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“Heart-Pure Blessings”

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“Heart-Pure Blessings”

Matthew 5:1-8 (5:8) – August 14, 2022

Our modern society today is noisy, that’s for sure! So many noisy people, so many competing advertisements, all kinds of sound and visual media vying for our attention. How can we manage if we want to step away from all of this clutter and clatter and cacophony filling our ears? And what about the overwhelming smorgasbord of visual media overloading our eyes?

I want to do as Jesus suggests in this Beatitude and strive to be pure of heart. You may want to do this, too! I know that seeing God is something that many Christians really desire. But, how can we be pure of heart when we have all of these competing audio and visual noises, sounds and media constantly in our faces?

When Jesus mentions those who are pure in heart, I think of those who have integrity. Can you think of someone you know who is truly a person of integrity? How do they live their lives? Do they watch eight, ten, twelve hours of television or other kinds of media each day? Do they have their ears and eyes filled with all kinds of extraneous noise and clutter and cacophony? Do they bicker and argue with family and friends, ignoring what God finds important?

Jesus spent time regularly being quiet, peaceful, allowing Himself to listen to God as well as to His inner thoughts and feelings. Do you take the time to listen to your own heart, as well as listen to others expressing their deep thoughts and feelings?   

If we look at Jesus and His message throughout the Gospels, it’s all about the heart, and the inner person. As preacher and theologian D. Martin Lloyd-Jones, says, the observant Jews of Jesus’s day were so concerned about external behavior. It was the Rabbi Jesus’s “great charge against them always that they were interested in the outside of the pots and platters and ignored the inside. Looked at externally, they were without spot…they were most concerned about the external injunctions of religion; but they forgot the weightier matters of the law.” [1]

Instead of the outside of a person, again and again throughout the Gospels our Lord Jesus reminds His disciples (and us!) that all along He is talking about the heart. Those weighty matters of God’s Law include love to God and the love of one’s neighbor. Again and again, the commands of Jesus to love God and to love neighbor trump any other command.

I am reminded about the prophet Samuel in the Hebrew Scriptures. When God sent the prophet Samuel to Jesse and his sons, Samuel looked at the outward appearance of Jesse’s sons. “Surely the Lord wants to choose one of these fine, upstanding young men!”

How do people today judge leaders, or kings, politicians, or CEOs? Most people “tend to judge others on how they look, what they do, how they act, and what they say.” In other words, all of the external stuff, all the stuff on the outside. But, what about the Lord? “God goes much deeper in relationship than that; God goes right into our hearts. God knows the secrets that we don’t tell anyone, and knows our greatest fears and what embarrasses us the most…God knows us better than we know ourselves.” [2]

Think about it. Seven of Jesse’s sons were considered by the prophet Samuel, and none of them were chosen by God. I can’t help but remember 1 Samuel 16:7 – “Do not look on his appearance or the height of his stature. For the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.” God encouraged Samuel to find David, Jesse’s youngest son, the one with the least amount of honor and standing in his family, who was indeed anointed king of Israel.

God wanted to find someone after God’s own heart!

“We have to remind ourselves again that the Christian faith is ultimately not only a matter of doctrine or understanding or of intellect, it is a condition of the heart.” [3] It does not matter whether we are considering the Hebrew Scriptures or the New Testament. Here in this Beatitude is the concentration on the heart. Your heart, and mine, too!

 If we take the time to read through these Topsy-Turvy Teachings from Matthew 5, and read them slowly, savoring each one, this collection of traits of followers of God honestly makes me take a step back. I am serious. This list is daunting. And, this week, the idea that if someone is pure in heart then they will see God? That makes me hold my breath and hesitate again.

I guess I am still tentative, agreeing with many people in the Hebrew Scriptures who are hesitant at actually seeing God. If God is making Godself available so that the run of the mill pew-sitting Christian can have a deep friendship and an intimate relationship with God, that is something very serious indeed! Am I really ready to see God? Are you?

“Jesus reminded us that when our actions align with our thoughts and feelings, we can see God around us and in our world. But it is difficult to see God around us if we do not quiet ourselves and listen to our hearts.” [4]

The thoughts and ideas we carry in our hearts have a big impact on the actions we take and the choices we make. Our insides – our hearts – guide and direct the words we speak and the actions we take. This is why the heart – the inside of us – is so important to Jesus.

One big way to be pure in heart is to show love for God, your neighbor, and yourself in how you act, speak, and think. God wants to find someone after God’s own heart!

What a way to be a blessing to others! Remember, this is how Jesus said the “pure in heart” will be blessed. Amen, alleluia!

@chaplaineliza

(Suggestion: visit me at my other blogs: matterofprayer: A Year of Everyday Prayers. #PursuePEACE – and  A Year of Being Kind . Thanks!

(Thanks to illustratedministries.com for their excellent family Sunday school curriculum on the Beatitudes. I will be using this curriculum all summer as source material for a summer sermon series on the Topsy-Turvy Teachings of Jesus!)

[1] Lloyd-Jones, D. Martyn, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount (Wm. Eerdmans Pub. Co., Grand Rapids MI, 1971), 108.

[2] https://ministry-to-children.com/beatitudes-lesson-7/

[3] https://ministry-to-children.com/beatitudes-lesson-7/

[4] Illustrated Ministries, Curriculum for Summer Sunday school family series, “The Beatitudes.” Summer 2022.

Be a Do-er!

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“Be a Do-er!”

James 1:16-25 (1:22) – August 29, 2021

            When my children were small, they sometimes used to bicker and argue. And not only with each other, but with me and my husband, too. We would correct them about certain common-sense things, and a typical response would be, “I know that!” It didn’t matter whether it was “Don’t touch that hot stove!” or “Don’t run out into the middle of the street!” Their response would often be, “I know that!” Complete with an eye roll and an ornery attitude.

            So often, parents, grandparents, teachers and other adults are put in an awkward situation. We may question if our children really know what they just did! Time after time, we adults agree with this chapter from James that our actions need to match what we know and say. And, face it. This is not only true of children. It can be true of adults, as well. I suspect we are all familiar with the phrase “Don’t just talk the talk – walk the walk!”

            James wrote this letter to a bunch of believers scattered all over a large area of what is now the Middle East. They were living in small groups, and the letter was copied and passed around from group to group, sent or mailed for encouragement and instruction. In other words, James sent out a manual for Christian living! A how-to book: how to LIVE the Word.

            The great theologian Martin Luther did not like the letter James wrote. “Martin Luther thought James was dangerous stuff. He thought that James was an “epistle of straw” because of all this hearing and doing stuff. See, Luther was afraid that we would read the Letter of James and come away with the feeling that it was all about doing.”[1] I understand where Luther was coming from, because he came out of a Christian tradition where people had to earn their salvation. People in his time and place had little certainty of their salvation, and constantly needed to be doing more and more just to placate some mean, vengeful God in heaven, as well as some judgmental, nasty-spirited church leadership here on earth.

            Thank God, we know the grace and mercy of God! And, so did Martin Luther! Yet, we are faced with this challenging letter from the apostle James! What ARE we going to do with these hard-hitting verses of his? How are we to respond to that talk about doing the Word? Walking the walk? Living a life of Christian action?

            Some people love to get into discussions about the Bible. About what exactly the words “salvation” or “justification” or “sanctification” mean. We love to dive deep into the Bible, “but find it a lot more difficult to do what it says. Of course, our problem is even more complex than that. Theological knowledge can easily become a good work in itself. We can easily make theology our religion.”[2]

Such philosophical, esoteric discussions can go on and on and on. I love theological discussion, don’t get me wrong! However, several hundred years ago, some Christian writers put their finger on these endless, almost frivolous discussions: they called those involved in them theologians arguing about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.

            Again, I greatly enjoy discussing theology! Yet, something within me wants to be up and doing, too. What about the Bible, anyway? Is there any application here? Anything for me to do? Any way for us to honor God through action, through doing what these verses say?

             James does give us some excellent examples in his how-to manual of Christian living. “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, 20 because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. 21 Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.” Plain-speaking from James, and hard-hitting, too! He does not sugarcoat his words. And sometimes, these words are hard for us to hear, and even harder to put into practice, like James is telling us to.

            And yet, as our commentator David Lose says, “All of these things are within our reach. What parent doesn’t want to be slower to anger with his or her children? What friend doesn’t want to be a better listener? Aren’t all of us in a position to offer help and support to those in need? James encourages us not just to think the faith, but to do it.” [3]

            Now, is James only talking to pastors? To church leaders? No, he is not. James is addressing the whole congregation. That means all of us – all of you. Everyone in the pew, no matter what, no matter who. James considers each one of us as believers. Each one of us is important, with our daily lives and activities and responsibilities. It does not matter if we serve in a large arena or a small circle: we all have the opportunity to serve, to be doers of the Word.  

As David Lose suggests, I invite you all to write down one place you will be in the coming week where God could use you to listen, to be patient, or to care for those in need. Or maybe we could have folks stand and actually commission them as God’s co-workers and partners in making this world a more trustworthy, safe, and healthy place.[4]

Remember, James gives us a how-to manual. How to live the Christian life! Listen to James: “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says!” However we are gifted or moved by the Spirit to carry them out, we all have our marching orders. Do what the Word of God says! Love, care, encourage, help, serve. And love some more. Amen, alleluia!   

@chaplaineliza

(Suggestion: visit me at my other blogs: matterofprayer: A Year of Everyday Prayers. #PursuePEACE – and  A Year of Being Kind . Thanks!

[1] https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/worship-planning/doers-of-the-word/fourteenth-sunday-after-pentecost-year-b-lectionary-planning-notes/fourteenth-sunday-after-pentecost-year-b-preaching-notes

[2] http://www.lectionarystudies.com/sunday22be.html   “Be Doers of the Word,” Rev. Bryan Findlayson, Lectionary Bible Studies and Sermons, Pumpkin Cottage Ministry Resources.  

[3] https://www.workingpreacher.org/dear-working-preacher/ordinary-saints David Lose

[4] Ibid.