Saint John 8:31-36

Imagine the scene: you are in the Doctor's Office, an array of EKGs, echocardiograms, and other test results splayed around the room. The Doctor's face is grim but resolute. "Your heart is so severely damaged that you will surely die without a transplant. I've placed your name on the waiting list; in a few months, we'll schedule the surgery and when it's over, God willing, you'll be healed. No more gasping for breath when you walk across the room. No shooting pains. You'll be your old self again, only better."

Your mind is reeling with the news. There are so many questions you want answered! Patiently the Doctor walks you through what is to come, and eventually, the day you dread and hope for arrives. "Get to the Hospital. We have a new heart for you." Most of your energy and thoughts are focused on yourself, the surgical and medical team, your family, and just getting through this radical procedure. But late at night - perhaps the night before surgery, maybe a few days afterwards, as you wait for pain medication to kick in or for the anti-rejection drugs to reduce a fever - there in the silent room, late at night you have other questions.

Who was the person whose heart is now yours? Was it a man or a woman? We he or she white, black, Oriental, something else? Was the person Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, atheist? What did this person do for a living, what hopes and sorrows did he or she bear? How did the person live, and how did he or she die? What does it mean that you bear a living portion of another person's body there within your chest? What does it mean that you live only because another person died, and allowed part of his or her own body be given to a stranger? Does something of that person's history or essence or soul pass into you with the living tissue? How will you be changed - not just by the surgical procedure but by this astonishing and deeply intimate gift that will beat within your chest for the rest of your natural life? What will it be like to live. Knowing that each breath you take, each word you speak, each thought and gesture and action is possible only because of this new heart, gift of a stranger, powering your body?

Perhaps, half-embarrassed, you share some of your questions with the Doctor or someone else. You're assured that, no, you're not suddenly going to gain the characteristics of a different gender or race; your not suddenly going to start watching old movies and sitcoms you'd heard the other person liked. In fact, your body is constantly going to try rejecting the new heart, deeming it alien, dangerous, and "other." Only the anti-rejection drugs you take will allow the new heart to become an integral part of your own body. Perhaps the Doctor was right: this heart transplant has allowed you to be your old self again, though wiser, deeper, more grateful.

Imagine the scene: you come to church with your new baby, and you hear disturbing words. "Your baby's heart - not her physical one, but her real heart, the seat of her soul and the core of her identity - is deeply damaged as yours was. Without a heart transplant, she will surely die. But there is great hope," the Pastor continues, voice warm with resolution and joy. "Our Lord Jesus has promised to give your child his very own heart, just as he gave to you and me. Let's schedule the Baptism for next Sunday, shall we?"

You sit there, reeling with questions. My beautiful baby? Die? Deeply damaged as my own heart - what didn't my parents tell me? Heart transplant? What are you talking about? Isn't there something less radical, less dangerous? Our real heart? What's going on?

The Pastor patiently answers your questions. "If our physical heart is wounded, clogged, malformed, it affects the whole body, doesn't it? If it fails, the whole body dies. And in the meantime, before the transplant, you're in bondage. You're a slave to pain, to the terrible limitations enforced by the malfunctioning heart. And without a transplant, you die in that bondage.

"Sin is like that; it's like terrible heart disease of the soul. It keeps us in bondage - we keep on hurting ourselves and one another, and we anger and grieve God. Even if we wanted to live healthy, sinless lives, we couldn't - just as when you have a failing heart, even giving up smoking, eating right, and mild exercise only postpone the inevitable. Without a real heart transplant, we're doomed to die in bondage to sin."

"But my baby!" you say. "She hasn't lived long enough to sin! Is she born with this?"

The Pastor nods gently. "It's like being born with a really terrible heart defect: even though she's being fed the best baby food and is getting all her shots and seems healthy, she could have a condition that is life threatening, right? Well, that's the human condition, there in the depth of what makes us human. Following God's laws and commandments alleviates

the worst of the side effects, but it only postpones the inevitable. Only a heart transplant from God can correct it - after all, since we're all in the same boat, who else could do it?"

You think hard for several minutes. "With a regular heart transplant, you're still the same old self, just healthier. You don't change colors or religion or gender because of it. What about this - this baptismal transplant you're talking about?"

"Ah!" the Pastor beams. "That's the big surprise. Jesus puts his own heart in us! He died under sin's load and rose again and is forever immune to its deadly effects! His heart is completely in tune with his Heavenly Father. God's intentions are engraved on Jesus' heart. His heart is the heart of God's beloved Son - and when we receive it, we're not only set free from slavery to sin and death, we are counted as members of God's family, too! We don't say our same old selves when we get a heart transplant in Baptism. We begin to be like Jesus. No. no, let me rephrase that. We're made part of his own Body when his heart is put in us. And he will never, ever reject us as foreign and dangerous. Sin and death will never have the last word over us. We're his when we receive his heart, life, and future from God's hand."

"Don't we need anti-rejection drugs, though?" you ask, half-kidding. "I mean, this is a lot more radical than real - uh, I mean physical heart transplant surgery!"

"That's why we're given his Body and Blood every time we come to the Lord's table - almost 2,000 years ago a great saint called Communion the 'medicine of immortality.' Maybe he was more right than he knew! Being here in Worship with other transplant recipients, constantly hearing what God has done that we could never do for ourselves and what he wants to do for all his people, and receiving his presence in bead and wine, his promise that we're forgiven all our attempts to 'reject' Him - that's what keeps us healthy after this great heart transplant. And we're promised that it will last not in our physical lifetime, but forever. As Jesus said, if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed. Forever!"

Dear friends in Christ, that isn't a hypothetical conversation. It's one our Lord has with us every week, and we hear it very pointedly on Reformation Sunday. Maybe it's the deepest meaning of Reformation: That always, throughout the world, the Church announces that it is comprised solely of people who live with a new heart in them: the heart of Christ. They are alive solely through his grace. Anyone who believes and this and is baptized - who received this incredible, intimate gift of God's own life - will live forever as a child of God's house.

"For is the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed."

Thanks be to God!!!!!

Amen!!!