Psalm 24:1-6 ; Rev 22:1-5


"Seeing God"

"Seeing God", my friends. Pulling away the curtain that conceals the mystery that we call "God". Lifting the secret that underlies all of life. Uncovering the source of our being, and the hope of our lives. Finding out, finally, what really counts in life. Being able to distinguish, finally, between the wheat and the tares.

How often have we breathed: if we could only see what we have believed.

How often have we joined Moses with his request to see God: "Show me your glory, I pray." But God said to Moses: "I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, 'The LORD'; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy." "But," he said, "you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live." And then in this beautiful little story. God points Moses to a cleft of the rock and while my glory goes by, "I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen."

But we want to see! Faith is good, we say, seeing would be better. "Being" is good, "having" is better, our humanity proclaims. Trust is good, security is better, we hear all around us.

"Seeing" the divine was the core and the aim of all Greek philosophy. Plato speaks of the "eye of the soul" that is worth more than 10,000 physical eyes. It is the eye that discerns truth and appreciates beauty and knows what is right.

The Holy Scriptures are aware of our human desire to see. It constantly addresses that problem. Here are a couple of examples.

In the Epistle to the Hebrews we read:

"… faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." (Hebr. 11:1)

The Apostle Paul in his letter to the Christians in Corinth says:

"… now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known." (1 Cor 13:12)

And in the Gospel of John:

"No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known." (John 1:18)

The longing to see is not criticized or denied. It is assigned its place. We will see when God is God. We will see when love has won its struggle for our hearts.

In the mean time we have glimpses of God:

We know that God is good and that God is love because God has shared his life with Jesus, the man with and for others, the messiah of the poor and oppressed. He who was "close to the father's heart" has made God known to us.

Every time we meet some one who lives out of hope, faith and love we receive a glimpse of the divine.

In the beatitude for our meditation today the "pure in heart" are blessed and they are given the promise that they "will see God".

"Heart" here stands for conscience, the centre of our personhood, the source of our thinking, willing, feeling, and acting.

What does it mean to be pure at the centre of our personality, to be pure in heart?

A contrast may make it a little easier to understand. Jesus criticised the "scribes and Pharisees" and called them "hypocrites"! Why? This is what he said to them:

"… you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may become clean." (Matthew 23:25f.)

Jesus makes the distinction between "inside" and "outside", and he said that it is not only important to be clean outside. There must be a harmony, a coherence between inside and outside.

That is an important distinction.

The "inside" is the motivation why we do things. The inner voice. We love our families and therefore we make sacrifices for them. We love our church and therefore we look after it. We love our country and therefore we are faithful citizens. The inside, our motivation why we do things, is important.

But the "inside" and the "outside" must be in harmony. They must cohere. For an ethical action to be called "good", not only our motivation counts, but also the consequences of our action. Only if the motivation and the consequences cohere can the action be called "good". We need to feed our children, and we love to do so. That is our motivation. That is the "inside". But if we give in to their wishes and regularly go to McDonalds or KFC or feed them other junk food, then the consequences may be obesity which is not good.

The secret of a "pure heart" is to get the inside and the outside together and make sure that they are both clean.

That raises a prayer within us. We join the Psalmist.

What would it mean if we would join the Psalmist and pray:

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit. (Ps 51:10-12)

What would it mean to ask for a "pure heart", which then entails the promise that we will see God.

1. It would mean, first of all, turning to God as the only source and hope of our lives. Having a "pure heart" means living in relationship with God. That relationship is God's great gift to you. With Jesus and in the Spirit, God has said "yes" to you. He has called you by name. He has said: you are mine. Do you hear? Will what you hear create faith in you and warm your heart?

2. A person with a "pure heart" is sincere and has integrity. There are no hidden agendas. There is no playing games with people.

3. A person with a "pure heart" accepts responsibility for what they know! No one can blame you for what you don't know. But if you know something and then don't try to live in accordance with it, then you don't have a pure heart, but a divided heart.

Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, commits sin. (James 4:17)

That is the reason, my friends:

That we confess Jesus as the messiah of the poor and then engage ourselves in the struggle against poverty.

That we confess that Jesus wants to liberate the oppressed, and therefore we want to join God in the struggle for liberation.

That when we read that God exhorts God's people to welcome the stranger in our midst, we actually become involved with the longing of fairness for refugees and asylum seekers.

You see, if we were not to do it. If we were not to bring together our inner motivation with our outward action then we would be divided within ourselves, we would not be the pure in heart that are promised to see God.

Here is an illustration from history. We remember Martin Luther King Jr's struggle for civil rights. He gave his life for that struggle. Many name him a modern saint because of that struggle. But in the midst of that struggle came the Vietnam War. From Ghandi he had learned that the conscience cannot be divided. His friends warned him to keep his hands off Vietnam, not to "touch" Vietnam, but to focus on leading the civil rights movement. What was he to do? He believed that the Vietnam War was wrong, but at the same time he knew that there were many other things to do. He finally raised his prophetic protest against the Vietnam war. Why? Because he believed that the moral conscience cannot be divided!

My friends, it is a beautiful promise. It appeals to the best within us. It wants to lift us above the fog of self interest and lets us dream of the clean air and the sunshine that are pictures of a pure heart, a heart that is in tune with God.

"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God."

Thorwald Lorenzen
11/07/2004