Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. (Psalm 51:10)
I played golf a couple of days ago in a foursome that included a fellow who had had a heart transplant nine years ago. I wouldn’t have known it if it hadn’t come up in conversation.
In my former life, I was a surgeon, and while I’ve never been involved in transplant surgery, I’ve watched the development of organ transplantation with some interest over the years.
Dr. Christiaan Barnard did the first human heart transplant in 1967 in Cape Town, South Africa. The recipient was Louis Washkansky, who died 18 days after the procedure.
Ironically, Mr. Washkansky’s demise was not so much a result of the surgery – but rather from the pneumonia he acquired postoperatively.
That he developed pneumonia was due in part to immune suppressive drugs intended to blunt his body’s rejection of the transplanted organ but which had the simultaneous and unfortunate effect of impairing his ability to fight infections.
The current crop of these drugs is significantly improved relative to those available in the early days of transplant surgery.
Of interest to those of us who view the world through golf-colored glasses, the first heart transplant in the UK was done in May of 1968 by none other than Donald Ross. Who knew?
I routinely speak ill of his golf course design namesake because of the elevated and undulating greens he included on our local course, but perhaps I should be more respectful.
Of course, the “pure heart” alluded to in today’s Bible verse understands “heart” to refer more to the “center of my being” than to the muscular pump that we modern folk typically picture in relation to that word.
And, as a descendant of Adam and Eve, my “ticker” is pretty healthy, but the center of my being is anything but pure. Ripe for a transplant.
This is a reasonably apt analogy since my righteousness is the righteousness (i.e., the “pure heart”) that has been imputed to me by Jesus. And, as such, it is purer than a four iron that rolls up to the center of the green from 220 yards out.
The analogy is even stronger when you consider that a modern-day heart transplant is life-saving for the recipient but necessitates the death of the donor.
Sometimes, I doubt the “cleanliness” of my heart. After all, I’ve already admitted to entertaining uncharitable thoughts toward Donald Ross (the golf course architect – not the transplant surgeon) even though he never harmed me.
But Jesus and St. Paul tell me that, having been baptized into Jesus’ atoning death and the benefits thereof, my heart is indeed clean, and I trust them.
There are a lot of good reasons to consider them to be trustworthy.
“Simultaneous saint and sinner” is the way theologians talk about it. A human heart, transplanted from one sinner to another, is good for a while, but it will eventually wear out. The pure heart of a saint lasts forever. Which, after all, is a tribute to the purity of the donor’s heart.
Prayer: Father, thank you for the pure heart you’ve gifted us that will beat eternally