1 John 3:16-24
And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and [God] knows everything.
If your heart has never condemned you, then you can go grab another cup of coffee or return to your crossword puzzle or take a little nap, because unfortunately I have nothing to offer you today. But if your heart has ever condemned you, if you’ve felt the sting of failure, if you’ve experienced the pain of hurting people you love, if you know what it feels like to fall short of being who you want to be, then stay with me as we unpack this message from the First Letter of John.
And like so much of the New Testament, this passage seeks to push us beyond our small and finite selves. We face many perils when we operate within the limited confines of our egos. We can live in denial, basically out of touch with reality; we can constantly be fearful and angry as we perceive the world around us to be inherently threatening. And for many people, there is the danger of being trapped in a vicious cycle of despair: we feel guilty and ashamed when we fail, which just sets us up to feel even worse the next time we fail. Our own hearts condemn us, and as anyone who has experienced this knows, it can feel very difficult to reassure our hearts and somehow get to a better place. And when we feel alone and isolated, it can be well-nigh impossible.
But we are never truly alone. The Holy Spirit within us connects us in the deepest possible way with God. And God is greater than our hearts. Let me repeat that: God is greater than our hearts. Just saying those words is liberating. The invitation here is to wake up and see ourselves as part of a larger reality, an abiding love that enfolds all our sins and miseries in compassion and mercy, taking the frayed and tangled threads of our lives and weaving them into something beautiful. My power is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor. 12:9), the Lord says to Paul. Failure is not an unfortunate aberration: it is somehow a necessary part of the program. But we can’t see that while we are imprisoned in our own hearts: only the all-embracing heart of Christ can make that clear and set us free.
This is not academic for me: I say this from hard experience. I am acutely aware of all the ways I fall short. I can write out an extensive list of my sins, my character flaws, and the ways I have hurt or disappointed people. And given my personality type, it would be very easy to fall into a pit of despair — and I have. What saves me is the love of Christ lifting me out of myself and helping me see that I am still connected, I am still part of what God is doing in this world. And that’s what I want: to be part of what God is doing, I want to love, I want to enjoy abundant life, I want to help others enjoy abundant life. And God knows this. As the reading says, God knows everything. And God can deal with my failures and shortcomings just fine. What matters is that I am with God and I choose love.
This is what it means to believe in Jesus: to trust that God loves the way Jesus loves and to live accordingly. We won’t be perfect and we don’t have to be. We just need to love as best we can. And when we fail, we remember the bigger picture, remember that God is happy to work through us as we are, then get up, smile, and keep on loving. The First Letter of Peter tells us love covers a multitude of sins (1 Pet. 4:8), and it’s true. God won’t let our hearts condemn us, because God knows that we want to love and we’re trying to love. And God will take even our weakest efforts and use them for good.
So the next time you fail, rather than deny it or beat yourself up about it, I encourage you to see it as an opportunity to experience God’s mercy and to grow in love. For that to happen, the primary thing we need is humility: the humility to acknowledge our weakness, the humility to receive forgiveness, the humility to grow. This is what Jesus means when he talks about poverty of spirit. The poor in spirit are blessed because they have surrendered the egotistical need to be perfect and are open enough and vulnerable enough to give themselves to God as they are. Maybe that’s why the wonderful mystic Julian of Norwich insists that sin is not only inevitable, but necessary. Maybe only failure can soften our hearts enough for us to realize that God is greater than our hearts, and to know, as Julian says, that in God all shall be well and all shall well, and all manner of thing shall be well.
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