Seeing With the Eyes of the Heart
Matthew 5:8
June 19, 2005
Maria Yudina was one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century, although she remains largely unknown outside of Russia. She has a fascinating story.
She was born in 1899, died in 1970, and was graduated with honors from the St. Petersburg Conservatory of Music.
When Germany invaded Russia in 1941, Maria was in Leningrad where she stayed during the siege of that city. Freezing, hungry, and not far from death herself, she kept playing concerts and recording for the people of her city who needed some reasons to continue to struggle on.
In 1944, with the end of the war still a year away, a new music institute was opened in Moscow and Maria was brought in to be a teacher. Through all of these duties she kept up her schedule of concerts filled with Bach and Beethoven, Schubert, and Schumann.
What makes her even more special and more fascinating is that she was a Christian who defied Stalin and lived to tell about it. Throughout all the crackdowns on religion, she kept going to church, corresponding with theologians, and refusing to cower before the threat of the Gulag. (Maria Yudina, “The Voice of Russia” www.vor.ru/English/Music_Portraite_ 43.html. Accessed March 24, 2005).
The great Russian composer Dimitri Shostakovich told a remarkable story about her. During the latter days of his life, as Stalin began to get more and more bizarre in mood and behavior, he sat one night listening to the radio on which played Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23, performed by Yudina. He called the radio station and told them to send him the record of the music.
Actually there was no record because the radio broadcast had been live, but everyone was afraid to tell Stalin the truth. So they immediately called in Yudina and an orchestra to record the piece, so that it could be sent to the dictator. It took a whole night’s work, but the recording was finished in the morning.
Not long after that, she received an envelope with 20,000 rubles in it, sent directly from Stalin himself. She wrote him a letter. In that letter, she said, “I thank you Joseph, for your aid. I will pray for you day and night and ask the Lord to forgive your great sins before the people and the country. The Lord is merciful and he’ll forgive you. I gave the money to the church that I attend.”
That letter was an act of suicide. An order to arrest her was drawn up by Stalin, but nothing happened. He never signed it. It was this recording of Mozart that was found on his record player when he was discovered dead in his home. It was the last thing to which he had listened (“The Ladder of the Beatitudes,” Jim Forest. 1999. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books. page 101-103).
An internet article I read about her said this: “Maria Yudina knew how to separate eternal values from the vanity of everyday life, in her selfless service to music. Everything else looked unimportant. The rough and tumble of everyday life certainly had its toll on her but never touched her soul. She just couldn’t care less about what she was wearing and how her hair looked. She lived a life that was bubbling inside her and it was there that she was looking for harmony and purity” (The Voice of Russia). As I interpret her life, it is clear, at least to me, that she wanted nothing more than to see and do the work of God.
Which brings us to continuing sermon series on the beatitudes. We have come to “Blessed are the pure in heart.” My hope is that our goal, like that of Maria Yudina, is to discover harmony and purity of heart that bubbles over into everything we do.
I think we need to do at least a cursory search of both the Old and New Testaments to find some biblical thoughts and attitudes on purity and heart. When you go back to the Old Testament and look at the purity laws contained there, you find that they mostly had to do with the discipline of ritual life: what foods were clean or unclean, what acts caused one to be ritually unclean, what one should wear, various conditions or diseases that caused one to be unclean, and the ceremonial washings which restored ritual purity.
In a real way, purity was defined as an outward condition. But it was also seen as an inward quality. Purity referred to a person who had right motives and integrity. A person who displayed purity was one who was blameless, sinless, and possessing of a clean heart. Psalm 24:3-4 says:
Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place? Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false, and do not swear deceitfully.
Psalm 51:10 says:
Create in me a pure heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.
The prophet Isaiah indicates what is required for purity.
Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean. Take away the evil from your souls before my eyes! Cease to do evil, learn to do good! Seek justice, correct oppression, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow. (Isaiah 1:15-17).
With the coming of Jesus, outward purity became less of an issue. It was inward purity of the heart with which he concerned himself. Rodney Clapp is an author who I have come to appreciate. He has written a new book and in it, he talks about purity. He says,”…we very much want purity in our water or tomatoes; we just as definitely don’t want to be pure in our sexuality or heart or business dealings. Purity is thought akin to innocence and naïveté…” (“Tortured Wonders: Christian Spirituality for People, Not Angels” 2004. Rodney Clapp. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press. page 12).
I think that he probably does a pretty good job of hitting the nail on the head concerning our modern day sense of “purity.” Jesus, however, disagrees with contemporary sensibilities. According to Jesus, a clean body is less important than a clean heart. One day, after having been invited to dinner at the home of a Pharisee, the host asked Jesus why he didn’t participate in a ceremonial washing before dinner. Eugene Peterson’s “Message” renders Jesus’ answer in Luke 11:39 like this. I know you Pharisees burnish the surface of your cups and plates so that they sparkle in the sun, but I also know your insides are maggoty with greed and secret evil. Stupid Pharisees! Didn’t the One who made the outside also make the inside? Turn both your pockets and your hearts inside out and give generously to the poor, then your lives will be clean, not just your dishes and your hands.”
“Heart” is an often-used word in the gospels. “Where your treasure is, there also is your heart” (Matthew 6:21). “Unless you forgive your brother from the heart” (Matthew 18:35). “You must love the Lord your God with all of your heart” (Matthew 22:37). “Mary treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:19). “Did not our hearts burn within us as he talked to us?” (Luke 24:32). “Do not let your hearts be troubled” (John 14:27).
The heart is the core of our being. It is not our brain, as some would like to suppose. For thousands of years, the heart has represented the center of human identity. In the heart we find our capacity to love. All of our emotions come from the heart. It is also in the heart where we find the center of our spiritual longings.
So far, we have been talking about purity and about heart. Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Purity of heart, in my way of thinking, is a life that is bubbling over with a desire to see God in everything and to do the will of God at all times.
When Lloyd Ogilvie was pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Hollywood, California, he wrote a book titled “Congratulations - God Believes in You!” (1980. Waco, Texas: Word Books). In that book, he writes that we need to have eyes in our hearts as well as in our heads because heart-eyes see things that our physical eyes often can not.
My son Matthew had a couple of his pieces of artwork chosen to become part of an art exhibit down at Indiana State University: a photograph and a ceramic piece. We went down to the awards show at which he won a prize for his ceramics. I honestly didn’t know why. I think he is a better photographer than he is ceramic artist, but his photo didn’t win anything. This really curious vase he created won a $100 prize. I still don’t know why.
The juror for the show was from the Art Museum of Chicago and obviously sees things that I don’t see. There were other prizes given for other works that made no sense to me either. The piece that was deemed the best in the show was a drawing on wood. I thought that it was absolutely horrendous. But then, I’m not trained in art. Those who are see differently than I see.
I remember walking through the woods down at our Pine Creek Camp with a bunch of Jr. High’ers and the camp director. I saw trees and dirt and leaves. The director pointed out small insects, trails left on the ground by deer and other creatures, and mushrooms of both edible and non-edible kind. He could name the trees and actually knew the difference between poison ivy and kudzu. This city boy couldn’t see any of that. My eyes weren’t in tune to it.
When I go outside on a clear night and look up at the sky, all I see is stars. I see millions and millions of stars, but they are only pinpricks of light to me. But if you bring an astronomer outside with you, he or she will see planets, and suns, and constellations, and galaxies. A navigator will use those same stars to sail the trackless ocean or chart a course through uncharted wilderness. They have different eyes than I have.
Just the same, those who have eyes of the heart are able to see things that other people don’t see. Jesus says that they are blessed because they have developed a unique ability to see the heart of God. They understand the purity of faith, belief, and actions that God desires. They are people whose motives are always to see God in everything. They are people who, like Maria Yudina, are bubbling inside, always wanting to please God.
A man went to his pastor following cataract surgery and told him how amazing it was to be able to see clearly again. It had been a long time since he had been able to see clearly enough to read, or to watch television, or to drive a car. “Now,” he said, “my vision has been restored. It is amazing.”
“But now pastor,” he went on, “I need your help to remove the cataracts from my soul.” He said that he felt as though he has a cloudy, fuzzy veil over his heart. He needed to learn how to trust God again. He needed to learn how to love God again. He needed to know how to make the things of God a priority in his life once again. He needed eyes in his heart to see God.
The Apostle Paul wrote to the Church at Ephesus and said, “I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers. I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe… (Ephesians 1:16-19).
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. The pure in heart are the ones who see the light of God and want nothing more than to live according to God’s will. Their promise is that they will indeed have their vision sharpened to see the face of their Lord, the object of their faith, and the goal of their living.
