Revolution of the Heart

Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28
Luke 15:1-10

Jesus is many things, but I’m not sure it would be fair to refer to him as a Jack-of-all-trades. We know that he’s a carpenter, or at least that he was brought up by a carpenter. We shouldn’t assume that he necessarily picked anything up from Joseph, since we’re told he was the kind of kid who liked to wander off and read instead of doing what he was supposed to be doing. So, at best he had the skills of a carpenter. But the words of this parable betray a lack of understanding of what would have been considered conventional wisdom amongst shepherds, on Jesus’ part. According to classics and Bible scholar Sarah Ruden, to leave the ninety-nine sheep in the wilderness to go and look for a lost sheep would have been nonsensical. What shepherd would leave the vast majority of their flock exposed to thieves and wolves and the sheeps’ own propensity to wander, just for a single wayward sheep. For any reasonable shepherd, the right thing to do would be to protect the rest of the assets, to cut their losses and leave the one for the sake of the rest. Especially since shepherds were typically hired hands, the best thing to do would be to keep as many sheep safe as possible—not risk everything turning their attention towards the lost sheep.

That conventional wisdom isn’t limited to the shepherds of two millennia ago, though. This mentality persists, telling us that some loss is necessary in order to preserve the greater profit margin, the security of the nation, our comfort, our desires. In order to give us some semblance of safety in a world that loves to remind us of all the potential for danger out there. Why would we risk everything for a small piece of the community, when there are wolves and thieves everywhere we turn out here in the wilderness? This conventional wisdom shames any sense of empathy, any urge to feel the pain of another and be moved by suffering. This conventional wisdom sees it not only as practical to leave the one sheep, but as a necessary sacrifice if we are to enjoy the freedoms and fullness of life that we ought to enjoy. This conventional wisdom deplores empathy and lifts up not mere apathy, but a conscious hard-heartedness with regards to those who suffer, those on the margins, and those in greatest need of the shepherd’s touch. And still it persists, even though it is not the way that Jesus shepherds, and it is certainly not the way we are meant to keep one another.

The news this week was heavy, though not anything out of the ordinary. This past week, a truly staggering number of shootings took place in the United States. More newsworthy shootings, such as those that took place in Evergreen, Colorado, Orem, Utah, and South St. Paul, Minnesota were not isolated incidents, but three of dozens. From right here in Rochester to the middle of nowhere Washington, in red states and blue states, big cities and small towns. Motivated by ideologies of violence, personal conflicts, fear, greed, and who knows what else. The responses to these acts of violence have been just as varied. Some have responded with calls for vengeance, both in the form of the death penalty and by vigilante means. Others have responded with broader calls for violence against political enemies. Others still, have met violence with apathy, ignoring the inconvenient or the unremarkable stories in the name of protecting our peace or preserving the political narrative. We exist in a culture that continues to see guns as irreproachable, gun violence as unavoidable, and those who say disagree as anti-freedom. And it’s not just a gun problem. It’s a problem of violence, which has become normalized in so many aspects of our lives. Those who encourage and justify violence against women, immigrants, and transgender people are themselves victimized by violence. 

Throughout Creation, cries for justice—true justice—fall silently, unheard. The city streets are barren, too overwhelmed and too hopeless to bear the weight of marches and rallies and protests. Or…are they?

In the midst of story after story of despair, in the midst of apathy and hard-heartedness, we saw a sign this week that God is not done with us yet just down the road in Rochester. This past Tuesday, as three men were in the middle of a roofing job in the Park Avenue neighborhood, ICE rolled in to take them into custody. Instead of leaving these behind, instead of casting sheep from our flock out into the wilderness to be fed to the wolves or taken by thieves, over a hundred neighbors from around Rochester showed up to the work site and put themselves between the workers and ICE. They used their voices, their bodies, and their numbers to successfully get ICE to turn away, though one of the three men was taken into custody. This was not the response of apathy. It was not the response of those who couldn’t be bothered to care what happened to their neighbors. It was an acknowledgement of the need to stand against systems of violence, even if it means putting everything on the line. It’s a rejection of convention, and an expression of empathy—not a sign of weakness, but proof that in our connectedness we are more capable of resisting evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves. 

In the midst of a world where the habit is hardheartedness and empathy is a weakness, we need to hear the words again and again of Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement. She wrote that “the greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart.” This revolution, she writes, starts with each one of us. It starts with allowing our hearts of stone to be broken. It starts with showing up for one another, for our neighbors, for those afflicted by violence. It means looking internally, at our own ways of thinking, our own families, our own communities. It means examining our policies around guns through a lens of compassion and a concern for life, and it means voicing criticism of those who prey on primarily young white men and lead them towards right-wing extremism. We need a revolution of the heart, a revolution more focused on helping our neighbors to live than helping our neighbors to die. A revolution that does not build up walls and fortifications but tears down divisions that we create. A revolution that recognizes that until the most vulnerable among us—each child, each unhoused person, each migrant, each queer person—are pursued, are kept, are raised up, are made free, none of us is free. A non-violent revolution to oppose systems built and maintained by violence. This is our call as members of the body of Christ—to be a part of the revolution of the heart that began with the prophets’ song. To be a part of Christ’s non-violent revolution.

The prophet tells us that there shall be desolation—and boy, is there desolation. We can witness, without a doubt, to the desolation around us. But this is not the end, Jeremiah says. And we can witness to that, too. Because God does not turn God’s back on us, even when we are foolish, even when we worship other gods. The God we worship, who shepherds us through the wilderness and beyond all fear, has no use for apathy, no interest in turning away from the humanity of our violence. Our God allows their heart to be broken, sees their body broken alongside those who suffer, and dies the deaths we inflict on one another. We are called to shepherd one another, to see each sheep as beloved, and to risk it all for the sake of the one. Not for the sake of guns or gold, but so that more and more might find their place in the kingdom of God. May we have the strength to step into this revolution of the heart, to have our hearts broken, and to shepherd one another in solidarity. We need a revolution of the heart, one that starts with each one of us. May it be so. Amen.