Purify

Part 5 of Personify Faith

Introduction

In our pursuit of unity in the body of Christ, we may have come across some “stuff” in our own lives that we were not too proud of. As we seek to be humble listeners to our Christian siblings, their words may have pointed out things within us that need to be removed—forever cast out. The Bible frequently mentions the process of purifying metals such as iron, copper, and lead as a metaphor for purifying our own hearts and minds (i.e. Malachi 3:2-3). In fire-refined oxidation, the impure metal is heated until it is a liquid and then air is added to oxidize the impurities so they can be removed more easily. Maybe last week’s lesson provided enough heat that the Holy Spirit can move through you this week to oxidize the impurities to remove the contaminants?

Some might wonder why it is important to remove these impurities or contaminants if you cannot even see them. If they are buried deep within, what harm can they do if the outside looks as it should? These impurities, though, can literally become the “breaking point.” For example, often glass will break at an imperceptible point of an internal impurity. Another way to think about it is through the fruit of a plant. If the plant is not receiving water from a pure source or the soil is contaminated, it will be evident in the fruit that is grown. Beth Moore, in Chasing Vines, describes the importance of terroir or the “sense of place” in growing grapes. Terroir is important because “it captures the interplay between factors such as soil, climate, the plant itself, and its orientation toward the sun. Together, these factors ultimately shape the ‘personality’ of the resulting fruit.” We will naturally soak up through the vine whatever contaminants are in the air, soil, or water around us, and the evidence will be in our fruit. Our fruit houses the seeds for the next generation, too, so if we do not rid ourselves of contaminants in our lives now, it may pass on to our children in unexpected ways.

Purify might make us think of Puritans—austere, rigid, and bound by regulation. We recall associations with purity rings and pledges popular in evangelical culture. We may remember watching “Footloose” and the preacher’s call to get rid of all that dancing music! In our world today, purifying may just make us think of Purell and the need to keep our hands clean! In actuality, though, purifying is a release from constraints of this world as we pull closer to God. I see it as a process of self-reflection, confession, repentance, penance, and forgiveness. To purify is to make holy, to be set apart from the world. It is not easy work, but Jesus assures us that “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God” (Matthew 5:8).

“I wanted God to speak to me, but I didn’t want God to confront me.”

--Renita Weems

Day of Preparation

Opening Prayer

Dear God,

Give me insight into areas of my life that may need purification. Let me listen to your word with an open and humble heart. Prepare me for a time of examination and reflection. Amen.

Scriptural Teachings

Leviticus 16 is the heart of the Old Testament understanding of purity. In this passage, God gives Moses the directions on how to observe the “Day of Atonement” (known now in the Jewish tradition today as Yom Kippur). During this solemn day, there were rituals to purify the place of worship, the leadership, and the people. Burnt offerings were made and a “scapegoat,” which symbolically carried the sins of the people, was released to the wild. Kenneth Overberg, in The Mystery of God and Suffering, explains that “the sacrifices were an expression of their desire for union with God, which included a sense of reconciliation and making up for sin.” Israelites would place their hands on the blemish-less animal to be sacrificed as a symbolic transfer of their sins and impurities. The animal was then offered as an atoning sacrifice to God. Though designed by God to be a way for the people to draw closer to God, it soon became a ritual that people did without sincerity. By the time the Psalms were written, we begin to see the belief that it was not the ritual that was important, but the condition of the heart. Psalm 51 is a good example of how the understanding of sacrifice began to shift.

Psalm 51: 10-17

10 Create in me a pure heart, O God,
    and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
11 Do not cast me from your presence
    or take your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation
    and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.

13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
    so that sinners will turn back to you.
14 Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God,
    you who are God my Savior,
    and my tongue will sing of your righteousness.
15 Open my lips, Lord,
    and my mouth will declare your praise.
16 You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
    you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
17 My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;
    a broken and contrite heart
    you, God, will not despise.

Here the Psalmist understands that the ritual sacrifices are meaningless without a humble and contrite heart. The same sentiment is echoed in Psalm 139 where David asks God to search me, know me, and make clear the places within that are offensive to God.

The prophets also saw the rote sacrifices of the people to be without meaning and called for a renewing of the heart. In Isaiah 1, God calls the offerings of the people worthless without a change in lifestyle. Malachi 1 points out how the offering of impure sacrifices showed the impure hearts that made them. After the destruction of the temple, it became evident that there was going to have to be another way for people to draw close to God in repentance. Thus, the coming of the incarnate Jesus gave us a new path to closeness with God. Jesus finally brought a new paradigm of purity to counteract the Holiness Code of Leviticus. According to Rachel Held Evans, in A Year of Biblical Womanhood, “when God became human, when he wrapped himself in our blood and skin and bones, his first order of business was to touch the ones that we would not touch, to fellowship in our sufferings, and to declare once and for all that purity is found not in the body, but in the heart.” Jesus reached out and touched the unclean and demonstrated a new sense of a pure heart. Now, once we had been “washed clean” in our baptism, we maintain our closeness with God through purifying our hearts in confession rather than physical sacrifices of animals. We can do just as James 4:8 says: “Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.” Seems to be a perfect pandemic reminder to wash your outsides and insides!

Wisdom from the Past

In the introduction, I talked about two metaphors for thinking about purification. One was to consider times when the “temperature” was raised in our lives and the Holy Spirit moved through like the oxidizing process used to purify liquid metals. The second example was to contemplate what happens to our fruit when we soak up contaminants from the environment around us. These two ideas can be visual represented in two famous pieces of artwork.

The first is Purification of the Temple by Spanish painter El Greco in the 1570s. The story of Jesus driving the money changers out of the temple was one of his favorite subjects to paint, and he revisited the theme several times throughout his career. Here we see a rare glimpse of anger in Jesus as he turns over the tables in the temple. Maybe this fiery Jesus is what attracted El Greco to the story? We find in this painting the idea of the refiner’s fire. Sometimes the temperature must be turned up in our lives so that the Holy Spirit can blow through and identify the impurities. Those impurities form slag which must be disposed of. Only then can we be holy and set apart for God, just as Jesus wanted to reclaim the Temple as a holy place set apart for God.  As an interesting side note, El Greco modeled several of the people in this painting off the great masters of Italian art such as Raphael seen front and center.  No one was immune from the fiery purification of Jesus! Have you encountered the fiery Jesus? Has God acted immediately to remove a toxin from your life and restore you to holiness?

The second image is The Angelus painted by Jean-Francois Millet in 1859. Millet was part of the French realist movement and tried to capture the everyday lives of common people. Here two peasants stop to say the Catholic Angelus prayer over their potato crop at the end of the day. We see a purity of heart and devotion here. The church bells in the background have probably just rung signaling the day’s end. The farmers stop to entrust their very lives to God in prayer. We can almost hear their words asking for pure soil, water, and air to nourish their crop, so that they may physically live. Do we earnestly seek God’s protection over our livelihood, or do we like to do things on our own? What might you need to surrender to God’s care? 

This painting has hung by our back door for years, so that we see it every time we go out into the world. My husband was gifted it at some point by his grandparents early on in his adulthood. It reminds me of what humble, pure devotion to God looks like—the type of trust that would say, “Lord, I trust you to provide my every need.” I need to see that every time I go out into a world that values the myth of the self-made person and always seeks to be bigger, faster, stronger, and better. A glimpse at this painting can re-center me on the provision of God rather than self-reliance. Do you rely on your own abilities too much? Are you carrying a heavy burden of providing for yourself and your family? What could you do a better job of trusting God with?

This is the power of visual art to capture and hold a complex idea in a simple image. I am thankful that God has gifted artists through the centuries to create opportunities to connect to God in meaningful ways. If you are curious as to the Angelus prayer, I have included it below.

The Angelus

Pour forth, we beseech You, O Lord,
Your Grace into our hearts;
that as we have known the incarnation of Christ,
your Son by the message of an angel,
so by His passion and cross
we may be brought to the glory of His Resurrection.
Through the same Christ, our Lord.

Closing Blessing

Almighty God,

to you all hearts are open, all desires known,

and from you no secrets are hid.

Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts

by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit,

that we may perfectly love you

and worthily magnify your holy name,

through Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Day of Action

Opening Prayer

Dear God,

We have contemplated how purification works in the world. Now, guide us as we seek what you would have us do to purify our own lives. We hope to be representatives of you in the world in true and authentic ways. Amen.

Scriptural Reflection

Consider these verses that address our need to purify.

Psalm 66:10-12

Malachi 3:2-3

1 Peter 1: 6-7

1 John 3:1-3

Have you ever experienced a trial that felt like going through the refiner’s fire? How did you come out changed on the other side? 

Call to Action

Without turning to an austere lifestyle, how can we use the spiritual practice of purification to bring us closer to God? We do not want to think of purification as a list of legalistic rules to be followed. We have seen from the experience of the Israelites that this can easily become meaningless without a true change of heart. So where do we start with purification in the 21st century? One area we could focus on is how we talk about others and the comparisons we make internally. Ethicist Richard Mouw, in his book Uncommon Decency: Christian Civility in an Uncivil World, reminds us that civility is not simply being “politically correct.” It is a directive from the Bible to honor God’s creation. He explains, “Each person is a very precious work of divine art. To make light of an artist’s work within the artist’ earshot is a cruel thing to do. To demean one of God’s most precious artworks when God is listening—and he always is—crudely dishonors the divine artist.” Seeking out the image of God in everyone we meet is one way to purify our thoughts and words about them.

Mouw provides another way to purify by being truth-seekers. Rather than just assuming we know all the things we have always known, he encourages us to examine more closely the roots of where that belief stemmed from in our lives. He says that often “all-or-nothing rhetoric has been a substitute for an honest wrestling with the issues.” Asking ourselves why we think the way we do about a certain issue or topic can help us identify corruption in our thought processes. Even good things can become contaminants if they pull us away from God. For example, nationalism or a love of one’s country might be a good thing, but if it so consumes us that we pull away from God or try to justify God’s involvement in our country over others in the world, this can lead to impure motives in our actions.

Another contaminant that may need to be removed is our own materialism. Many of us have more than we could ever need, and yet always feel like we have less than everyone else we see. In the book The 7 Experiment: Staging Your Own Mutiny Against Excess, Jen Hatmaker describes the predicament many of us find ourselves in: “We’re a double-edged sword, privileged believers, because we are so incredibly resourced with potential to battle disparity, but those same resources trap and tangle us, and we become unwilling to part with them.” Maybe your purification this week is to seek better ways to use your income or spend your time. This could be the week you take an actual Sabbath from all work. Devoting a day to God helps you to trust and rely upon God the other six days of the week.  

Finally, one way to purify your life is to return to the simple love and courtesy we should always be showing one another. Chris Webb says, “If we want to learn the great art of love from Jesus, we might begin by being attentive to the many small acts of gentleness, kindness, and courtesy that graced his most ordinary interactions with other people.” Jesus was the ultimate guide for us on how to live a life of purity.

Here are some other ideas for ways to purify this week:

Examine the media you consume for its impact on your faith life

Look for toxins in your food or cleaning products and make a switch this week to something more pure

Confess a transgression to God or a trusted listener

Sit with God in silence after praying Psalm 51

Pay attention to how you describe other people this week

Refrain from gossip or responding on social media

Only spend money this week on needs, not wants

Focus on getting a good night’s sleep

Fast from certain activities or foods

Observe a true Sabbath from sundown to sundown

Spend time playing with a child and witnessing their pure joy

Closing Blessing

May God himself, the God of peace,

sanctify you through and through.

May your whole spirit, soul and body

be kept blameless

at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Day of Reflection

Opening Prayer

Dear God,

To purify, we must reflect upon the impurities in our lives. Use the Holy Spirit to move through us and identify those things that are blocking your love from flowing through us. Help us to repent and be renewed. Amen.

Reflection

Begin today by writing about your action experience this week. What area of impurity did this address in your life? Are there other areas you would like to explore?

Modern Perspectives

Purifying can be a difficult task because it relies on the fact that we admit our weaknesses and our stumbling blocks. It is the removing of the log from our own eye before we can see a speck on our brother’s (Matthew 7). This is especially true in church contexts where we can try to keep up appearances that we are living a “good Christian life.” In Searching for Sunday, Rachel Held Evans explains: “We think church is for the healthy, even though Jesus told us time and again he came to minister to the sick. We think church is for good people, not resurrected people.” We must recognize this is true on both an individual and a corporate level. It is okay to say that our individual church or the church at large has not done something right. God knows that even at our best we are still broken. We live a lie when we pretend otherwise—a lie that is increasingly easy for those on the outside of the Christian community to see. Author Chris Webb reminds us that “we are not called to be the ethical guardians of society, but rather a haven for the morally broken and compromised. And for that we don’t need platitudes and certainties, we need tender hearts and forgiving souls. In a world of judgement, we are to be a people of mercy. We openly accept our weakness, our inability to be who we should be. It is a difficult position to take in a world where power, strength, and force are so respected and valued. But in the end, it is the only place from which healing can possibly begin.” Do you feel like your church community is one where openness about weakness is accepted? Do you have a place to share your brokenness in an authentic way? If not, how could you cultivate this type of true community? 

Once we recognize the impurities within us, the next step is to confess them to God and ask God to remove from us anything that is providing resistance to the free flow of the Holy Spirit through our lives. Richard Foster describes it this way: “Confession is a difficult Discipline for us because we all too often view the believing community as fellowship of saints before we see it as a fellowship of sinners.” For many in the protestant context, confession can be no more than rote reading of a prayer in worship.  We must go to a deeper level. Rachel Held Evans explains why prayers of confession are so important: “They embolden us to confess to one another not only our sins, but also our fears, our doubts, our questions, our injuries, and our pain. They give us permission to start telling one another the truth, and to believe that this strange way of living is the only way to set one another free.” Pursuit of the truth is the key to purifying. When we search for the authentic being that God created, we end the striving that leads to much sin in our lives. Nathan Foster puts it this way: “I wonder if confession is not just naming our wrongdoings but is a deliberate act of framing our life in an honest and open manner, accepting the truth of our life and not trying to cover things up.” Do you feel like you must “cover up” parts of your life? What would it take to reframe your life in an honest manner?

It is often much easier to overlook or even run from the points of conviction. We may be exhausted from trying to “keep ahead of” the impurities in our lives.  Pricilla Shirer, in her book Jonah: Navigating a Life Interrupted, describes how we sometimes hide from these points of conviction: “We run mentally when we detach our thought life from our tasks and go through the motions. We run emotionally by building up callousness displayed by the attitude we show to others. We can even run spiritually, going through the motions while having no fellowship with him.” Are you running from something that God has already convicted you about?  How would it feel to stop and confront that issue rather than running from it or burying it deep within? Facing these convictions will allow us to gain true spiritual maturity which Henri Nouwen describes as “the ability and willingness to be led where you would rather not go.” How do you feel about being led where you would rather not go? Do you think this is a sign of spiritual maturity?

Purification is truly a healing process. Chris Webb says, “The implication is that the healing of our souls, which allows us to live well and love deeply, is a gift from beyond ourselves, a process that occurs quite naturally when the living Spirit is allowed to flow through us and animate us from within.” Do you feel like the spirit is flowing freely through you or is it getting caught up by contaminants within you? When we get down to our purest selves, void of contaminants of the world, Chris Webb says we are left with love: “Love is the raw matter of our spirit, our inner person, as surely as atoms are the raw matter of the body.” This is the type of purification that we seek—when we root out everything that is not done in love.

Closing Blessing

A Prayer for Holiness of Heart
By Howard Thurman

Lord, I want to be more holy in my heart.
Here is the citadel of all my desiring,
where my hopes are born
and all the deep resolutions of my spirit take wings.
In this center, my fears are nourished,
and all my hates are nurtured.
Here my loves are cherished,
and all the deep hungers of my spirit are honored
without quivering and without shock.
In my heart, above all else,
let love and integrity envelop me
until my love is perfected and the last vestige
of my desiring is no longer in conflict with Thy Spirit.
Lord, I want to be more holy in my heart. Amen.

Sources

 United Methodist Hymnal

Listening for God by Renita Weems

Searching for Sunday by Rachel Held Evans

A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans

In the Name of Jesus by Henri Nouwen

Celebration of Discipline by Richard J. Foster

Closing blessings from The Worship Sourcebook

The Making of an Ordinary Saint by Nathan Foster

Chasing Vines by Beth Moore

Jonah: Navigating a Life Interrupted by Priscilla Shirer

Uncommon Decency: Christian Civility in an Uncivil World by Richard J. Mouw

The 7 Experiment: Staging Your Own Mutiny Against Excess by Jen Hatmaker

The Mystery of God and Suffering: Lament, Trust, and Awe by Kenneth Overberg

The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures by Michael D. Coogan

God-Soaked Life: Discovering a Kingdom Spirituality by Chris Webb

https://www.britannica.com/science/metallurgy/Refining

https://learnodo-newtonic.com/famous-religious-paintings

https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.43723.html