The Pure in Heart SEE GOD.

I must admit it has been a while since I've read through the Beatitudes. They are however, embedded in my memory as a result of having to memorize them for recitation in the Pentecostal church in which I grew up. They are stuck in my brain right next to the first solo song I ever sung and the monologue I memorized for my first acting jury in high school. That is why it was refreshing for me to see something for the first time in this scripture I know by heart, while reading them yesterday to follow along with the sermon my friend was preaching. Verse 8 of Matthew chapter 5, where the beatitudes are found says, "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God." All my life my understanding of that verse positioned it as a command to strive to keep ones heart pure so that 1) You will get to see God at the end when your time here on earth was done (my initial understanding as a child/teen) and 2) God will show up in your life in needed ways (my understanding as an young adult). However, when vising that scripture today there was a new revelation that I, someone who has now lived through 45 years and is almost through with my 46th year here on earth, found. The thought hit me before the sermon even started, while were were just reading the text. And my friend actually took her sermon in a different direction than this revelation, but even after sitting through her thoughtful sermon, I was brought back to my initial revelation when considering the text later in the evening.

When our heart is pure, we see God everywhere we look. This is not a directive for faultlessness or behavior without error, but rather a declaration that those who make the effort toward wholehearted love have the ability to see the god nature of their fellow humans. If we are indeed made in the image and likeness of the creator, and if the Most Beloved's breath is the spark that gave humanity its existence, then is there not a reflection of divinity in each of us? When we push past the cynicism that comes from living on earth and living within the effects of its various isms and oppression, we are able to see the divine in every creature and being. If we strive to acknowledge the very sacredness of the experience of life that we are having on the planet, we will recognize the divinity of those around us living into, out of, and through that experience.

When I considered the implications of this interpretation of Matthew 5:8 it brought to mind such clarity of another scripture that is often quoted by both Christians and non Christians alike. In Matthew 25:31-40 Jesus, after having told the parable of the talents, starts into a sermon where he instructs those listening of how things will be when he comes into his throne. He advises that the blessed of the lord will be welcomed into his kingdom because they have clothed, fed, visited and otherwise cared for him. And anticipating their confusion, Jesus also says in his sermon that when these blessed ask "when did we see you to do any of these things for you?" his response will be that when they did it for the least of his brethren they had done it for him. The pure of heart can look at the poor, the hungry, the homeless, and the otherwise disenfranchised and see God. Standing with and caring for the oppressed and marginalized is the very definition of being pure at heart. This is what was revealed to me today as I read through the beatitudes for probably the fiftieth time in my life.

Now, I am no theologian; no New Testament scholar. I have no formal scholarship in the book of Matthew as yet. This is just a Sunday morning musing on scripture by a woman who has spent most of her life seeking to understand the nature of God, Her/His/Their existence, and their relationship to us and our lives as humans. So you are welcomed to consider this as heavily or lightly as you will. I was just struck by not only the new perspective I had on this scripture but also by how my perspective had changed even though the scripture itself had not.

I often remember hearing as a young girl in church that "God's word is sure and it does not change." Words on a page indeed do not change, but if we are living this life to its fullest we should be ever growing, evolving and changing. As Muhammad Ali once said, "A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life." That applies to scripture too. And this new perspective on Matthew 5:8 not only serves to inform the way I will live my own life from this point, but will also effect the way I engage those in our world who claim Christianity while simultaneously opposing the rights and equality for the marginalized and oppressed. Because I now know the pure in heart, SEE GOD in us all.  

Selah.