“Blessed are the merciful…..”
“Blessed are the pure in heart…..”

Scriptures:   Psalm 32, Matthew 5:7-8

We are about to start our Lenten journeys. A journey is one key metaphor I like to use for this spiritual period. A clergy colleague of mine, Rob Williams, has suggested another: that Lent is sorta like spring cleaning. He says, “As Lent is the Christian season of preparation for Easter, might it be related to the Jewish practice of cleaning out leaven in preparation for Passover? Can Lent be a time of reflection and spring cleaning for the house of one’s spirit? What might that look like? If spring cleaning involves some opening of doors and windows to allow the breezes of March to blow through our homes, how might we open the doors and windows of our hearts and minds to allow the breath of God to flow through our souls?”

That’s not a bad image. But there is a problem with it. For some of us – well, OK, probably most of us – spring cleaning involves a lot of good intentions, but….. We really do mean to get to that garage or attic or pile of magazines, but somehow the warmer days of summer come around and it’s still sitting there. Just so, we might feel like the season of Lent is a good time for stock-taking and re-charging our spiritual batteries. But actually doing something about it…..well, perhaps that might be a different story.

If the Sermon on the Mount is any indication, Jesus isn’t going to let us get away with only having good intentions. He puts forth some very specific requirements for kingdom-living, for crafting a life that leads to blessing. He wants us to get serious about our Lenten spring cleaning, our Lenten journeying. He cuts right to the heart of the matter.

A month-and-a-half ago when our lectionary passages took us to the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew we said that Lent might be a good time to look at these Beatitudes in more detail. Lent is a good time to relate us back to the basics of our faith, and these nine Beatitudes are as basic as it gets. So…..here goes.

“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.” I wanted to start with this one, even though it’s number five in the order Jesus speaks them in the Sermon on the Mount, because this sentiment is so central, so crucial to what Jesus brings to our lives, and, as you well know, it is the most central theological tenet I have been preaching to you over these five years. It is so central it is repeated in a slightly different form in the prayer our Lord gives us to say repeatedly: “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”

Let me also begin by reminding you of the paragraph I used six weeks ago in talking about this particular Beatitude:

“Blessed are the merciful.” We wish for mercy for ourselves, but we also desire to be able to show mercy to others. Portia’s famous line from The Merchant of Venice precisely parallels our own position:

“The quality of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.”

But offering mercy is not always that easy to do (in fact, the difficulty Shylock is having with doing this is what prompts Portia’s speech). There are times and situations when we would prefer swift and merciless justice. But this is not a kingdom approach. Think again about the context of Jesus giving the Sermon on the Mount: those who were listening to him expected a revolutionary Messiah who would dethrone Rome and deal with the enemies of the Israelites. How could the Messiah call his followers to show compassion and relief towards the despised Romans? How could forgiveness be extended to those who had subjugated the land, desecrated the holy city, and raped the economy of the nation of the Lord? And yet, Jesus still did not cater to their political expectations or interpretation of historical justice, but called for all kingdom citizens to show mercy like God had expressed to them. That’s really the key, isn’t it – we offer mercy because God has showered it upon us. We are blessed because we receive mercy.

One translation of the Beatitudes that I found by someone named Wuest (whom I don’t know and I couldn’t even find a first name) has Jesus putting it this way: “Spiritually prosperous are those who are merciful, because they themselves shall be the objects of mercy.” Showing mercy, forgiving the indebtedness of others, having compassion even for those who have wronged us feeds our spiritual lives, building up a thriving spirituality within us that leads us to a sense of well-being. Yet another translation that you frequently see used for the Beatitudes is “Happy are…” Utilizing this translation Episcopal priest Lowell Grisham says, “’Happy are the merciful’ invites us to expand our love into the whole human family – past, present, and yet to come.  To join Jesus’ work of healing and reconciling the world. To love others in their individuality, opinionatedness, in personality conflicts and unbearable situations.  To offer mercy, compassion. And such mercy extends also toward ourselves. When we internalize an idealized image of ourselves, it is our pride, not God, that says ‘you’re not good; you don’t measure up.’  God loves and values us infinitely.  God is merciful. We are invited to be merciful/compassionate like God, toward others; toward ourselves.” Thinking this way also connects us with our reading from Psalm 32: “Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven….. Happy are those…in whose spirit there is no deceit.”

One of the most familiar and famous literary examples of the power of showing mercy that can last over a span of years is in Victor Hugo’s well-known Les Miserables. The story takes place during a time of upheaval in France. Jean Valjean, the main character, is a poor tree trimmer who steals a loaf of bread to feed his sister’s family. Convicted of stealing, he spends 18 years in the slave galleys, rowing the seas in misery. Upon his release, his attitude is hard and crusty, ready for vengeance. By chance he stays in the home of a priest because no one else will give him lodging, and during the night he robs the priest of a silver candlestick and escapes from the town. Later when apprehended, he is brought to the priest for identification, who then tells the police, “I gave him the candlestick.” Then he picks up another and said that he gave him a pair of candlesticks but he had forgotten the other when he left. Released by the police, he stumbles out of the village, overwhelmed by the mercy shown by the priest. His life changes as he was affected by mercy. After being mistaken one more time as a criminal, he refuses to head down that path again, and spends the rest of his life showing mercy to the unfortunate, even to those that had wronged him. In the end, the man that hunted him for years, Inspector Javert, is overcome by the mercy Jean Valjean displayed, and lets him go, even though it tears at the very fabric of his police officer’s sense of justice to do so. But mercy here, as in The Merchant of Venice, is strong enough to overcome the need for justice. Perhaps it’s a bit clichéd, but someone has summed up this Beatitude with the phrase, “It’s better to give others a piece of your heart than a piece of your mind.”

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” This one is a whole lot tougher. Which one of us really believes that we can become pure in heart? Indeed, the whole concept of “purity” seems to belong to a different age, and the religious group called Puritans certainly has had a bum rap over the last few decades. However, as Lowell Grisham, once again, says about this Beatitude,

“When the eyes of the spirit are purified by deep trust, then everything begins to speak to us of God. We sense God’s closeness; we sense our belonging to the universe.”  In other words, there is a reason why this Beatitude follows right after the one about showing mercy, for the building up of our “spiritual prosperity”, as Wuest puts it, means that we are, in fact, becoming more pure of heart.

Baptist minister Brad Beaman tells this story: “Purity is essential in certain realms. We started drinking bottled water because ordinary water was not pure enough for my liking. When I was shopping around with different purified water companies there was one company that claimed to be more pure. It was more expensive water but [they claimed that] it was more pure by one particle in one million. In that case I went for the cheaper water with [a little] less purity. But when it comes to your heart go for the highest purity at any cost.”

Those of you with long memories for advertisements may recall that Ivory Soap liked to bill itself as “99 and 44/100% pure”. As with Brad Beaman’s bottled water, perhaps this level of purity works for us when we’re buying soap. And I rather suspect that for most of us when we are contemplating our own hearts and souls to reach that level of purity would be pretty impressive, now wouldn’t it? Maybe we could push it up to 99 and 45/100% pure, hmmm?

Israel was well-acquainted with purity. The books of Moses are full of detailed instructions about how to remain pure among the other nations. So, Jesus was speaking to a people for whom the ideal of purity was a big deal. And now the Pharisees had devised a whole new set of laws for the people to follow, a whole parallel system of evaluating who was “pure” and who was not. Primarily, of course, this was done by devotion to the law and to following it properly. The Pharisees got upset if certain rituals, such as hand washing or proper Sabbath observance weren’t done correctly. Rather than this kind of a focus Jesus wanted them to pay more attention to such things as love, truth, mercy, and justice.

For, of course, Jesus is not talking here about something that can be quantified, like the purity of Ivory Soap, and made just a little bit stronger or a bit more intense. What I believe he is wanting from us in urging us to be “pure of heart” is to be authentic. So often we put up masks to the world. So often we repress the good we would do for fear of appearing foolish. So often we project what might be called a “media image” of who we are. If you or I were on television what would come through to the viewer on the other end of that screen? Would it be simply a façade, an image of how we think others would like to see us? Or would we come across as real with true Christian compassion flowing through that screen? I have often said that the best religious television program I have ever seen was a one-on-one interview that Malcolm Muggeridge did with Mother Teresa. Even though it was everything supposedly “good” television shouldn’t be – talking heads, single camera angle – it was enthralling because the authenticity of who Mother Teresa was came through with every word that was spoken, every image we had of her.

On the other side of the coin, and I know it’s not very sporting to kick a man when he’s down, I’ve been thinking while I’ve been writing this of John Ensign. Here’s a perfect example of someone projecting an image – of a family man with conservative values and a sense of fiscal, ethical responsibility – but who, it turns out, is quite different. The measure of a person’s authenticity and how that authenticity is projected is what moves us toward that “99 44/100ths% pure” – that purity of heart that Jesus wants for us. Ryan Dueck puts it this way:

“Jesus is here…telling us not to make a show of our purity, not to advertise our holiness to those around us. Rather than obsessing about how we are perceived by others we are to strive for a deep correspondence between our motivations, thoughts, and convictions and the self that we present to the world around us.”

The promise that is related to this Beatitude is that those who are pure of heart will see God. Not see with our eyes, but experience God in the fullness of God’s creation. Purity of heart enables us to see God, to experience God with understanding and hope and an inner vision of the future and present kingdom of God in our hearts. Even Jonathan Edwards, best known for his fiery sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” could preach a sermon in 1753 called “The Pure in Heart Blessed”. Edwards, like all preachers worthy of the calling, knew that it is possible for the experience of God to enter into peoples’ lives in such a way that they will “see” with renewed focus and vision the God of creation, the God of redemption, the God of love.

We’ve begun our Lenten journey with two Beatitudes that emphasize how we are enabled to experience God intuitively, directly. Next week we shift back a bit to look at how what Jesus is telling us helps us to experience God with our reason and our particular acts of devotion: “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” I hope your Lenten journeys are going well.

 

Amen

Dave Pomeroy

First Congregational Church/United Church of Christ
Las Vegas, NV
March 13, 2011