My friend Andy was raised in a Christian home.

So when he returned from college one year and told his parents that he had found Jesus, they were puzzled.

So his mother asked,

"Did you find a different kind of church?

"Is there a minister that you like?

"You have grown up in our Christian home, what do you mean that you have now suddenly found Jesus?"

What Andy articulated is at the heart of this Sunday's gospel. It's the difference between "believing", and "giving your heart over."

We see this in that iconic Bible verse from John chapter 3, 'For God so loved the world he gave his only begotten son so that whoever would believe in him would not perish but would have eternal life.'

One theologian says we should substitute the word "believe" with the phrase "give your heart over to" - he says it's much closer to the author's intent.

In other words, the biblical sense of believing in Christ is more than just ascending to some list of theological of doctrines, it's more visceral, more emotional, it means to give our selves - all of who we are - over to God.

In one sense, it's the difference between saying I love you and will you marry me?

And what we consider during this Lenten season, is that giving our hearts over to God is not something that we do once and never consider again. Rather, to use the marriage analogy again, it is not unlike successful couples, in which we continually give our hearts over to our beloved.

What does that look like to you and me?

In what ways have we agreed to believe but not given our hearts over?

In what ways have we copped to the safe harbor of intellectual ascent, tending to the rituals putting up a good front, and avoided the much less predictable waters of heartfelt commitment to Christ?

We do well to consider that God asks us to do this not for God's well-being, but for our own.