“The Blessing of Unmixed Motives”

Matthew 5:8

Today is the first Sunday in Lent. Lent is about much, much more than giving up chocolate, doughnuts, ice cream, or whatever. It’s not just a time to start a diet or exercise program. Lent is a season of exacting self-examination and penitence. It’s a time of deep introspection, not some new agey, mystical kind of navel gazing, but an honest, searching, and rational look into our hearts and souls. It’s very much akin to the Fourth Step of recovery from addiction in which one is called to make a searching and fearless moral inventory.

Andrew Purvess, a professor at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and a powerful spokesman for the evangelical wing of our denomination, gave those of us in one of us continuing education workshops some Godly counsel that I have never forgotten. It was his sincere belief, that from time to time, each of us should honestly seek the answer to the following question: “How are you and Jesus getting along lately?” That, may I suggest, is as good a way as any to begin our Lenten self-examination.

“How are Jesus and I getting along lately? How close is our relationship? How often do we talk? How often do I really listen, and then obey? Do my attitudes and behaviors reflect well on his name? Do I relate to others in a Christ like manner? Am I as much a Christian Monday through Saturday as I am on Sunday? Am I sincere in my worship, praise, and stewardship, or do I come into God’s house out of a sense of guilt, uninspired duty, or robot like habit? Am I there for God, or am I trying to impress my friends and neighbors? What motivates me to serve God and do the work Christ’s Church? How pure are my motives for the ministry, mission, and witnessing that I do?”

Why all this focus on motivation? Jesus said, “Blessed are those whose hearts are pure.” That’s today’s Beatitude. But long before Jesus ever spoke those words, the psalmist wrote about walking blamelessly, doing what is right, and speaking the truth from our hearts as preconditions for abiding with God. Furthermore, we who would enter into the holy places of God must have clean hands and pure hearts. We must live our lives with utmost integrity, an integrity rooted in an unadulterated honesty. We must know what our real motives are, and if they do not conform to the will of God, we must bring them into such conformity.

Bad news: such purity of motives is humanly impossible. Good news: God loves us and has made provision for our ultimate purity in Jesus Christ. In Christ we know that we will some day enter into the very presence of God. Meanwhile, however, we are called to be as pure in heart – as unmixed in our motives - as we possibly can. Through the power of God’s grace and by the leading of the Holy Spirit we are to seek each day to make whatever strides we can toward such purity, all the while closely monitoring our behaviors, attitudes, and motives for impurities.

This self-monitoring, or self-examination, is the key to pureness of heart. And over and over, as we examine ourselves, we keep coming back to the same question. How well are we getting along with Jesus - really? How single-minded are we in our devotion to our Lord? How intently – and intentionally - do we honor, serve, and obey him? Do we love him with our whole heart, mind, soul, and strength?

As we asking these questions we also must also be asking the deeper questions that underlie them, questions about our own self-honesty. We need to know if there is any self-duplicity at work within us. Until we are thoroughly, brutally, sometimes frighteningly honest with ourselves we cannot be honest with God. The harsh reality is that we sinful human beings have a great capacity for self-deception. As one of the prayers of confession we sometimes pray puts it: “We see ourselves pure when we are stained, and great when we are small.” We have a way of becoming spiritual legends in our own minds, of believing that we are far better Christians than we really are. Such self-deception comes between God and ourselves. Such self-deception gets in the way of a real purity of heart. Such self-deception leads us to ignore our inward lack of purity until it erupts in some form of sinful outward behavior. A wise old director of a non-profit organization once told me, that if we don’t say it out straight, we are going to act it out crooked. If we’re not straight with God and ourselves, we will end up leading some very crooked little lives.

The saddest part of such lives is how much they cut us off from God. Purity of heart – purity of motivation – brings us closer to God. It focuses us on what’s real. It makes us sensitive to the truth. It clears away the emotional and spiritual clouds that interfere with our perception of God’s will.

On the other hand, a heart that deceives us into believing that we are closer to God than we really are dims our vision of reality and dulls our sense of what’s true and what’s false. It brings a cloud of spiritual and emotional darkness into our lives that blinds us to God’s presence and closes us off from the leading of his Spirit. Those who are sincerely seeking a purity of heart will see God, will perceive God’s presence. Those who are not inclined toward such self-examination won’t.

There are, thanks be to God, things we can do to identify and cleanse from our hearts whatever it is that makes them impure. We can pray, really pray. I’m talking about climbing into whatever space we use as a prayer closet. Just like Jesus we need to draw away from the world from time to time. In that quiet space where we pray we can also read, study, and meditate on God’s Word. The desert fathers who taught, and still teach, the church what it means to exercise spiritual discipline described such meditation of Scripture in terms akin to a cow chewing on her cud. It is a slow, intentional, and patient exercise by which we get from Scripture every last ounce of the spiritual nourishment it provides.

There also comes a time to rejoin our brothers and sisters in prayer, study, worship, and fellowship. The Christian life must be lived in community with other Christians. Within that community there must be mutual accountability. It is much harder to deceive a faithful brother or sister in the Lord than it is to deceive ourselves. They who have gone through the painful task of pulling the beam out of their own eye are real good at helping us clear the specks from our own. Quite often others can identify and point out – never self-righteously, by the way - those impurities and mixed motives about which we’ve become so good at deluding ourselves. There is much to be gained from bouncing our hopes, thoughts, beliefs, dreams and prayers off of one another in an atmosphere of loving truthfulness.

We are not in this alone. We do not make the spiritual journey of Lent or life by ourselves. We have that fellowship of kindred minds – our fellow Christians. We are surrounded by that great cloud of witnesses, who have gone before us and cheer us on from heaven. The very Spirit of God shares the journey with us and guides us along the paths of wisdom, righteousness, and truth. Jesus himself sits at the right hand of God praying for our deliverance from not only the world’s delusions, but also our own.

When Jesus taught his disciples the importance of a pure heart, he did so in a spirit of grace. Nobody knew better than he how woefully lacking his first disciples and all those who would follow were in their ability to be honest with themselves, not to mention God. Blessed are the pure in heart, said Jesus. Blessed are those who genuinely strive for an unsullied inner life, a life that will be expressed outwardly in Godly ways. They, said Jesus, will be able to know and perceive God. Amen.