Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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When they asked the Danish theologian, Soren Kirkegaard, to explain the meaning of Jesus' beatitude, "Blessed are the pure in heart," he ended up writing a book on the subject! And the name of the book gives away its theme. It's titled, Purity of Heart Is To Will One Thing. Our problem, Kirkegaard said - the reason our hearts are impure -- is that we will many things. We can never devote ourselves to one thing, and accomplish it, because as soon as we begin to pursue that devotion all our other "wills" begin to badger us for attention. Jesus said we couldn't serve two masters. He should see us today, trying to serve a hundred! There is a piling on of desires that leads to confusion…if not chaos. Our lives are crowded, jammed up with our wills. To make matters worse, we often will incompatible things. We will ourselves to be popular, but we also will ourselves to be men and women of character - who will stand against popular opinion. We will ourselves to be trim and athletic, but we also will ourselves to eat good food, and to smoke cigarettes, and to sit on the couch, and to watch lots of television. So our lives are not only crowded by all our desires, they are often conflicted by them.

Kirkegaard wrote his book almost a century ago, when (by our lights) life was simpler. The problem, certainly, is all the worse today, with two career families, and confused gender roles, and a social busyness that fills every waking hour. How can we possibly find purity of heart? Is it, perhaps, unreasonable to suggest that anyone, in today's world, could will one thing?

Truth is, we can't. Not in this earthly realm. Unless we can arrive, somehow, at a spiritual level (from which we can sort our priorities according to higher principles) we will always be bandied about by our wants and wishes. To be "blessed," in the beatitudes, is to be confident (and, therefore, happy - on the bottom line) - to be confident that our will is in sync with God's will, in spite of what others may think, and sometimes at great cost. And that, you see, is to will one thing: to want more than anything else (and, if necessary, to the exclusion of everything else) that God's will might be my will. And so we come to Jesus on the cross…a man of pure heart who willed one thing: to do his Father's biddidng.

I have always believed that the deepest meaning of Good Friday is right there, clear as a bell, in its name. For only one who has the instincts of a true Christian can understand why this day, with its catastrophic events, might be called "good." Only in the circle of faith, only in the church, can we say such a thing. The world outside the church is appalled by the Good Friday story: a fine, upstanding young man, in the prime of his life, idealistic to a fault, gentle, loving, innocent in every respect, cruelly tortured and murdered by army thugs. How could that be good? Only if one sees, in the cross, an exhibition of the nature of God - to borrow Oswald Chamber's wonderful phrase. Only he can say this day is "good" who sees, in the cross, "an exhibition of the nature of God."

Here is a love that bears wrong. Here is forgiving love. (Reinhold Niebuhr said forgiveness is "the final form of love.") Here is the love that comes to us only by grace, and not by any merit of our own, ("perpendicular down from above," Barth said). All grace is amazing, but the grace of God, seen in the cross of Jesus, is amazing beyond words. The poets and hymn writers have tried: "…my richest gain I count by loss, and pour contempt on all my pride." "…sorrow and love come mingled down." "O Love divine, what hast thou done? The eternal God hath died for me." It was a good day - if you see it right.

Mary and I have a thing we say, sometimes, when we encounter someone who is being just terrible, who is selfish, and destructive, and abusive, and cruel. One of us will say, "Christ died for him," and then, together, we say, "…and I can't imagine why!" It is only a short step from there to, "Christ died for me, and I can't imagine why!" For that is the truth. I know myself. St. Augustine said that, before God can rescue us from ourselves, we have to be undeluded." I don't know a better expression for repentance. Undeluded. When we see - and we often see it as we stand at the foot of the cross - when we see that we are not good, but (by God's standards) are always and in every detail sinful - that we cannot escape the trap of self-centeredness, which is the core of sin, and which (if we cannot escape it) will carry us to eternal death, our eyes are opened and we repent "in dust and ashes" (as Job said).

But we are very skilled excuse makers. We make excuses rather than repent. The psychologists and sociologists have given us a whole bag of ready-made excuses, by which we, in some unsatisfying way, forgive ourselves. But the Christian pilgrimage begins with seeing ourselves true, or it does not begin at all. The medieval mass began with the priest lying on his stomach, facing the altar, asking God to forgive his sins, "which are mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. My fault, my fault, entirely my fault." The cross shows us that.

But the cross not only forces us to see our helplessness, it also provides us with an answer. On Calvary we see a man who is not self-centered, whose heart is pure, who need not be doing what he is doing, and we hear his promise of forgiveness. We're, going to make heaven not by what we do but by what God has done pro nobis, for us. Relax. Breathe. There is room even for the likes of me in God's kingdom. That is how I came to Christ. Or, to be more accurate, that is how Christ found me.

God put the two thieves, who were crucified on Jesus' left and right, there for a reason. They represent the two possible responses to sin. One thief fails to see his own need, and mocks Jesus in bitter scorn. "If you're such a great magician, now's the time -- save yourself and us." The other sees the truth of the matter: "we are guilty, he's not. Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom." Both thieves are guilty. The one who admits his guilt, and asks, is offered a place in paradise. It's Friday, and Sunday's coming! There will be time for rejoicing. Now is the time to see Christ on the cross, to repent and to hear his wonderful promise in our heart of hearts.