Righteous or righteousness are church words. Other than 80s surfers who would say things like the waves were righteous dude or anyone trying to describe Ferris Bueller because he is a righteous dude, and then other than talking about people who are self-righteous, that is they think more of themselves, or think themselves better than they should, we only use that term in church. But the problem with even talking about righteousness, or of being righteous in church, is the fact that it has different meanings and understandings at different times and places and in different settings. And so to really address it, as Proverbs does, we have to try and give it some definition so that we understand what it means in its usage so we can then understand what it means for us to try and apply to our lives as we too see to become righteous dudes and dudettes. After all, we are told that gray hair is a crown of glory, or as my wife calls them her wisdom highlights, and they are gained through living a righteous life.
And so I know some of you want to know how to avoid getting gray hair, and therefore want to do the opposite of what we are about to discuss, and others who are coloring your hair, just know that you are covering up the indication of your righteousness. Now, just because you have grey hair does not actually mean that you are either wise or righteous, because Proverbs also wants to say, as the immortal Buck Owens encapsulated in a song, there is no fool like and old fool. And so it turns out that how you know if people are actually living lives of wisdom, or at least seeking wisdom, was by how they lived. But, just as a reminder for those who have been here for prior weeks, or as new information if you are hearing this message on proverbs for the first time, the book of Proverbs was written in order to instruct young men of the upper social classes who are about to embark into the world and entering into marriages and leadership positions to instruct them in the wisdom they need in order to be able to do the right thing, to live a righteous life, to pursue and come to know wisdom, who is personified as a woman. And that idea of doing the right thing is really important because as I said in the first message on this, while Proverbs is about wisdom, it is not wisdom for wisdom’s sake. It is about how we live in the world and it calls for us to be living it out, to be doing it, and that plays a critical role in our understanding of righteousness.
Now as I already said, the word righteous means different
things in different places in scripture. Within the Hebrew scriptures, righteousness
is about more than just ethical living, more than just seeking not to do the
wrong thing, but about intentionally doing the right thing. Righteousness is
about how you live your life, and you earn righteousness, or are described as
being righteous by how you live, and in particular by how you follow the law.
But, it’s also about covenantal relationships. Normally when we think about
covenantal relationships, at least when it comes to our faith, it’s about our
relationship with God, and for us that covenantal relationship starts with our
baptism. And the reason we as Methodists don’t rebaptize is because God is
always faithful to God’s side of that covenantal relationship. We can break our
side, and therefore not live in righteousness, but God is forever faithful and
therefore God is forever righteous in this understanding. And so we too are
then called to uphold our side of that covenant and doing so is righteous, and
those that “corrupt and violate” the covenant are considered unrighteous.
But, it’s not just our covenantal relationship with God, but
it’s also about our relationship with each other, which is why I say that Jesus
came to restore us to right relationship with God and with one another. And so
righteousness in that sense is about how we treat one another, and you may have
heard that quite a bit in the passages from Proverbs that I selected for this
morning. That we are called to care for those who might not be able to speak
for themselves or be listened to by those who have power and wealth. And this
idea is furthered by the fact that the Hebrew word that is translated as
righteous can also be translated as justice among other things. And so think of
Micah 6:8, which asks “what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice,
love kindness and walk humbly with the Lord.” But we could also translate that
as do righteousness, and humbleness also plays a role. And we’ll come back to
that in a moment.
This idea of righteousness, as right living and following
the law, continues into the New Testament in the gospels in particular. we are
told that John the Baptist’s parents “live blamelessly according to all the
commandments and regulations of the Lord”, thus making them righteous.
Presumably the same thing is being said about Joseph of Arimathea who is said
to be “a good and righteous man,” that is he is an observant Jew. In Luke’s
gospel at the cross when the Roman soldier, played so well by John Wayne, says
“surely this man was innocent,” the Greek word for innocent could also be
translated as righteous, or holy, meaning he lived in right relationship with
God. And, although Jesus does talk about righteousness, such as saying that the
disciples’ righteousness must surpass that of the scribes and the Pharisees, he
does not emphasize it as much as might be expected because of its emphasis in
the Hebrew scriptures.
But, Paul makes a dramatic change to our understanding of
righteousness, in particular in his letter to the Romans. The word righteous
appears a little over 300 times in the New Testament, and 72 of those
references are found in the letter to the Romans, and really the heart of
Romans is an exploration of righteousness means after the coming of Christ.
Paul argues that righteousness is not the result of what we do, because if it
was then it would be something about which we could brag and take credit for,
but instead righteousness is given to us, or as he says “reckoned” to us by
God. So, righteousness is mediated not through our actions but instead through
our faith. This is part of Paul’s argument that we are saved by faith alone, or
at least that was Martin Luther’s interpretation of Paul that we hold onto as
Protestants. It is God’s actions through the person of Jesus that brings
righteousness to us, and we react to this action with faith, so that God then
gives righteousness to us. Paul also argues that righteousness is found in
conjunction with wisdom, which is what Proverbs is about, and so builds on this
sense of understanding God’s wisdom for the world. So, a quick recap of a
semester’s course. Righteousness in scripture can be the faithful observance of
the law and to God’s covenantal relationship; and it can also be a gift from
God for those who believe. And then to add in one more element.
In the letter of James, which again is deeply connected to
wisdom literature, he says that faith without works is dead. This is often seen
as being in opposition to Paul, but I actually think they are saying the same
thing, just in different ways. Because Paul says that once we have accepted
Christ that we are called to live differently, to find the fruit of the Spirit,
and so our actions come out of our faith. James says that he will show you his
faith through his actions, that they too are coming out of faith, and so faith
leads to action. Of course Jesus tells us the same thing, because as we heard
in today’s passage from Luke, which is a parallel section to the Sermon on the
Mount as core teachings, it’s not a series of suggestions. He doesn’t say,
“yeah, if you could go ahead and pray for love enemies, that would be great.”
Instead these are a series of commands, ways that we will show our faith, ways
that we will show that we follow Christ, ways that we will show that we don’t
just understand the wisdom of his teachings, and Jesus is clearly a wisdom
teacher as the teaching “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” But
these are things that we are going to live out. We are going to do these things,
and they are also representative of the covenantal relationship we have with
others and that we also have with God. But, if we think about righteousness as
being in right relationship with God and with others, then it turns out that
its really, really hard to live lives of righteousness, because we’re alive.
And so then we have to return to where we started which is
that knowledge of God, seeking to be in relationship with God, is the beginning
of wisdom. But just as wisdom begins with bowing down to God, of being in awe
and wonder of God, and turning our lives over to God, where that also leads is
to a position of humility. “When pride comes, then comes disgrace,” which we
still know as pride goes before the fall, “but wisdom is with the humble.” As
soon as you start to think of yourself as better than others, and this is not
about being proud of what you do or accomplish, or downplaying your gifts and
graces, but instead thinking that what you do is superior to others, then you are
on the path to destruction. Pope Gregory the Great, who is responsible for the
propagation of the seven deadly sins, said that the sin of pride was the worst
of the sins because pride would not only cause us to forget about God, or think
that we didn’t need God, and it is pride that leads to all other sins, because
it is pride that leads us away from even thinking about others.
And what we see in Proverbs is that righteousness is about
how we treat others. Not those who are like us. Not those who are more
powerful, or wealthier than us, those who might be able to help us in life, but
instead how we treat those who are in need or don’t have a voice, and remember
that proverbs is written for wealthy young men and those who will be future
leaders of Israel. “The righteous know the needs of their animals, but the
mercy of the wicked is cruel.” While animals can communicate their needs
somewhat, for the most part, they are voiceless, and so the righteous know
their needs, they give voice to them in order to be able to take care of them.
They don’t see them simply as a means to and ends, but as things deserving good
treatment, as ends, in and of themselves. This is made more explicit later on,
when we are told “if you close your ear to the cry of the poor, you will cry
out and not be heard.” We hear several times in scripture of people crying out
to God, and of God listening and responding to their cries, and often, of
bringing down those who were oppressing them, with the biggest being rescuing
them from slavery in Egypt. But here, we are told that if we hope to have our
cried listened to, that we must also listen to the cries of others who cry out.
It’s like that to be forgiven we must forgive. To have our cries heard by God,
we must hear the cries of those less fortunate then us.
But, it’s more than just listening to their cries, it’s also
about doing something about it. “Speak
out for those who cannot speak, for the rights of the destitute, speak out,
judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy.” Give voice to the
voiceless, speak out on their behalf, and judge rightly on their behalf. There
are lots of cries about injustice taking place in our streets, not justice
injustice against individuals, but also laws, systems and institutions that are
unjust, and we must listen to those cries. It doesn’t mean you have to
initially agree with what they are saying, but listen to them and hear the
words of truth that are contained in their cries, and then speak out against
those injustices. Just because it doesn’t affect you doesn’t mean it’s not a
problem, or that it is not a reality for them. Which then leads into what I
think is an injunction that we need to hear in this day and age because I think
it is one of the major shortfalls we see around us everyone, and of which
neatly all of us are guilty. “One who justifies the wicked and one who condemns
the righteous,” proverbs says, “are both alike an abomination to the Lord.”
There is a tendency to attack people in other groups for
things we don’t like, but to defend the same behavior in our own group, because
they are ours, or more directly, they are us. When Alex Rodriguez, was playing
for the Yankees, Red Sox fans were always quick to call him out for cheating
because of his past steroid use. And I would add rightly so. But they
conveniently ignored the fact that David Ortiz, their big hitter and most
popular player, had also failed a steroid test and their cheered lustily for
them. And I should add Ortiz was just elected to the Hall of Fame while other
steroid users are kept out for the same reason, and probably because, as one
commentator said, “They like Ortiz and they don’t like Barry Bonds and Roger
Clemens.” Or in politics, one politician said about his parties’ leader, “sure
he’s a blankety blank” although he said an actual word, “but he’s our blankety
blank.” We justify the actions on our side of the aisle, justifying the wicked,
while calling out others because they are on the other team, which can be
condemning the righteous. If we want to get past the partisan gridlock we are
in, we have to learn to praise those on the opposite team when they do well,
and more importantly we have to call out those on our own team when they do
wrong, not to try and defend them. Praise when praise is due, on all sides, and
criticize on all sides when criticism is due. Don’t allow tribalism to overcome
our injunction to do the right thing.
That leads into the final point, which builds on this idea,
and that is “Do not rejoice when your enemies fall, and do not let your heart
be glad when they stumble, or else the Lord will see it and be displeased, and
turn away his anger from them.” Just like the last one, this one is hard. I have
to admit that there are some people that, let me say I’m not overly fond of,
and I love it when their teams lose, I unrighteously sort of revel in it. Or,
whenever baseball season might finally start, I love days when the Yankees win
and the Red Sox lose. Now I don’t root for injuries or anything, I just want
them to get the snot beat out of them, and I have been known the gloat every
now and then, but it’s wrong. Jesus tells us to pray for our enemies, not
because it’s easy, but because it’s hard, and when we begin to pray for them
what we discover is that we are changed, our attitude towards them begins to
change. How we see them, and how we see ourselves is transformed. Now, what
this proverb actually says is that if we gloat when bad things happen to them,
that God might stop having bad things happen to them. I’m not sure that’s the
best reason not to gloat about their downfall, but if that’s what you need to
tell yourself in order to do the right thing, then maybe that’s what needs to
happen. But a better place to be is simply to see them as a brother or sister,
as a beloved child of God, and to leave it at that.
Righteousness is about living in right relationship with God and living in right relationship with each other. It’s not about what we believe or don’t believe, but about what we do and what we don’t do. Are we practicing love for enemies, blessing those who curse us, turning the other cheek, giving to those in need, being kind and merciful and forgiving and giving and not condemning? When we exhibit faithfulness to God, then we will exhibit faithfulness to the world, and will practice righteousness, and the measure we give will be given back to us. But we don’t do it because of the reward and we definitely don’t do it because it’s easy. We do it because it’s hard, we do it because it’s what we are called to do, we do it because it means that we are walk the path of righteousness. What Proverbs tells us, what Jesus tells us, is that there are two paths we can follow, the path of righteousness and wisdom, or the path of wickedness and folly. The choice is ours. May we practice and live righteousness and justice. I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters. Amen.
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