Righteousness and Peace Have Kissed Each Other, and the Pure in Heart See God

Preached at Silverton Friends Church

Nov. 23, 2025

Four more Beatitudes:

Matthew 5:8-12

Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called children of God,

Blessed are the persecuted for righteousness’s sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when they revile you and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely on account of me, for so they persecuted the prophets before you; rejoice and be glad, for great is your reward in heaven.

Like some of you, I grew up during the hot era of the Cold War, learning in high school how to crouch under my paddle desk in case of nuclear attack.  My teacher, who had a dark sense of humor, said, “It will be as much use to hold this civil defense book over your head.” I also read a book around that time called I Found God in Soviet Russia by John Noble, and I was pretty sure that the main enemies of Christians were communists. So when I read where Jesus says, “Blessed are you when they revile you and persecute you and say all manner of evil against you falsely, on account of Me,” I was pretty sure that the “they” in this sentence were the communists or at least atheists, and that my crime would be identifying as a Christian.

I don’t feel sure of that today, here in the U.S.A., and if I look at Jesus’s life and death, I am even less sure that my opposition is likely to be systems outside of Christianity. The people who hounded Jesus to death were of his own religion, and they were both the intellectuals and the Torah literalists, the Sadducees and the Pharisees. And these four other beatitudes we’re looking at today may help us see how to live in precarious times, when a person’s enemies may be members of their families (see Mt. 10:36). 

First, blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.  As we’ve seen before, Jesus brings into his gospel many insights from the poets and prophets of the First Testament, our Old Testament, helping us see that God has not changed somehow between testaments.  Jesus nearly quotes Psalm 24:

“Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? And who may stand in his holy place? The one who has clean hands and a pure heart…” 

In other words. the pure in heart are the ones who will see God.  And the identifying marks of the pure in heart are these: truthfulness, honesty, integrity—and actions that line up with a pure heart, symbolized by clean hands.

Hidden in the word for pure are the metaphors of pruning or being purified by fire, like gold.  So it isn’t a static word, it’s an ongoing process word. We can remember John 15, with its extended metaphor of pruning and abiding; parables about sifting out chaff which is thrown on the fire; and an acted parable about washing the feet. Staying open to God’s actions to bring us into our best selves, our truest selves is being pure in heart. You are clean, Jesus says, through the word I have spoken to you (John 15:3).  And Jesus is still speaking through the Holy Spirit.

This brings to mind what Jesus said about being clean, about being pure. Jesus advised his critics to clean the inside of the cup first, to admit the death hidden in whitewashed tombs, to allow God to make their inside pure so their outside could be truly pure. He told those most committed to purity, the Pharisees, to start from within, to be honest, and then to act out of that pure heart, actions of generosity and mercy.

Every committed movement has its purity laws. You must boycott this, you must praise this, you must make followers who are as zealous as you are, which Jesus referred to as making them twice as fit for hell as you are yourself. Those purity laws are focused on external behaviors but do nothing to remedy the hot mess within.

I advise you to sift through St. Paul’s pastoral advice to see how he tries to help people disallow harmful activities at the same time as he encourages them to embrace the liberty of the children of God. There is no way except to rely on the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the example of Jesus. And that means that one additional characteristic of the pure in heart is humility.  

The second:  Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. It may not surprise you that there isn’t a lot in the history of Israel praising peacemaking. But peacemaking does show up in the poets and prophets. Psalm 34:14 “Depart from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.” Psalm 85:1: “Righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” Isaiah foretells the coming of  the Prince of Peace (9:6) and says,  “the work of righteousness will be peace, and the service of righteousness, quietness and confidence forever” (32:17).  “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who announces peace, and brings good news of happiness, who announces salvation, and says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!’” (Is. 52:7). 

The peace we are talking about refers both to tranquillity and quietness and also to reconciliation and to fearlessness. So we can see that it is evident both in stillness and in action.

This Hebrew word, shalom, has so much embedded in it. Not only is it used to describe our relationship with God, where our reverence is not tainted with fear, but also our relationship with others. The messengers of God greet frightened humans with “Fear not!” Jesus said, “Don’t be afraid of those who can kill the body.” It includes contentment, which derives from having enough to meet our daily physical needs (our daily bread) as well as our need for love. It includes friendship. It includes wholeness, wellbeing, and safety. 

Jesus says, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give you” (John 14), the peace of an untroubled heart.  “You will have tribulation, but in me you can have peace."  This speaks to centeredness, and clearly connects to the idea of being pure in heart. 

St. Paul consistently opens his letters with “Grace and peace.” All of Romans 12 can be read as a manual for peacemaking, ending with “as much as is possible, live peaceably with everyone.” Ephesians 2:14 identifies Jesus as our peace, who has reconciled opponents with each other and has broken down the walls between us.  Hebrews 12:14 says, “Follow peace with all and holiness, without which no one shall see the Lord.”  

Following Jesus means to do what we can to help create a world where people can live tranquil, fearless lives, where we work to bring down walls and to bring opponents together in harmony.  This work, surprisingly, is counter-cultural in every culture, since each culture or subculture identifies “us vs. them” groups, people who belong inside vs. people who belong outside.  And we ourselves need to live without walls, without fearing our opponents, without our hearts being troubled. Believe in God, Jesus says, and believe also in me.

Third, blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. As the Psalmist says, Righteousness and peace have kissed each other. So it will be helpful to delve a bit into what qualifies as righteousness. 

Though it came to me from the church much laden with baggage, this word righteousness means simply the state of being who we are meant to be, our true selves, our right selves. In a narrower sense, it also means justice, or giving each other what is due to another human being. What do we feel we are owed as a human? Give that to others.  

But surprisingly, giving other people their natural rights as human beings, acknowledging their inclusion as children of God, carriers of the image of God, can make some people mad.  So if we’re part of a culture, which we are, that identifies insiders and outsiders, some in our culture may well want to protect that by suggesting that outsiders are not due their rights as human beings, or maybe aren’t entirely human at all. 

Insisting on the human dignity of outsiders can turn us into outsiders, and then we will be persecuted. Persecution means driving people away, forcing them to flee, harassing them, molesting them, troubling them, mistreating them. We have seen this on viral videos in recent times.  And it is soooo hard to remain peacemakers, so hard to center on God and to keep our hearts open to God’s purifying work, so hard to be just to our opponents. 

I turned to my World War II thinkers and survivors for help on how to remain fully human and humane, how to be righteous, in hard times.  A French Orthodox Christian who was for awhile in the French Resistance to the Nazi occupation, Olivier Clement wrote this:  “The war threw me into political action…I joined the French Resistance. But total war makes for total politics as well, and … total politics justifies anything and everything.  It justifies lies and violence, with no longer the recognition of any limits—whether …honor or…cannibalism.” (43)“The worst is when the shedding of blood is premeditated…During the last months of the war, this was something I could not subscribe to. So I became involved in other forms of resistance. We still risked our lives, but in order to save lives.” (44)  Clement had to leave the Resistance as a movement to remain his true self, but still he participated in actions that made others safe. (The Other Sun: A Spiritual Autobiography, tr. Michael Donley, Chester, UK: 2021)

Tzvetan Todorov looks at a Dutchwoman, Etty Hillesum, who was 27 when Nazis occupied Holland.  She felt called to minister to her fellow Jews who were in transit to concentration camps by showing them “the way to their own interior in a time of great adversity.” She constantly spoke to God, not as a potential savior, but as a power inside herself that had to be nurtured. (see Wikipedia article). Todorov writes, “Though she never stops fighting the injustices of the camp, hatred remains her chief enemy” (200).  (Facing the Extreme: Moral Life in the Concentration Camps, [New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1996)). She was eventually deported to Auschwitz, where she was murdered.

Todorov is not sure that such nonviolence is the only or the most effective response to totalitarianism, and he acknowledges that even “those whose cause is just” may exchange being the hunted for being hunters, in which case “the new kingdom…will not be so new after all.” (216) He quotes Victor Frankl, survivor, “No one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to him.” (217) He admits that “moral action [as opposed to political or military action] can perhaps be more effective than we think” (201).

I want to acknowledge that I also would like to persecute a person or two, but I’m not going to, and that is the difference between the capacity to act and the action itself. At the present time, I’m praying for those I want to persecute to meet Jesus like Saul did on the road to Damascus, as he was traveling in order to persecute followers of Jesus.

Here’s a prayer I heard on the Canterbury Cathedral choral evensong for Wednesday, Nov. 19:

“Loving God, we give thanks for the precious gift of life.  Give us strength and courage to speak out against all forms of abuse. …Lord, we pray for your world. In times of hostility to immigrants, we pray for a more generous understanding of the needs of others throughout our world. For an openness to the value that people different from ourselves can bring to our life. And for a recognition that it is only by working together that we can serve the good and the prosperity of all.  Generous God, to you all people are equal and from your love nobody can be shut out.  Inspire all peoples with this vision of your equal love that we may learn to expand our hearts in reaching out to others and find by looking on their faces with gentleness the true image of your son Jesus Christ our Lord.” (YouTube, Canterbury Cathedral Choral Evensong, Nov. 19, 2025)

Let’s move forward in our times and places with the commitment to be fully human and humane, to be true inside and out, to work for the dignity and peace of others, and to center ourselves in our experience of God’s presence and the example of Jesus. And then let’s commit to listening to the Spirit of God and doing what we are told to do.

 

The Beatitudes and Political Realities

Preached at Silverton Friends Church

July 20, 2025

I have a lifetime of reading the Beatitudes, Matthew 5:1-12, as statements to me of how my interior life ought to be. Perhaps you also have heard the saying, “beatitudes are attitudes to be.” This (like many clichés) is only partly true.  I’ve also argued with these pronouncements, particularly those that seem to promote spinelessness and subservience. Since Jesus was neither spineless nor subservient, I figure I have misunderstood something about what he taught in these massively important words. So I’ve gone looking for context to help me update my understanding, particularly in relation to the turbulent times in which we are living. I want us to look at the beatitudes for their prophetic content.

Luke’s gospel records the moment when Jesus announced to his hometown congregation what he had come to do (Luke 4:17-21): “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are downtrodden, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord” (Is. 61:1-2). This announcement sets context for Jesus’s mission here; Jesus places his calling in the line of prophets from ancient history. Therefore, we can expect to find precedent for his teaching in the Jewish Testament. We can also notice that Jesus stopped short of this word: “the favorable year of the Lord, the day of vengeance for our God.”  All his hearers would have noticed that he omitted this phrase.  

Luke includes a second version of the beatitudes, one less likely to be spiritualized and individualized (Luke 6:20-38).  Luke also includes the “woes”—the day of vengeance for our God. I’m not implying one is accurate and one is inaccurate; I’d guess instead that Jesus said these things more than just one time on a hillside.  

Today I want us to consider these three beatitudes from Matthew.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. 

These three beatitudes communicate the shocking idea that those who are beaten down are blessed, or happy.  No one actually thinks this is true. In the Greek,  “poor” connotes beggary, crouching in fear, helplessness; “mourn” connotes profound and irreparable loss; “meek” connotes downcast eyes, oppressed, depressed, lowly, tamed (though I have to include the meanings of gentle and humble).

It is hard to aspire to these conditions, even though Jesus announces that the law of the universe is that these conditions will be rewarded, or perhaps, if I understand the second part of the beatitudes more accurately, will be remedied far and above the harm.

Let’s look at the poor in spirit.  In Luke, Jesus says, “Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven.”

This is a common theme of the Jewish Testament. God is on the side of the poor, and will  recompense their misery.  Psalm 113 says, “Who is like the Lord our God, who is enthroned on high, who humbles himself to behold things in heaven and in the earth. He raises the poor from the dust, and lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with nobles, with the privileged of his people.” This is the tip of the iceberg of prophecies and psalms where God excoriates the rich for grinding the faces of the poor into the dirt and asserts that their wrongs will be redressed and those who wrong them will reap what they have sown.

Jesus, who grew up in a family with royal forbears and was part of the working class, may not himself have had this grinding down experience of poverty. But he gave up home and livelihood to obey the will of God—to preach the good news to the poor. The rich who came to him were confronted—Zacchaeus offered to pay back all he had defrauded at a rate of 4 to 1, and the rich young ruler went away sad because he couldn’t bear to part with the security of his wealth. Matthew himself gave up his lucrative tax practice in order to follow Jesus, and Mary poured a fortune in perfume onto him in worship. Detachment from wealth and increased generosity developed in Jesus's followers.

It’s tempting to think that Matthew, likely well-to-do, emphasized the “in spirit” version when Jesus said it, because those of us not impoverished also want to be eligible heirs of the kingdom of heaven. And Matthew also omits the “woes”: Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.” The rich believe their needs have been met and will be met by the cushion of wealth.  They are comforted and comfortable. Wealth is their comforter.

I’ll refer you to the parable of the rich man and Lazarus the beggar, in which Lazarus ends up being comforted in Abraham’s arms and the rich man ends up in flames, begging for a drop of water to drink. Abraham said to him, “Son, remember that in life you had all the good things and Lazarus had all the bad things, and so now he is comforted, and you are in torment” (Luke 16:19-31). This parable teaches us the same thing as the sheep and the goats—those who have must share to alleviate the suffering of those who have not, or there will be hell to pay.  

The poor sit next door to those who mourn.  Proverbs 29:2, “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice, but when the wicked rule, the people mourn.” Psalm 55 is a long and bitter lament mourning the loss of a friend who betrayed the psalmist, and crying out to God to set things right. And just after Jesus’s mission statement from Isaiah 61 is this: “to comfort those that mourn, … to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified.”

It is difficult to overstate how much of the Jewish testament is given over to mourning, to lament, often followed by entreaties for God to take action and execute judgment and even vengeance on those who have done the harm. The beautiful psalm that begins with “By the waters of Babylon, we lay down and wept for thee, Zion” ends with a  bloodthirsty prayer that asks God to require an eye for an eye, an infant for an infant.

Even the Revelation of John includes the martyrs under the throne of God crying out for their blood to be avenged. 

It is hard to mourn without also blaming someone for the loss. And just after Jesus’s mission statement from Isaiah 61 is this: “the acceptable day of the Lord, the day of vengeance for our God, to comfort those that mourn.” But over and over, the Bible disapproves of taking personal revenge, even in the Law of an eye for an eye. At least that limits revenge, so that the wronged person doesn’t take more than was taken.  

Paul reminds his readers, “ Don’t repay anyone evil for evil, because ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord” and Jesus pushes beyond that to require us to pray for those who misuse us, who cause us harm. In fact, Jesus wades into the deep waters of turning the other cheek, offering no resistance to evil, and loving the enemy, all of which are unnatural to human beings and require us to seek the intervention of the indwelling Spirit of God to teach us how to respond to loss, to undeserved harm, to intentional evil. 

And finally, Blessed are the meek. Within this word is a picture of a tamed animal. For instance, the horse, while dangerous due to its size, is a prey animal, and lives in a state of readiness for alarm, even when tamed. A horse with a rope around its neck can be led by a small human. And anyone who has read Black Beauty knows how a horse can be abused by its owners, despite having the potential to trample said owner into the ground. 

The negative side of meekness is this subservience, this loss of belief in one’s own power to effect change, the resignation of the hopeless. And yet, in a direct reference to Psalm 37, “The meek shall inherit the earth, and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.” Jesus says, “The meek shall inherit the earth." This psalm offers a picture of meekness: Trust in the Lord, do good, don’t fret because of evildoers, delight yourself in the Lord, commit your way to the Lord, rest in the Lord, wait patiently for him, cease from anger, believe that the Lord will set things right.

It’s pretty difficult not to fret because of evildoers, and anger seems unavoidable when we see evil prosper.  The Psalms are full of this anger, and yet they provide us with a way to move toward meekness. Taking the harms and the evil we see being done to the vulnerable among us, and to us ourselves at times, taking those to God in passionate, angry, justice-seeking prayer is a positive action.   

I’ve recently read Jacques Ellul’s book, Hope in Time of Abandonment (New York: Seabury Press, 1972).

Writing in the early 1970s, Ellul responded to the chaos of his times, expressing his observation that God has abandoned history. Ellul allowed for the perceived presence and activity of God in the lives of individuals, but he did not see God intervening in elections, in wars, in technological developments, in disasters natural and human-made.  He did not see God setting things right on behalf of those who need everything, those who lament irretrievable losses, those who are beaten down to the point of no resistance.  And, if I’m honest, these times are not better.  Ellul set out to write about this abandonment, but instead, he wrote, “hope asserted itself” (Preface, viii). It was precisely in this recognition of abandonment, this awareness that no human initiative or institution or election will redress the miseries of the world, this realization of the childishness and impotence of the church to bring positive change, it  was in this chaos that hope asserted itself.  

Ellul says this, “There is little attraction in prayer. It is boring. And yet, … without prayer there is no hope, not the slightest” (272).“Prayer is the assurance of the possibility of God’s intervention, without which there is no hope” (271-2).  

“Hope is based on God’s promise constantly fulfilled and renewed. But how can we forget that, throughout the Bible, this promise is linked with the ceaseless outcry of prayer? It is [our] prayer which demands the fulfillment and its ongoing. Without prayer, the promise and its fulfillment are forces just as indifferent and blind as fate and necessity” (273).  Prayer is the only basis for hope, and at the same time it is the means of hope and the expression of hope.  “Prayer is the referral to God’s decision, on which we are counting” (272).

Jesus pointed us in this direction with his parable in Luke 18 of the persistent widow and the unjust judge, “a parable to show that at all times [we] should pray and not lose heart.”

A widow, one of the poor, the mournful, the meek, petitioned a judge to avenge her on her adversary.  He ignored her.  She brought her case again, and then again, and then again.  Finally, the unjust judge said, “Even though I do not fear God nor respect human beings, I will avenge her. She is wearing me out, bothering me beyond endurance.”

And Jesus said, “Now shall not God bring about justice for those he cares for, who cry to God night and day?”

What can we learn from these beatitudes and the Old Testament sources they derive from? We learn that centering our hearts on God’s character and God’s faithfulness is the place to start. (I’m trying contemplative prayer for this purpose.)  It is always right to pray. It is not the last resort; it is the only resort in hopeless times. Prayer is the expression of hope when there is no basis for hope. 

Prayer is modeled throughout the Bible, and recommended (!) by Jesus in the face of injustice and evil leadership.  Prayer expresses the anger and despair we feel about the power evil wields in our world and channels our feelings towards God, who can absorb them, so that in our daily lives we can act and react with non-violence in word and deed, but still act in ways that make life more bearable for the poor, the mournful, the beaten down. 

We pray because God told us to, and we then do what God tells us to. 

“Thy Word Is a Lamp and a Light”—the Word in Psalm 119

Two of the most memorized verses in the Bible (at least for someone of my era) are Psalm 119:11, “Thy word have I hid in mine heart that I might not sin against thee,” and Psalm 119: 105, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path” (KJV). When I learned this in 5^th grade, I had no way of knowing that the Hebrew behind “word” was so full of the immediate presence of God in the lives of God’s children.  Instead, I understood it to be referring directly (and only) to the Bible, the written Word of God.

So in order to improve on my childish understanding, I recently took a look at the ways it is possible legitimately to translate dabar and ’imrah, both translated (for the most part) by word or words. Buried in dabar are the ideas of speaking, setting in order, promising, declaring, warning, conversing and singing.  Buried in ’imrah are the ideas of saying, uttering, speaking, answering, thinking, and promising. The verbs behind the nouns communicate a relationship of conversing with God and of being conversed with by God. How wonderful to find in these words the same thing we see in the many stories of people talking with God in the Old Testament and the intimate ongoing conversation between Jesus and our Father in the New Testament. From the Garden of Eden until today, God has been showing up to talk with us, and we can without shame turn and talk with God because Jesus has shown us the way and made it clear we are welcome.

Here is a distillation of what Psalm 119 says about the “word,” and what it is like when God speaks to us.

When God speaks to the child,

the next step is clear;

When God speaks to the easily led, the naïve, the open-minded,

they gain discernment, understanding.

The sick at heart, sitting in dust and ashes,

grief-stricken, wasting away;

the afflicted and humbled, the persecuted—

these long for, wait for, and hope for God to speak.

God leans toward them, is present with them, and speaks.

When God speaks, they are restored to life and health,

they are protected, defended, delivered, rescued,

comforted, consoled. God does justly by them.

Those who love it when God speaks,

who are awed by God’s speaking,

who pay attention to and obey what God says:

they live within God’s limits with pleasure and playfulness,

take pleasure in other servants of God,

hear God’s speaking as pleasant,

rejoice when they hear God speaking.

They respond to God’s speaking,

they make their requests in God’s presence,

they trust God to champion their cause,

they meditate on God’s speaking until it comes to life in them.

They experience God’s bounty, speak God’s truth,

treasure God’s speaking with their whole selves,

receive God’s mercy.

They avoid causing harm,

are not dominated by trouble and wickedness,

they keep to the clear path, they stay whole,

they trust God to be just.

Hearing the Psalm this way strikes me like a memory.  I have heard this before somewhere.  And then I recognize these words are echoed in several things Jesus said, beginning with the Beatitudes (Matthew 5).

Blessed are the poor in spirit, beggar souls.

They rule in God’s kingdom.

Blessed are those who mourn, lamenters.

They will be called to be by God’s side, comforted, taught, consoled.

Blessed are the meek, gentle trusters.

They will own the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, cravers of wholeness, integrity, God’s approval.

They will be satisfied.

Blessed are the merciful, gracious helpers of the needy and wretched.

They will receive gracious help.

Blessed are the pure in heart, those who are purified, made whole, pruned in soul, desire, intelligence, will.

They will see and be seen by God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, lovers and nurturers of peace, harmony, tranquility.

They will be named “God’s children.”

Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, those who run for their lives, who face hostility, who are abused because they are who God made them to be, because they are just, because they live in wholeness.

They rule in God’s kingdom.

Psalm 119’s teaching on the “word” easily fits with Jesus’s teaching on who is blessed, who is happy. Each passage helps us read and understand the other. I come to see both as describing a daily conversation between God and human beings, a conversation in which what God says breathes life and health into us and thus helps us be our real and best selves.