A Pure Heart and Eyes to See
Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting
Pastor Bob Henry
February 23, 2025
Good morning, Friends, and Welcome to Light Reflections. Today, we continue our exploration of the Beatitudes with Matthew 5:8 from the New Revised Standard Version.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
I don’t know how many times I get in a conversation about faith and end up hearing the person say, I cannot believe in a Divine Being or a God if there is no way to see them? Well, today, I get to address that very question with our beatitude. To get there we have to understand the first part of our beatitude, “Blessed are the pure in heart” - and that itself is a loaded phrase that needs unpacking.
Each week, so far, we have talked about a group that Jesus says are blessed. Just to review - the first few Beatitudes seemed at first to refer to people in various states of suffering or desolation: the poor in spirit, the mourners, the meek, the hungry and thirsty. Even the “merciful” from last week are a group of people often thought of as somehow weak or inferior. Yet in unpacking each of the previous Beatitudes, we’ve seen how all of these qualities, in fact, correspond to strength and the potential for immense growth and community engagement.
They are what some people have described as paradoxes of the “upside-down kingdom of God.”
Then today, we come to the sixth Beatitude and it seems to take a different approach - the “pure in heart.” Most of us would consider this a positive and good quality - or, at least, a quality we are supposed to hold in high regard. So where is the paradox we’ve come to expect from the other Beatitudes? Where is the deeper meaning? Well…don’t hold your breath.
We think we know what “pure in heart” means because “pure” and “heart” are words that get tossed around so frequently in our English language. They appear so simple and familiar. On some levels, they are. But because of their simplicity and familiarity, we rarely reflect on what these words really mean. So, let’s go a little deeper.
Just a week ago we were celebrating Valentine’s Day, and many of us engaged in the West’s long history of referring to “the heart” as the source of things like love and romance. We even give paper cards with hearts, candy hearts, even some of you may have ordered or made a pizza shaped like a heart.
Yet, in our culture we also reference “following our heart” when we are faced with a difficult decision or a romantic relationship that demands a path of sacrifice. We listen to our hearts when there’s an important life-altering decision to be made.
Much of this can be traced back to Aristotle, who believed that the physical heart, not the brain, was the seat of our intellect and emotions. Although Western science and medicine moved on long ago from subscribing to this view in a literal sense, these expressions that tie the heart to the intellect and emotions persist in our language because we still feel deep down like there is some essence of truth there.
So why do we feel that way? What do we really mean when we speak of the heart in this way?
Sister Nina Hirlaender, a Franciscan, helped me understand that from a mystical perspective, one definition of the heart that makes a lot of sense—especially when thinking about this Beatitude—comes from the 4th century Egyptian hermit Macarius. He says,
“The Heart governs and reigns over your whole body. When Grace possesses the ranges of the heart, it rules over all the activities and the thoughts. For there in the heart, is the Heart-Mind. All the thoughts of the soul and all of its expectations, and in this way, Grace penetrates also to all the members of the body. Within the Heart-Mind, there are unfathomable depths. In the heart is death. In the heart is life. The heart is God’s palace. All things are in the Heart.”
In some ways, this description of the heart’s function is similar to Aristotle’s. But it takes things even further.
The reason we feel as though the heart may govern some aspect of our intellectual and emotional processing is because the heart is the command center of all of our thoughts and activities, not just the intellectual and emotional stuff, but everything else, including our spiritual side.
Just like our physical hearts pump out the life-giving blood that courses through and animates every other part of the physical body, the figurative “heart” that our Beatitude for today refers to is the core from which all of our thoughts, intentions, goals, decisions, and actions originate.
So, then what is a “pure” heart?
Since my dad’s heart attack early last week, I have been pondering the heart and find its analogy helping with understanding this beatitude. Think about it, what happens when the arteries and valves in our physical hearts get clogged with plaque? Things take a dramatic turn, the entire body suffers in numerous ways.
If we want to avoid serious, life-threatening cardiovascular complications, we need to keep our physical heart unobstructed – or as we might say this morning, pure.
The same goes for our spiritual heart. Maintaining our spiritual vitality means keeping our heart pure. But sadly, when some people first peruse this beatitude, they read “pure in heart” to mean something like “those who never sin.” In our day and age the character who personifies this idea of “pure in heart” the most is Ned Flanders from the Simpsons – Hi Diddley Ho, Neighborino!
But thankfully, becoming like Ned Flanders is not what this Beatitude is about. Even though, I think there are churches out there who think so. You don’t have to be a perfectly virtuous person to be pure in heart.
The pure of heart are those whose hearts are functioning optimally. There’s no plaque. All the channels from their hearts to the rest of their being are clear.
In other words, you know you are pure of heart when your mind, emotions, and actions are all in alignment because all those aspects of your being can be traced back to the same root source.
This means there is a unity in our being – what some may call our authentic self.
This allows for the attributes of righteousness (we talked about a couple weeks ago) such as forgiveness, compassion, mercy, justice, and love to flow through us seamlessly and guide us towards a higher purpose.
So, how can we be pure in heart?
Sister Nina gives a great analogy that I think we all can relate to. She says,
“Have you ever tried to keep houseplants? If you have, there’s a good chance you’ve probably seen at least one or two wither away and die on your watch, even when you thought you were doing all the right things.
[I can totally relate to this. We have a pot for one of our plants that literally says, “Please don’t die” on it.]
There’s two ways to kill a houseplant. One is through neglect: you don’t water it enough or don’t give it enough access to sunlight. But the other way to kill a houseplant—which is actually much more common—is the exact opposite. You give your plant too much water and drown it. You give it too much direct sunlight and scorch it. Even too much fertilizer can be a bad thing.
The point is that purifying the heart is not necessarily accomplished with more prayer or more repentance or more anything. Oftentimes, the most important step toward being more pure in heart is subtractive. As the painter Hans Hofmann once said,
“The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.”
[Folks, this is what the Quaker Testimony of simplicity is all about.] If you want to see God, you should think less about what you need to do and more about what you need to stop doing; more about what you need to let go of and less about what you think you need to be grasping for.”
Let me take a moment and pause on these thoughts. Ask yourself,
· What is “clogging” the arteries of my heart, currently?
o Maybe it is
§ being consumed by the news,
§ trolling others on social media,
§ engaging in unhealthy relationships,
§ having a detrimental need for wealth, success, control, or power,
§ an addiction to alcohol, painkillers, your drug of choice,
§ over commitment,
§ a comfortable and privileged lifestyle.
What is clogging my heart?
· How do I eliminate or stop doing these things? What is unnecessary in my life?
Folks, purity of heart is an ongoing process, and it will take time. It may even call for professional help, mentors, accountability, or fellow Friends in our Meeting.
As you ponder all this…I want to jump to that second half of our beatitude – “for they will see God.” So, how is that possible?
Can you and I really see God, if we simply address the purity of our hearts?
Folks, over time, I have come to believe the Heart of God and our hearts are actually the same Heart. As Quakers say the Seed, Christ, that of God resides in the heart of everyone.
It’s just that our ability to see God within each other gets compromised when we compromise the purity of our hearts by trying to organize our lives around things other than those attributes of righteousness.
As you and I work to be more pure in heart, our eyes will open to see God within and around us. And we will start to realize we are no different than everyone else. Actually, we may even begin to see people whose hearts are far from pure, and recognize that they, too, possess God’s Heart deep down. That is having the eyes of God to see both our friends and our enemies in the same light.
This is what Mother Teresa meant (in this very Quaker quote) when she said,
“A pure heart is necessary to see God in each other. If you see God in each other, there is love for each other, and then there is peace.”
So, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Or another way to put it,
“Aligned with the Universe are those whose lives radiate from a core of love, for they shall recognize the face of God everywhere.”
What do you and I do once we realize, by purifying our hearts that our hearts and the hearts of everyone else are the Heart of God? Simple. We begin to love everyone as deeply as we love God and God loves us. And we do it through acts of righteousness – through forgiving, having compassion, offering mercy, standing up for justice, loving unconditionally, seeking peaceful exchanges, and through serving our neighbors in whom we will see God!
May it be so.
During waiting worship, I would like us to return to those queries I offered earlier for us to ponder.
· What is “clogging” the arteries of my heart, currently?
· How do I eliminate or stop doing these things? What is unnecessary in my life?
· How am I loving my neighbor as God love me?