July 27 2025
Matthew 5;8, Acts 6:1-6, 7:54-60
I have to admit that I have always had a lot of curiosity about the world and the way it works. Growing up, the Encyclopedia set that we had at home was a real treasure to me. Whatever I wanted to figure out could be found somewhere in those pages. So I ended up having a real love of the science called physics, the study basically of how the world works. Now, one of the more fascinating new finds in physics when I was growing up was the study of lasers. The word,“Laser” is an acronym which means, “Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation”. Seems simple enough, doesn’t it? Well, before your eyes glaze over, all this acronym means is that light has been given power. This happens by synchronizing all of the light waves of a laser so they all move in the same direction. We might say that normal light is like a bunch of people all hammering on a door without much effect. A laser though, is like when those same people hold onto a battering ram, a big hammer, and together, in synch with each other, they run in step at that same door and this time they have the force to knock that door down. We might say that the light from a laser is pure, all the light waves synchronized together with a power which your ordinary light bulb will never have. It is this power, the power of the pure light found in a laser, which is able send messages around the world through fiber optics;, a pure light that can cut through thick steel with ease; and a pure light which can even entertain your cat, something no ordinary light could ever dream of doing.
Now the reason I thought about how different a laser is from an ordinary lightbulb, is not to bewilder you, but to prove the power of being pure. You see, when we speak of being pure, in scripture, as we do in our blessing for today, we discover that being pure unleashes a power every bit as astonishing as a laser. I believe we can sense this in our scripture for today from Matthews gospel. There Jesus teaches us, “Blessed are the pure of heart for they shall see God.” Jesus is telling us that a pure heart has the power to tear away the very veil of heaven so that through the eyes of faith one can even see God. Can you sense that there is indeed, a power to be found in being pure?
So, yes, we can say that this idea that being pure can indeed result in power is a true statement. Jesus speaks further of how light can be a power which can change the world, found at the fourteenth verse of the fifth chapter of Matthew. Jesus tells us this: ‘You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. People do not light a lamp just to then go and set a basket over top of it, and sit in the dark. No, they put that light on a stand and that light gives light to all the house. In the same way, you are a light, so let your light shine before others. They are to see your goodness and when they do, they will give glory to your good Father in heaven.” Did you hear how the power of our light does indeed, change the world? This world, which is bound in a prison of darkness, is now to be lit up. This light, Jesus goes on to explain is our goodness that has the power to cause those who live in darkness to come home to the Father and glorify him. You see, it is never enough that we, ourselves, glorify our God. No, we are to be a light that has the power to cause others to bring glory to our Heavenly Father.
So now we know that this power, this light in us, is the good that we do. This good, we discover, is given to us through the blessing of the Holy Spirit. In this series of messages, called, “The Taste of Blessing”, we are looking at what Paul teaches us about the fruit of the Spirit as found at the end of the fifth chapter of Galatians. You see, the Holy Spirit is the God who blesses us. These blessings given to us by the Holy Spirit give us a taste of the goodness of God. Now, what is interesting is that today the fruit which the Spirit gives to us is the fruit of goodness. This means that the goodness we have experienced so far through being blessed by the Spirit, is now to be a quality of our life. This goodness is what others will see in us when we have been blessed by the Spirit in this way, “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” When the Holy Spirt blesses those who are pure in heart they will see the very face of God. We hear Paul speak of this blessing in the third chapter of Second Corinthians, where he says that all those with unveiled faces who behold the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image, from one degree of glory to the next,…this comes from the Lord who is Spirit.
This verse helps us to remember that we are purified only through an action of the Holy Spirit, and never through our futile efforts.The Spirit of holiness, just by being present with us, certifies that we have been declared holy through the blood of Jesus. This means that can stand before the face of a holy God without any fear. Instead, we know that our Father’s face glows with love for us. Our Father rejoices over us, as we are told in the seventeenth verse of the third chapter of Zephaniah. There we are told, “The Lord God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save. He rejoices over you with gladness; he settles your heart with his love. He will exult over you with loud singing.” So, the Holy Spirit calls us to see by faith that the face of our Heavenly Father lights up anytime we come before him.
You see, seeing the the face of our Father is the very power which makes us pure.The unwavering love and joy of our Father is the pure motivation which causes us to radiate his goodness in all that we do. Listen to what Jesus tells us at the beginning of the sixth chapter of Matthew. He tells us, “… do not practice our righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them. If you want the honor of others then you will receive no reward from your Heavenly Father. Therefore, when you give to the needy, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and the streets. The truth is that when they do this they have already received the honor of those watching them. Instead, when you give to the needy do it so secretly that your left hand does not know what the right hand has done. In this way your giving is in secret and your Father who sees you in secret, will reward you.” When we know of the wondrous love seen in the face of our Father, then the honor of others pales in comparison. We know that he sees us, and he rejoices when we imitate him, giving extravagantly and offering life to others. You see, just as a laser is powered by a burst of radiation, so too we are empowered by that burst of joy which radiates over us in the presence of our Heavenly Father. This is why Jesus encourages us to, “…go into a private place, and shut the door and just stand before your Father in secret. Pray with him, for your Father found there in that secret place will reward you.” The Father who rejoices over us, moves us to act with the power of God’s uncommon goodness.
This power found in this uncommon goodness is here in the story of the church’s first martyr, a man named Stephen. It is in the sixth chapter of the book of Acts where we first meet Stephen. He is to be the answer for the crisis that the early church has found itself in. You see, the Jewish believers from outside of Judaea, those called the Hellenists, complained to the apostles that some of their widows had been neglected during the daily distribution of food. The number of those in need had grown so large that this ministry of the early church had become stretched thin. What we are to understand is that the early church had made it their highest priority to ensure that no unmarried woman go without a daily meal. If this were not enough, they also did not simply drop some food off at the door of the homes that needed it; no, they waited on these women as they ate at their tables. Can you imagine how very strange these actions must have been for those who were watching these followers of Jesus. First, these people look out for the very poorest of people, these unmarried woman who were without a man to provide for them. Jesus knew, all too well, the plight for the women of his day, how difficult it was for them to merely survive without some man to give them a roof over their head. If their husband died or divorced them, they were left searching for someone else to provide for them, however that might happen. So it makes sense that the church, those who imitate their Heavenly Father by doing two actions: giving generously and offering life, would be drawn to these women in dire straights. While their caring for the widows demonstrated clearly the power of their pure hearts perhaps the most amazing part of this ministry is that the apostles themselves, you know Peter, James, and John, are right there with their aprons on. There they are, hustling steaming dishes of food out to those hungry women. It was only when too many showed up for dinner that the apostles reluctantly gave up this service to have more time for prayer and teaching. This seems to imply that this service at the tables was on equal footing with their teaching and prayer which to our ears sounds incredible. We can understand then, why the apostles were so serious about choosing the right seven men to continue to wait at the tables for these unmarried women. Did they simply grab the first seven guys who they could find? Absolutely not! No, they assembled all the believers and with extreme care they chose men like Stephen, men full of faith and the Holy Spirit. Doesn’t this seem to be a little bit much for those who are going to be waiters and servers? I mean, does such work really require the apostles to come and lay their hands on them and pray over them? You see, these actions bewilder the world who can see no reward in caring for the poorest of the poor. Yet what the apostles knew is that real greatness is always found serving the very least. They knew that such service causes our Heavenly Father to rejoice and sing for this is when we have shown his goodness to the world. Now the world can see for themselves why our God is known as a good, good, Father. As his children, we prove the power of being pure by showing the world that our Heavenly Father gives generously, and he offers life to everyone, especially the least of these.
So the power that purifies us and causes us to live as holy lights, is found when we come before our Heavenly Father in secret and pray. The prayer that we have been taught to pray causes us to be in synch with our Heavenly Father. Jesus teaches us about this prayer in the middle of the sixth chapter of Matthew. We first begin with this: “Our Father, who is in heaven. May your name be known as holy.” Here we must pause and ask, just what does our Father desire when he asks that his name be considered holy. Well, holy simply means to be different than the normal, common, ordinary way of doing things. Just as a light is visibly different from the dark, so too our lives are to have visible difference because we have come before the face of God in secret. We are to be people who demonstrate a life of uncommon, holy goodness. The importance of doing so is found in the thirty-third chapter of Exodus, where Moses asks God to make his glory pass before him. God tells Moses that his glory is his goodness, the very goodness which is his name. This name of God is simply his unchanging character, that we are forever certain that our God is pure goodness. So when we pray that the name of our heavenly Father be known as being holy, we know that we must witness to this pure goodness. You see, as the prayer continues, this is our Father’s will, what he wants to see us doing, living lives which behold the pure power of our heavenly Father’s uncommon goodness.
Well, as we continue to pray, Jesus says that to be in synch with our Father, we must desire that his kingdom come here on earth just as it is in heaven. As we learned from Paul in the fourteenth chapter of Romans, the kingdom comes when joy, peace and righteousness are found in our life through the blessing of the Holy Spirit. These are what mark our life when we receive the first of the blessings that Jesus teaches us about. Those blessings given by Jesus, go on then to teach us the importance of the Last Supper. You see, when we pray, “Give us today to be the bread, what is necessary, to bring life to the world.”, we are asking the Holy Spirit to take and give us, just as Jesus gives the bread at the table. We are given to be life giving people, those who bring life to the world. Then Jesus calls us to remember our debts, the debts which he forgave at the cost of his very blood. The blood of Jesus covered over the all that stood between us and our Heavenly Father, so that we might be given a life with him forever. The kindness of our Father which we experienced through this act of mercy draws us to him. So to be in synch with him means that we too must be known by our kindness because of our acts of mercy. You see, we pray to be delivered from evil because know only that the only way to be free from this evil world is to allow the Holy Spirit to offer us up as a pure sacrifice, an offering of uncommon goodness to bring glory of the Father.
Can you begin to see how the care for those poor, desperate widows became such an important task after praying such a prayer? Every time those apostles grabbed an apron they were allowing the Spirit to offer themselves up as lives of uncommon goodness bringing glory to their Heavenly Father. Through their actions it was evident that the Spirit of holiness had taken ahold of them. They freely offered their life, and through their acts of mercy they gave life to those who lived in daily fear of death. They gave generously to these women, remembering how the Father generously gave his Son Jesus to pay their debts through the shedding of his blood. Their lives were indeed pure light, in synch with the will of their Father. Their pure light had power just as Jesus had said their light would have for when the purity of their the goodness touched these woman the power of this light caused them to glorify our Father
So, yes, the early church had lives that radiated a light that could not be hidden. What an uncommon goodness was seen as these men who followed Jesus served and gave life to the woman at their tables. Their lives witnessed to the fact that they had gone into their secret places and had stood before the face of their Father. Yet, we must wonder just how much power does this light of ours have?Can we say that our pure light has a power like that of a laser? We find the answer to this question in the death of Stephan. You see, Stephen lived a life of uncommon goodness, a pure and powerful light. It was this light which caused those who dwelled in darkness to become enraged. They falsely charged Stephan and sentenced him to death. As these evil men, sought to kill him, we find that Stephen is praying. Fully in the grasp of the Holy Spirit, he looks up to see the the face of his Father in all his glory and Jesus at his right side. The heavens had opened revealing Jesus, the very Son of Man, whose kingdom has no end. As Stephen came to the moment of death, his uncommon goodness overcame the evil surrounding him. Stephan asked the Father two things. The first is that he asked his Father to receive his spirit, his life, the fullness of all he had. Then he asked his Father to forgive those who demanded his life. This uncommon goodness of Stephan was a pure and powerful light, a laser that cut deep onto the heart of a man who stood and cheered on that mob as he held their coats, a man named Saul. Later this one called Paul, would become a pure and powerful light that transformed the whole world. So, may we too be those who go out and radiate with a pure and powerful light, an uncommon goodness which brings glory to our Father. Amen!
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