I John 3:1-3
What exactly does it mean to be pure in heart,
as Jesus said when he taught us,
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall
see God”?
There are two verses from I John [3:2-3] that
also talk about purity of heart and seeing God.
“Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we
will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for
we will see him as he is. And all
who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.”
Those are hopeful verses, because they suggest
that purity of heart is possible.
“Purity”
is a tricky term, you know. Week by
week, on A Prairie Home Companion,
Garrison Keilor sings the praises of Powdermilk Biscuits, “made from wheat
grown by Norwegian bachelor farmers, so you know it’s pure, mostly.” Every time I hear that, I scratch my head and
wonder a) what that means and b) if I really want to know what that means. Ivory Soap used to advertise itself as 99 and
44/100 percent pure. Great! What is the other 54/100 percent made
of? “Purification” can be a good thing. That’s what happens to honey in between the
hive and the jar, and it involves straining out things like bees’ wings that
you might not want on your Powdermilk Biscuits.
But it is also a term that dangerous people have used for genocide.
What,
then, is the sort of purity that let’s us see God? Or maybe we should ask it the other way
around: what are the impurities in us that block our view?
The
monks and nuns of the Middle Ages spent a lot of time examining their lives and
developed some practical classifications for sin. I sometimes have asked confirmation students
to memorize the “Seven Deadly Sins”: pride, envy, wrath, sloth, greed,
gluttony, and lust. Being adolescents,
they often get hung up on that last one, but purity involves the absence, or at
least the control, of all of these, because they are all clouds that can come
between us and the sunlight of God’s presence.
When I John says that “Those who
have this hope [of seeing God] purify
themselves, as Christ is pure,” the scripture points out the importance of
making a conscious effort to turn away from these.
That’s
not always fun, but if you give it a try there is a certain real satisfaction
that comes from the effort. It’s similar
to those times when you open the refrigerator and your nose tells you that it
may be time to take a look in some of those containers that were put there with
good intentions at some indistinct point.
You have a feeling that most of them are just fine, but that one of them
has something inside that you would prefer not to know about. In the course of it, you discover not only
the suspect carton of some sort of Chinese food but also a dried-out piece of
cake, two moldy peppers, and something that once was a pork chop. Before you know it, you decide that it might
be a good idea to wash off the shelves while they are exposed. You don’t really need the twelve packets of
ketchup, either, and the date on the mayonnaise is a little old, even if it
does seem harmless.
So
start somewhere – anywhere. Pick one
practice or one attitude that may seem small but that, if you’re honest,
stinks. As you face that down, you will
come upon others. You can count on
that. But keep on going anyway.
I
knew a couple who went on a cruise around the Baltic. They started in Sweden and worked their way
toward Finland, which was where they were going to get off the ship one day to
take a guided tour. The wife decided
that it would help to put her hearing aids into her ears to understand the tour
guide better, which was when she discovered they were not anywhere in her
luggage. The best she could figure was
that she left them in customs somewhere, in one of those baskets they use when
you go through a metal detector. That
made the rest of the trip extremely frustrating.
When
they got home they ordered a new set. A
few weeks after those arrived she was getting ready to make supper and reached
into the freezer for something, and with it came a plastic baggie with two
small, tan, plastic, bean-shaped things…
Keep
on going. God shows good things along
the way to demonstrate the help he gives us to move forward. What was lost to sin can be and is restored
by grace. God does not want to stay
hidden. As Augustine of Hippo wrote
sixteen hundred years ago, God has made us for himself and our hearts are
restless until they rest in him. All
that keeps us from him, he will help to remove in his own time and his own way.
The
poet John Donne describes his experience of what we call “sanctifying grace”,
the action of God that not only forgives us but purifies our hearts. Donne, who started out life as a combination
of a Don Juan and a political hack, was, by the time he wrote his “Hymn to God
the Father”, the Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. Listen to how he makes puns on his own name,
but even more to what he asks of God.
“Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which
was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt thou forgive that sin, through which I
run,
And
do run still, though still I do deplore?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For
I have more.
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I have won
Others
to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A
year or two, but wallow'd in, a score?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For
I have more.
I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
My
last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
But swear by thyself, that at my death thy Son
Shall
shine as he shines now, and heretofore;
And, having done that, thou hast done;
I
fear no more.”
You
and I are no different, for that is the story of all God’s children, prodigals
making their way back to a Father who has been waiting anxiously the whole
time.
“Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we
will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for
we will see him as he is. And all
who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.”
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