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For some time now, intelligence has been measured by IQ testing...

HEART: God and My Emotional Self - I Samuel 18: 6-11; John 2: 13-17 - April 6, 2008 - Cicero United Methodist Church - Everett J. Bassett

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For some time now, intelligence has been measured by IQ testing. It was imagined that the IQ quotient would be a predictor of how a person would do academically, professionally and personally. To some extent, that turned out to be true. But there was still something missing that troubled researchers. Some people with excellent IQs did poorly in school, and in later life. And some with average numbers excelled.

To address this inconsistency, someone developed emotional intelligence testing - or EIQ. This testing measures such things as ability to express feelings, to integrate experiences, and to understand inner responses. What has been discovered is that EIQ is also a predictor of success in life. A person might have a high IQ, but be tripped up by a low EIQ. Two people with similar IQ results, might perform differently based on emotional IQ. It turns out that heart power is just as important as brain power.

It also might be just as important as physical power. This is March Madness season, and if you watch one of the NCAA playoff games, you will witness some pretty amazing athletes. No team is going to make it very far without these amazing physical qualities. But also without heart. Sometimes the emotional involvement of the team is like another player on the floor. A team without heart is not likely to do very well.

Heart. Soul. Brain Power. Physical strength. Starting today, I want to spend a few sermons talking about those various aspects of ourselves. While we are whole human beings, and all these qualities play together to make up who we are, I think it's sometimes helpful to see them as separate components. I also think Jesus gave us a template to study these personal 'selves' in two of his most important statements: "You should love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your mind, and all your strength." And, "You should love your neighbor as yourself." Each of those categories invites some thinking about an aspect of our selves.

Today I want to talk about loving God with your whole heart - or, to profoundly simplify what Jesus was saying --loving God with your emotional self. This will not be a scientific, psychological treatise - there are plenty of those around, along with thousands of self-help books about understanding your emotions. What I want to talk about is putting your emotions in service to God -loving God with all your heart. For me, that is the key question raised by the Bible - not how emotionally intelligent you are - but whether your emotions are given to the right things for the right reasons.

And to look at that, I've chosen two emotional moments from the Bible -- the jealousy of Saul, and the anger of Jesus. In each case, a person was overcome and was physically compelled by emotion. In each case, the emotional episode may have been the person's undoing. But the situations and the motivations were very different.

Let's start with Saul. You may know that Saul was the first significant king of the Hebrew people. He was a great leader and warrior. But he was undone by a young man named David - who, of course, would later become an even greater king. King Saul had every reason to love David. David had defeated the Philistine giant Goliath, preserving Saul's people. David was best friend to Saul's son Jonathan. And David was fiercely devoted the king and the people. David should have been a great asset to Saul.

What could go wrong? Saul's emotions went wrong. David's skills and accomplishments began to eclipse those of Saul. The people actually wrote a song about it: "Saul has slain his thousands, David his ten thousands." Saul became insanely jealous. I Samuel 18 describes what should have been a mellow moment - David playing the lyre to entertain his mentor and king. But, says verse 10, "an evil spirit from God rushed upon Saul." And Saul took his spear and threw it at David. David escaped, but the handwriting was on the wall for his relationship with Saul, and they became enemies.

I'm suggesting we not get hung up on the exact wording of Samuel 18: 10. Many people have been troubled by the suggestion that this evil spirit was sent by God. I see that as some writer's way of keeping God in control of things. What I want to pick up on is how an evil spirit rushed onto Saul, and took control of him. That is what emotions like jealousy, rage, or any number of negative emotions can do, left unchecked.

Consider the case of a man from Fort Lauderdale who spent time in jail after his landlord came out and found him shooting into the hood of his car with a .38-caliber semiautomatic. "I'm putting my car out of its misery," he explained. And later he said, "I think every guy in the universe has wanted to do it. It was worth every minute in that ... jail." An evil spirit may have been involved there. Unchecked emotions can get out-of-control, and be very destructive.

There is a lot of evidence that jealousy stewed in Saul for a long time; and there is no evidence that he tried to do anything to stop it. And anything I say at this point is going to sound a lot easier than it actually is to do; but it still has to be said - we need to have some strategy to deal with destructive negative emotions, or some day they will be like an evil spirit rushing upon us, and we'll do something that we'll regret.

Well, what strategy? Here are a few that have worked: counseling, spiritual direction, self-awareness, recognizing dangerous triggers, avoiding vulnerable situations, avoiding Jerry Springer (which is to say, avoiding filling our minds with unhealthy stuff), changing lifestyle. And, of course - prayer. We should never underestimate the power of prayer to bring healing to our wounded emotions. When I say prayer, I don't mean magic. I don't mean kneeling with the expectation that a magic wand is going to wave away a deep emotion. If that happens, then praise God. But it seems to me more likely that it's going to take a long season of prayer, and hard work, and wrestling with God. I've known people who have put in that hard work - and found their hearts healed.

That's dealing with negative emotions. There is another side of the coin; there are emotions just as strong that serve God, because they are channeled and nurtured in the right direction. And for that, we turn to the anger of Jesus. To love the Lord your God with all your heart means to get good and mad sometimes. And that's what happened to Jesus when he went into the temple courtyard, and saw the house of prayer turned into a marketplace of disregard for anything holy. In Saul's case, an evil spirit rushed upon him. In Jesus' case, John 2: 17 tells us that he was 'consumed by zeal.' But look at the difference: Saul was overcome by jealousy for his own sake; Jesus was consumed by zeal for God and God's house. That difference is key, because the actions are similar. Jesus flew off the handle, threw over the tables, chased people away with a whip. And at first you might say, "What happened to the loving Jesus?" But that's exactly what this was about. Sometimes love gets good and mad, and those moments in the temple were a profound message of love to those who were being abused in God's house.

Loving God with our whole heart means knowing what to get emotional about, and then praying for the words and actions to express it. What Jesus shows is us that there are times when the tables must be overturned. There are times to speak up and speak out with passion, even if it makes people uncomfortable. Jesus even shows us that there are times to surrender your life for the cause.

There is a lot of talk these last few weeks about Rev. Jeremiah Wright, retired pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago - now infamously known as Barack's pastor. Most everybody, I'm sure, has heard or seen the highly-emotional words Rev. Wright uttered in a sermon about racism. Much of the press, much of the public, and certainly Senator Obama's political enemies, have painted Rev. Wright as an unpatriotic, out-of-control wingnut who needs to be condemned.

And since that situation involves the integrity of the pulpit, and since it fits in to this sermon about the proper placement of emotions, I hope you'll indulge me to share a few thoughts about that. Every preacher who takes the calling seriously - and I believe Jack and Warren and anyone else who stands in the pulpit would agree with me - prays earnestly that God will still speak even when he or she, the preacher, botches up the words. I agree with many others that Rev. Wright botched up the words. But I also believe that God spoke - because the anger about racism in America, the anger about the terrible treatment of so many of God's people, past, present, and future is totally just, and must be expressed. Sen. Obama in his resent statements, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks - they may have expressed God's anger better than Rev. Wright did - but nothing should fool us into thinking that God isn't angry, and that God's people shouldn't get angry about the outrageous injustices against people in this world.

We are emotional beings - zeal can consume us; it is part of being human. And those emotions can be explosive, or implosive, and can be our undoing. Or they can be what compels great and noble acts, and overturns the evil tables of this world. The difference, Jesus shows us, is love. And the question we might ask is, "Is this passion I feel self­serving, self-preserving, selfish? Or is it zeal for the cause of love?" If the latter is the case, then don't hold back that offering. Love the Lord your God with all your heart.

Following this morning's prayer, leading up to Communion, our mission team and youth group will introduce an opportunity for well-placed passion for the cause of God and God's people. It's "Bread For the World." I hope all of us will want to take part.