Heartburn in Three Dimensions
This article is a sermon, written by the Rev. Chuck Walling, one of our Priest Associates. He wrote it for this coming Sunday, but the preaching schedule did not allow him to deliver it from the pulpit. I think it is excellent, and I did not want our congregation to miss it, so I asked him if I could share it as the lead article in this week’s newsletter. Graciously, Fr. Chuck agreed. I am thankful and commend these words to you. – Evan
Each Monday morning, I receive a copy of the Sunday Sermon by a young priest. He is in his mid-thirties now, but as child he was a member of my parish in Harrison, Arkansas, in the 1980s. I have been receiving his sermonic endeavors for about a year and half. What has grabbed my attention about his sermons is that they are totally different from my sermons when I was his age. When I was in my mid-thirties, sixty years ago, the normal sermon from an Episcopal pulpit was a short introduction followed by three points, or three movements, and a conclusion.
I remember a homiletics professor describing the three-point sermon as something like a Broadway musical. The lights dim, and the orchestra plays the overture, comprising bits and pieces of what will be sung in the show. Then, the curtain goes up, and the show unfolds in three acts, concluding with “The Finale” and a loud orchestra and the whole cast singing their hearts out as the curtain closes. The three-point sermon is also described as, “Tell them what you are going to tell them, then tell them, and then tell them what you told them.”
Today you are going to have a three-point sermon. No apologies. You have been warned ahead of time. The title of this sermon is HEARTBURN IN THREE DIMENSIONS.
When I was in my mid-forties, my family doctor and the x-ray folks at the Boone County Hospital concluded that I had a hiatal hernia, which explained the recurring bouts of heartburn, acid reflux, and indigestion. The treatment: sleep with your head elevated. Do not ever lie flat, and keep some antacids handy. I did all that for about forty years.
It was two days after Christmas in 2009. It was unseasonably warm that day with the temperature in the upper fifties. My golf friend and I met at the golf course to play a round of golf. Around the tenth hole, I began to have some belching problems, indigestion, and nausea. At around 7 o’clock that evening, my golf buddy, who is a family doctor, took me to the emergency room. I remember getting into a wheelchair, but, after that, the rest is blank. Later, I was told that I called Lowell Grisham and my daughter, and that I was lucid and answered all their questions, but I did not remember any of it. It was only about 12-18 hours later that I was aware of a nurse handing me a red heart-shaped pillow and telling me that, when I coughed, I was to press the pillow against my chest. It seems that I had had triple-bypass surgery. That’s the physical side of heartburn. Yes, sometimes heartburn can mask more serious problems, like heart disease.
There’s another kind of heartburn. For a long time, the sin of Envy, one of the seven deadly sins, has been associated with heartburn. Envy is often listed as the second deadly sin. To help you remember all seven, just think of the phrase, “PEW SAG L,” which equals Pride, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Avarice, Gluttony and Lust. Envy is popular in mystery stories as one of the motives for criminal activity.
Henry Fairly, former reporter and editor of the London Times, a contributor to the Washinton Post and The New Republic, wrote a book about the seven deadly sins as he had encountered them in his 40 years as a print journalist. His chapter on Envy begins with a line-drawing of a personification and a characterization of Envy. It is a non-descriptive person with a long-pointed nose and great big bulging eyes peering through a large keyhole. The envious are constantly looking at the gifts, talents, and abilities of another person. The envious spend their lives counting the blessings of others and always ignore their own gifts and blessings.
Envy, along with its companions jealousy and covetousness, is unlike the other deadly sins. In the other sins, there is always an element of the comic, the fun. We make jokes and draw cartoons about Gluttony and Lust and sometimes Pride. But there is no joking about Envy; it is serious, dreadfully serious. Envy destroys human relationships—all because the other person is better looking, more athletic, more likeable, more comfortable, and more spirited than they are. Envy is the moral dimension of heartburn.
Heartburn is physical. Heartburn is moral. But there is another kind of heartburn. I am going to call it the spiritual dimension. In the Gospel of Luke, there is a story about this other kind of heartburn. Two unnamed disciples of Jesus leave Jerusalem on the first Easter, travelling toward the community of Emmaus. They are saddened by the events of the previous week, and, as they walk along the road, a stranger catches up to them and asks why they are so sad and gloomy. They tell him why they are grieving, disappointed, and disillusioned. “We had hoped that that he was the one to redeem Israel.”
The stranger then interprets to them all the things about himself in all the scriptures. They stop for supper, and, at the meal, when the bread is broken, the disciples understand that the stranger is Jesus. They return immediately to Jerusalem, saying to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us, while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” In other words, they had an “AH-HA” moment of clarity, a moment when they started to connect all the dots.
When do our hearts burn within us so that we begin to connect the dots? When do we connect the dots? Is it when we are in prayer or in the liturgy, in a word, in an action, when clarity begins to break through to us? Maybe it is when the bread is broken at Communion, broken not only because it is to be shared but broken to remind us that we need to be broken from what prevents us from minimizing our discipleship.
It is October, and every October our parish begins to plan for the coming year by asking each of us to examine or re-examine our relationship not only with God but with this expression of the Body of Christ. Stewardship is about whether we will connect the dots of our lives in order that we might extend ourselves as a living sacrifice in thanksgiving for the gifts that God has entrusted to us individually and collectively. Stewardship is our way of connecting the dots of our lives with our discipleship of Jesus our Lord.
Heartburn is physical, moral, and spiritual. Never lie flat on your back, and keep your head elevated when you are sleeping. Count your blessings, and stop being preoccupied with the blessings of your neighbor. And stay awake for those opportunities that give you the chance to connect the dots.
There you have it. An old-fashioned three-point sermon. You can say AMEN, meaning “so be it.” Or you can say AMEN, meaning “I get it.” Or you can say AMEN, meaning “Thank God this sermon is over.”
The Rev. Charles E. Walling
Priest Associate
