Righteousness

Epiphany 5 Sermon

February 6, 2011

May the words of my mouth and meditations of all our hearts be now and always acceptable in your sight, O God our rock and our redeemer.  Amen

        In the earliest years of the church, the so-called Desert Fathers set a standard and an example for prayerful faithfulness. Living in the wilderness often far from the centres of society these monastics came to exemplify much about Christian faith.  There credo can be summarized by the story of the Abbott who was approached by a monk complaining that another had failed to comply with a particular rule on attending worship.  The monk replied in effect , the monk who fails to attend worship but pray in his room may be more faithful than those who gather together for public services.

It would be easy and dare I suggest somewhat predictable for me to focus this morning on Isaiah’s message that our spiritiual practices go beyond ritual formalities to include action in the world, challenging injustice and tending to the hungry and the homeless.  But I think you may have heard that before.  So instead I’d invite us to consider the issue of righteousness, which Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount presents as the goal of all disciples.  For perhaps it is in our struggle for righteousness that we find the strength to pursue our ministries in the Church and in the world.

I.      Righteousness

But what is this right relationship?  How do we find this. In this modern society of ours, we are tempted sometimes to think of righteousness in terms of our own individual attitudes and behavior.  Are we virtuous enough – or pious enough?  Do we go to church?  Do we give to charity? Perhaps instead we might think that (like happiness) righteousness as about relationships and in particular, relationship with God.  Remember, our mediator and advocate is Jesus Christ “the righteous.” Jesus Christ “the righteous.”  That’s not righteousness of the kind we hear about so often in the popular press – ‘oh that band was righteous’  or ‘that was a righteous party’ or some such.  The righteousness of which we speak is an entirely different matter altogether.

Perhaps righteousness is not a faith measured by adherence to formal texts and rituals.  When Jesus says we must be more righteous that the Pharisees, this is not a competition to be holier than the rest.  Rather, the righteousness of which we speak is about our humble acceptance of God’s love, which then empowers us to be committed to following God’s truth in our lives.  It means letting God in, despite the unlikelihood, the unreasonableness, the basic nuttiness of it all.  The foolishness of it all.  It means putting what we think we know aside, and trusting in God.

Putting aside what we think we know – turning from the reality that governs our lives and substituting a new reality – not so easy.  But let us reconsider what it is we think we know.  Yes of course we have a legacy of scientific experimentation, personal and social relations, psychology and all the rest.  Each year we read with interest the results of the Nobel Prize competition (and not just the peace prize either) – learning of new advances in medicine and the sciences.  But really, to borrow a note from Richard Hooker, shouldn’t we in this modern age be just a little bit modest about what we think we know? While we should of course continually strive to expand our knowledge and understanding of the world in which we live, let us also be modest about the state of our knowledge.

Let us be willing to accept that our relationship with God might just not fit within the confined spaces of our knowledge and understanding.  Perhaps this is what is meant by the phrase, ‘fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.’  Not being afraid, but being reverent before the power of God and then being ready to adjust our reality accordingly.  Rather the reverse of the time-honored practice of adjusting God to fit our expectations.  Instead, we adjust to God.  We adjust our lives to make room for God.

In our world today, we are often told how foolish it is to have faith.  So true.  For as Paul reminds us, God’s foolishness is wiser than the wisdom of the world.  Rather than requiring formal expressions of wisdom, Paul reminds us that true wisdom is the ability to see and hear the presence of God in our lives, despite all the logical and rational arguments to the contrary. We are called not to suppose that our earthly knowledge will explain God’s presence with us, but rather to receive the Holy Spirit who will grant us sight and hearing to perceive and understand the gifts bestowed upon us from God.

At this time of Chinese (Lunar) New Year, Paul’s discourse on wisdom and foolishness calls to mind is a story from ancient China in which the rather stiff Confucians with their formalistic rituals were in frequent contest with the playful Daoists who prized spontaneity over structure and control.  As a pair of Daoist priests with unkempt hair and riotous behavior came down the lane, the Confucians glared at them with the condescending scord of that the stiff and proper often feel for the relaxed and informal (not unlike the reaction that Jesus often induced in the Pharisees).  Anyway, back in China,  facing the approbrium of the establishment, the Daoists responded by saying, ‘clearly they don’t know the liturgy’ at once criticizing the narrow-mindedness of Confucian perspectives on proper behavior and also making fun of their critics by elevating their own unrestrained excesses to the level of liturgy equal to that espoused by the Confucians. And so as Jesus exemplified and as Paul proclaimed, let us also be liberated by our faith in God’s foolishness, not bound by our habits of ritual.  Let us be joyful.

II.    Happiness

Our Psalm today speaks of happiness for those who fear the Lord.  And we have heard earlier that fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Happiness and fear are not often associated with each other in our experience.  But perhaps happiness begins when we focus less on trusting in our own righteousness and accept that we owe it all to God’s manifold and great mercies.  So when we hear the phrase, ‘fear of the Lord’ (which the beginning of wisdom), we are invited not to be afraid, but rather to recognize our blessed dependence on God’s love. We are invited to accept and celebrate our reliance on the eternal faithfulness of the Holy One.  And with that comes true freedom and happiness.  With that comes the beginning of righteousness.

Perhaps we might consider that happiness does not revolve around us as individuals.  For although our contemporary world seems to put much stock in the importance of the individual, perhaps true happiness is not really about us as independent “autonomous” individuals, but rather about our relationships and what we do to nurture and sustain them.  Perhaps true happiness is found when we stop focusing on ourselves, and focus more on our relationships with others - with God, with our neighbors, with creation. Perhaps happiness begins when we focus less on ourselves and more on others.

And you know what comes from this?  Peace – the peace that the world cannot give.  What comes from this is freedom – the perfect freedom of service to the Holy One.  What comes from this is happiness.  The true happiness that comes to the righteous.

III.   Salt and Light.

        In his sermon on the mount, Jesus proclaimed that the disciples are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Essential for the society in which we live, but also responsible for staying strong enough to season our relationships with goodness, and visible enough to illuminate the path of righteousness. And thus comes the call to righteousness – for relationsip with God built upon but not confined to the traditions of Israel.  And such righteous invites us to consider how are we to be the salt that retains its flavor and light that shines in the darkness.  By putting relationship with God above all things.

And so we are invited to appreciate that righteousness is not a passive state of affairs. For we are called to make ready according to God’s will – not just saying “Lord, Lord,” but preparing to do the will of God in heaven.  Rather like the firefighters, medics and other first responders who are on call to serve, so too can we be ever ready to serve our neighbors and our world.  But our preparation involves nurturing our relationship with God that is the core of righteousness. 

And so in our own time, we are called to go beyond the formal structures of the Church to embrace our relationship with God in our own time and space – which means all the time and everywhere. And so we might consider how to prepare through our prayer life to do God’s will. A good place to start is home prayer, where the peace of quiet reflection is coupled with the solidarity that comes from the sure knowledge that others are praying at home too, and that we use common prayers at common times.  And as Isaiah relates, our faith traditions are also honored in our work for the dispossessed and the marginalized. And indeed, we are invited to consider how the practice of constant prayer enables us to engage in an ongoing dialogue with God as we go about our days. 

Our prayer life allows us to turn our hearts and minds to God, to be strengthened through our relationship with God, and to strengthen and inform our preparation to do God’s will in the world.   Not turning our back on the world, but enabling us to flavore and illuminate our world so that all can be ready for God’s presence among us and empowered to live in righteousness.  Prayer that strengthens us to be foolish in faith and find true happiness in acting on that faith.

Let us pray:

Holy One, we thank you for the opportunities to be your servants - servants to your glory and servants to your creation.  Strengthen us so that we might continually be watchful for your presence and prepared to do your will.  In Christ’s name we pray.   AMEN.