Pip: There's a sermon at Candle in a Cave that opens with a man proposing marriage — and his girlfriend immediately asking about someone else. Which, honestly, is a better setup for a theology lesson than most theology lessons get.
Mara: Fr. John uses that story as a way into something the sermon calls "the story of the heart" — what God actually finds when he looks past the surface performance of faith. Let's start there.
Sermon: Proper 15 RCL A — "Story of the Heart"
Pip: The question this sermon is really asking is whether religious observance and genuine faith are the same thing — and the answer, it turns out, is that God is not fooled by the difference.
Mara: The sermon anchors that claim in Psalm 139, with the opening line setting the frame: "O Lord, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar."
Pip: So the premise is that the search is already happening, whether you invited it or not. The real question the sermon puts to the listener is whether you actually want God to find what's there.
Mara: And the honest answer the sermon gives is: not always. The words are, "Do I really want God to do that? I mean, I know my heart, and sometimes… it's best left hidden."
Pip: That's a braver thing to say from a pulpit than most people manage.
Mara: The sermon then traces the problem backward through Isaiah, where God tells Israel he is weary of their feasts and offerings — "your hands are full of blood" — while they go through every outward motion correctly. The external performance is intact; the interior is the problem.
Mara: Jesus makes the same move in Matthew 15, quoting Isaiah directly: "This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men."
Pip: And then the sermon does something structurally interesting — it treats the very next scene, the Canaanite woman, not as a change of subject but as the proof of the lesson.
Mara: Right. The disciples tell Jesus to send the woman away. What comes out of their mouths, the sermon says, is "prejudice, contempt, judgment, anger, impatience." The woman, by contrast, keeps pressing — "Lord, help me" — and Jesus names what he finds: "Great is your faith."
Pip: The disciples followed every tradition. She broke every boundary just by being there. And she's the one who gets the blessing.
Mara: The sermon closes by returning to Psalm 139 as an invitation and a request together — not just "search me," but "if you find anything amiss, lead me out of it and into your ways." It calls that a good prayer, and also, honestly, a frightening one.
Pip: The sermon's final question — "what is the story of your heart?" — is one of those that doesn't let you off the hook by answering it quickly.
Mara: And it lands harder because the sermon already admitted the honest answer isn't always flattering. More from Candle in a Cave next time.
Candle in a Cave 