THE WAY TO A MEANINGFUL LIFE
Staying Focused

Dr. Richard J. Henderson March 25, 2007

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Psalm 25:1-12 (responsively)
Matthew 5:8; 7:28-8:4

Introduction

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Maybe you have a good picture of what the pure in heart are like. He's a monk who lives in his cloistered monastery reading the Bible and taking short walks among God's creation, his hands reverently folded in front of him. He lives in a tiny room with hardly any furniture and prays almost all the time.

Or maybe you picture a nun wrapped in a black habit praying the rosary and thinking nice thoughts all day long.

We think of the pure in heart as the innocent, who live cocooned in their own world of religious piety. Who are the pure in heart?

I

I think of the pure in heart as those who are focused on God and what God asks of us in Jesus. It is honing in on what Christ asks us to do. It is when we clearly follow without distractions or without diluting God's will.

The famous Danish philosopher and theologian, Soren Kierkegaard, wrote that "purity of heart is to will one thing." It is to center our attention on what God wants us to do and not be pulled away from that or distracted in our mission.

I don't think of purity of heart being like "pure gold" where there are no impurities in it - that's not something any of us can achieve - but as focused light, where a beam shines clearly in one direction. It is bright and we can see clearly.

I was driving on the Jeffries expressway once and the car behind me passed on the right. The man inside had the newspaper spread out in front of him and he was reading it at 80 mph! That is unfocused and dangerous. The opposite of that is the person who concentrates on how he is driving, where he is going, and what is happening around him.

To be pure in heart is to focus our lives on what Jesus taught. It is to have your life honed in on God's will.

Imagine you're heading home at night. You start the car and discover that your headlights are so out of alignment that they are shining off in two different directions. You hit the high beams and see the light going in four different directions. You're going to have a tough time getting home! That's what it's like when our lives are out of focus. (I know you automobile engineers are saying, "That's not how it works." Okay, but I'm trying to make a point here!)

II

Let's face it, there's a lot to pull our lives out of focus. There are kids to drop off and then pick up. The report you've been working on is due tomorrow, your daughter is sick and needs your attention. The oil needs to be changed, you're out of milk and orange juice, you have to go out of town tomorrow and you haven't even thought about packing yet. Life's little complications create anxiety.

We can worry ourselves to death. All our activity seems to keep our lives out of focus.

Alcoholics Anonymous has a wonderful phrase that all of us can practice - "Let go and let God." We can release our worries, our anxieties, our imagining what bad thing might happen. There are lots of distractions that pull our lives out of focus. Often our fear, our prejudice, and our feeling of superiority blur our vision.

III

Sometimes to be pure in heart we have to get our hands dirty. Being pure doesn't mean we isolate ourselves from people - especially people in need. Being pure isn't avoiding the sick, rejected, poor, dirty, and looked-down-on. We can see this clearly in Jesus' life. He was bitterly attacked by those who thought they were pure because he associated with those considered unclean - tax collectors, prostitutes, lepers, the wounded and sick.

In the New Testament reading today, right after Jesus finishes the Sermon on the Mount he goes down from the mountain, and a leper cries out to him, "If you choose you can make me clean." Lepers were required by law to stay a set distance away from other people. What Jesus did was wrong according to the law. Jesus, who had just finished teaching about the pure in heart, reaches out and touches the unclean leper. Lepers were unclean, but reaching out to help others, even those considered impure, is what the pure in heart do. To be pure in heart today means not to avoid the AIDS victim, the street person, the social outcast, the tattered looking beggar. To be pure in heart sometimes means getting your hands dirty.

IV

The reality is nobody has a pure heart all the time. It isn't possible for us to live totally pure lives. Sometimes we're out of focus, distorted, or we get distracted. We fail in the acts we commit and in the things we omit. Nobody's perfect.

A man got to know some monks at a monastery in central Michigan and was surprised to find out that some of their conversations are about how often brother James gets to drive into town, or complaints about how I got kitchen duty again! Even these, whom we think of as pure in heart, complain about the monk next door who snores all night. (1)

Sometimes we lose our focus. Sometimes we even go blind for a while. But the important thing is that we come back again, get our life focused, and renew our relationship with God. We can always pray to get back where God wants us to be. God draws toward himself, forgives us, and gives us the strength we need. We can't make ourselves pure. We keep calling to God for help.

V

Jesus says the pure in heart will see God. In our finer moments we get a glimpse of God. When we are really focused, we can feel the presence of God. Haven't you felt that - when you have taken the high road rather than strike back, or when you have let go of your self-interest and done something good for someone else. You can feel the difference; you can sense God with you.

Annie Dillard has written: "God shows an edge of himself to souls who seek him, and the people who bear those souls, marveling, know it, and see the skies carousing around them, and watch cells stream and multiply in green leaves." (2)

In our purest, most focused moments we have the chance to see God.

Conclusion

A man ended up alone on Thanksgiving. He decided that there were other people who were also alone on this day, so he went to the nursing home near his home and spent the day sitting down and talking with the residents. Some didn't even know it was Thanksgiving and, of course, didn't know him, but they enjoyed someone who wanted to spend some time with them.

Others were lucid and talked so rapidly and for so long that the man felt that they hadn't had anyone to talk with in a long time.

He walked out of the nursing home in the dark feeling that it had been one of the best Thanksgivings ever. He got at least as much out of it as he had given. On that day he caught a glimpse of God.

Amen

© Richard J. Henderson 2007