We have in our church a chapel of the Sacred Heart. We also have a statue. To many people the idea of the Sacred Heart of Jesus may well be something "foreign", exotic, old fashioned, and, dare one say it, Roman Catholic. We may think that it probably does not speak to us in any positive sense and is something best ignored. But to do this would be to miss an important opportunity to understand something of the nature of God.

The current trend in liturgy in the Church of England is to look hard at our traditions and to try to understand what caused them to arise in the first place, and then to ask how can we do the same thing in the early 21st century. I suggest we can do the same with the idea of the Sacred Heart.

As you will know from the Nicene Creed Our Lord is both man and God. This is not the time or place to follow all the arguments about the exact nature of Jesus. Suffice it to say that even in orthodox Christianity there is always a tension between emphasising the humanity of Jesus and the divinity of Jesus. Different periods of Christian history have found it more helpful to concentrate on the divinity of the Lord, rather than his humanity (and, of course, vice versa). A look through the hymn book will illustrate this very clearly. See how some hymns focus sharply on a particular aspect of Our Lord (and note when they were first written).

Theology, however, like politics, is about checks and balances, and the balance has always been restored. The concept of the Sacred Heart came to the fore in a period when the divinity of Christ was being emphasised at the expense of his humanity - or so some people thought. They reasoned like this. Yes, Jesus is exalted and glorified and enthroned in heavenly splendour - but we also need to remember that Jesus shows us the extent of God's love for us. Almighty God, the Eternal and Magnificent One, was prepared to lay aside his glory, to humble himself and become a human being, subject himself to human limitations and ultimately suffer and die.

There is something shocking and scandalous in this, but Christians believe it shows us just how great was and is God's love for his creation. There is one word that stands out in our thinking about this - compassion. Compassion is far more than feeling sorry. It means nothing less than "suffering with". So we see God identifying himself with the suffering of his world by taking upon himself all the pain and grief and deep despair, carrying it to Calvary and conquering it.

And perhaps you say: "Well that was then. But what about now? Because is there not even more pain and grief and anguish in our world than ever before? Where is God in all this? What is he doing?"

This is the cry that echoes down the centuries, and the answer will always be the same. God is there in the midst of all the pain and grief and anguish, still carrying his cross, still suffering with his people, still sharing with them their moments of deepest despair.

One of the paradoxes of our faith is that we are closest to God in these moments - and yet do not feel it. It cannot be any other. In our forsakenness we are close to the cry of Jesus from the cross: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

And all this is symbolised for us in the idea of the Sacred Heart. The statue of Jesus, the Sacred Heart, shows us some important truths. First of all note that this is the risen and glorified Christ (the scars on the hands and feet tell us that). Yet he shows us his "heart". That is, he shows us that even though he is in glory he is still as human as we are, that he continues to share in our lives to the full, in our sorrows as well as our joys. It is a concept of reassurance. We have a God who is deeply and intimately concerned with the affairs of this world, to the extent of immersing himself in the mire of despair and the tears of the abandoned and the cries of the anguished.

Purple prose, I know, but it needs saying because it runs counter to everything any other religion believes about God. Christianity is unique in worshipping a God who became one of his own creation and really and painfully suffered - and suffers still, now, today, and will continue to suffer as long as there is any one person in the whole of creation who suffers. We are talking of nothing less than the total identification of God with us.

I realised long ago that people tend to learn their theology from hymns. At the end of this article is a hymn by Timothy Rees, the Mirfield Father who was Bishop of Llandaff between the Wars. His thinking on these themes led him back to the vital and basic point that God is Love. Once we have grasped the amazing depths of that Love, we begin to appreciate what the Franciscans have called “the Divine Compassion”.

Father Ian Pearson
2004

God is Love : let heaven adore him;
God is Love : let earth rejoice;
Let creation sing before him,
and exalt him with one voice.
He who laid the earth's foundation,
he who spread the heavens above,
he who breathes through all creation,
he is Love, eternal Love.

God is Love : and he enfoldeth
all the world in one embrace;
with unfailing grasp he holdeth
every child of every race.
And when human hearts are breaking
under sorrow's iron rod,
then they find that selfsame aching
deep within the heart of God.

God is Love : and though with blindness
sin affects the souls of men,
God's eternal loving-kindness
holds and guides them even then.
Sin and death and hell shall never
o'er us final triumph gain;
God is Love, so Love for ever
o'er the universe must reign.

(Timothy Rees 1874 - 1939).