It’s funny how my mind plays tricks. In today’s readings, Circumcise, then, the foreskin of your heart, and do not be stubborn any longer, made a strong impression, but my mind tricked me to recalling this as part of today’s reading from Hebrews 4:11-16, not as verse 16 of today’s Deuteronomy 10:12-22. Seems to me that Paul often goes on and on about circumcision; I suppose in his world it was kind of like tattoos in ours. You can be tattooed, but you can hide it; so that, unless you chose to let it show, the people you meet in daily life may never know. But, tattooed on the heart: in situations where your heart can not be hidden, must be shown, to have it be clearly marked by God’s handiwork. Maybe you’ve been lucky enough to meet people who you just know will pass that inspection? I’m not sure if I would.
Conventional circumcision of infant boys in our culture seems an uncomfortable experience … tough to imagine the pain as an adult. I would guess that in our culture real “circumcision on the heart” is for many an adult choice, an adult experience… Tough to imagine what would draw one to it? Tough to imagine where to find the strength to see it through? What IS the pain of being circumcised on the heart? Why does it seem to hurt? What is the gain?
Today’s readings start with Psalm 95, with the comfortable and lovely verses of the Venite: “Come, let us sing to the Lord, let us shout for joy to the rock of our salvation!”; flowing on to the beautiful request: “O that today you would listen to his voice”. What called to me in today’s readings, though, were the verses that come next:
8 Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah,
as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,
9 when your ancestors tested me,
and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.
10 For forty years I loathed that generation
and said, ‘They are a people whose hearts go astray,
and they do not regard my ways.’
11 Therefore in my anger I swore,
‘They shall not enter my rest.’
Going through those 40 years, is that what it took to tattoo a “circumcision of the heart” on our stubborn Hebrew spiritual ancestors? These 40 days, this Lent, is there anything God’s voice is calling me to do; to go through, so that I am more open to the hand drawing the tattoo he longs to have seen on my heart?
Will Ames
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