colliding high and low pressures.
Open wide your hearts. Take the risks. Stand up for justice. Demand change. Stand in the line of fire for the sake of another. Be vulnerable. Maybe you’ll see Jesus.
This isn’t efficient. It’s a mess. It’s collision and reaction and explosion and confusion. It’s everyone speaking in different languages and yet still somehow understanding each other. It’s walking around with flames on your head. It’s God making connections and healing hurts and raising the dead. It’s pandemonium and chaos and mystery and connection.
It’s what grace looks, and feels, and sounds and tastes like.
Open your heart. That place where arteries and veins come together. Where the blue and the red meet. Where the abundance of oxygen and the lack of it comes back to this muscle of sinew and energy and electric pulses.
Open wide your hearts. It’ll hurt. Like open heart surgery. But it’s where the life is, Paul says. It’s where Jesus is.
Open your hearts —wide.
And then get ready for the collision. The collision of human hearts all tangled up and bleeding together. The collision of vulnerability and grace and sacrifice and joy and the messiness of humanity. Get ready for the traffic pile-up of forgiveness and change and transformation.
Get ready for the collision of humanity and deity. Of God, who was made into messy, vulnerable, open flesh, open wide, for all of us. Jesus, who hit the ground running and opened his heart wide even unto death, and then beyond.
Open wide your hearts. Don’t leave anything in the tank. Run the race with wild, persevering, abandon. When you collapse at the finish line, you’ll land among all those soft mushy open hearts. You will have no idea how you made it. You will be completely empty of anything you thought you had left. And you’ll be full of so much grace. You’ll be embraced by the widest, wildest, most vulnerable heart of all. The heart of Christ.
Thanks be to God.
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