Blessed are the pure in heart
/The Wednesday Recap
By Pastor Jason Crabbe
Welcome to the Wednesday Recap!
What is the Wednesday Recap, you ask? Each Wednesday, I recap the discussion from the previous week’s Local table gathering. Each week, The Local meets in various homes around a table to eat, worship, read and discuss the Bible, and pray for each other and our community. Living on mission is our response to the grace and love Jesus has shown us. We share the Gospel and show love to those we encounter where we live, learn, work, and play. While this recap gives people a chance to review, it also gives folks who were unable to gather with us a chance to catch up on what we are learning and working on together. I hope you find it a blessing. Be well, and I will see at our Local table!
“Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.”
What does purity mean to you? Does it mean taking a shower twice a day? What about never eating processed foods? Perhaps it means never watching anything but G-rated Disney movies? How does one have a pure heart or be “pure in heart?” As a Christian, does it mean becoming a monk or a nun? How does one maintain purity? Is this even an important characteristic for a person to have? Jesus thought so. He was even bold enough to say that someone who is pure in heart would “see God.” To see God. Gee, wouldn’t that be something?
I remember when I was a young man, this concept of purity in heart was extremely important to me. I was fascinated by knights, especially holy ones, and the thought of being someone so pure in heart that you could see God, and perhaps even hear His voice, was just too good for me to ignore. In his book Le Morte d’Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory wrote of a knight of the Round Table called Sir Galahad. I read an English version of this book in college, which contained a curated selection of Malory’s stories—my favorite being the ones with Sir Galahad. Sir Galahad was the son of Sir Lancelot, and he was known as the “perfect knight.” He performed miracles, healed the wounded, and outshined many other knights. Sir Galahad, with a few friends, quested for the Holy Grail (not to be confused with Monty Python’s movie!). It is an inspiring read if you are interested in that sort of thing. But for us nonknighted folks, what does it mean to be pure in heart? How do you become this? Let’s look to Scripture and see if we can find out.
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs....””
When reading the Bible, purity can take many meanings. I’d like to examine it within the context of the Beatitudes. In Matthew 23:27-28, Jesus criticizes the scribes and Pharisees, calling them hypocrites because they concentrate so much on the outward appearance, being ceremonially clean (outwardly pure), rather than focusing on their inner life. He compares them to “whitewashed tombs.” They are like graves that are clean on the outside but full of corruption and death on the inside. They were pretending to be something they were not. Hypocrisy was something Jesus was extremely concerned about. He uses this word to condemn the scribes and Pharisees 6 times in Chapter 23. Being sincerely who we are in every situation is what Jesus calls his disciples to be. Even worse than just being liars or falsely representing themselves, Jesus called them out because their hypocrisy hurt other people. They didn’t follow the law because they loved God. They outwardly followed the rules to be better than others, or at least to SEEM better than others. Jesus said they “shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces” (Matthew 23:13). They neither entered the kingdom nor let anyone else enter it. I can see why Jesus was so mad! Woe to us if we ever use our own “righteousness” as a weapon to bludgeon other people, inadvertently keeping them from the kingdom of heaven.
Jesus was more concerned about us being who we are inwardly and outwardly than following any kind of rules. Speaking of rules, as Christians, we must not confuse purity with righteousness. What we do in action or thought has no bearing on our salvation. We cannot earn our salvation (Ephesians 2:8-10). For Christians, righteousness’s tie to salvation is taken care of through Jesus. We ARE the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus (2 Corinthians 5:21). So, because of that, we can just do what we want, right? No. That isn’t exactly what Jesus was saying. Our thoughts and actions are still important, but they do not make us righteous. Jesus alluded to this in Matthew 5:20, “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” This must have shocked his listeners quite a bit. The Pharisees were seen as the pinnacle of religious devotion because they dedicated themselves to keeping every detail of the law. How could the average Hebrew do better? But Jesus was calling for a righteousness that was internal—a pure heart and a love for God and others. Jesus took the 613 individual commandments that made up the Jewish Law and reduced them to just two: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. The second is like this: love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:37-40). Our “position” as a son or daughter of the Living God is taken care of by Jesus. However, the quality of our relationship with God and His children is a matter of purity.
The things we say and do can place barriers between us and God. It isn’t just insincerity, hiding, or deception that can damage relationships. Activities, things, and relationships can place barriers between us and those we love. We can even allow good things into our lives that distract us or even become more important to us than God. The Bible is clear about how we are to live in relation to the things of the world:
Romans 12:2: Paul commands, "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind..."
James 1:27: James states that pure religion involves keeping oneself "unstained from the world."
1 John 2:15: John writes, "Do not love the world or the things in the world."
Have you ever allowed a good thing to get between you and God? Perhaps dieting and exercise has consumed your life. Maybe you have allowed a hobby or job to dominate your focus—moving it away from The Lord. These kinds of things are good in themselves until they become idols in our lives.
So, to be pure in heart is to love God with all of your heart. We must not let the love for anything or anyone take the place of our love for God. When our hearts our undivided, then our actions will follow. Our outsides will be the same as our insides: sincerity. This type of purity takes practice. We need to frequently come to The Lord and say, “Search me, O God, and know my heart” like David did. This is challenging, but if we practice this type of purity, Jesus says we will be blessed by seeing God. We will see Him at work in our lives and the lives of others as we live on mission. We will see His great love for us. Nothing will stand in our line of sight between us and God. This is still my goal after all these years. Before he quested for the grail, Sir Galahad was allowed a brief vision of the holy grail, even though it was covered in a silk cloth preventing a clear vision of it. During his quest, he allowed nothing to taint his focus or distract him from his goal. When he finally obtained the grail, he was granted a vision of God when he peered into the spiritual depths of the holy chalice. This week, I pray that the Holy Spirit helps us to be pure in heart, so like Sir Galahad, we may receive the blessing of seeing God.
Thank you for reading! If you are new to The Local, welcome! I hope you decide to stay. If you have stumbled onto this blog somehow, and you have gotten something out of these words, please share it with me. You are welcome at our table.