At LFCN, we’ve been working our way through the Beatitudes. Yesterday, we talked about these words of Jesus: ‘blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.’ As a way of continuing to let those words permeate my heart, I’d like to offer a few reflections.
‘Righteousness’
Obviously, ‘righteousness’ is an important word in this passage. It’s what those whom Jesus announces as blessed are hungry and thirsty for. Which makes an understanding of ‘righteousness’ fairly important. Or else these words of Jesus turn from being really good news to pretty bad news. Or, ‘just another thing that I need to do in order to be blessed’ news.
I used to hear the term righteousness and cringe. I thought it spoke of a code of ethic. I thought it spoke of morality. After reading through the gospel of Matthew, I thought wrong.
Matthew describes Joseph’s actions in chapter 1 as righteous. You remember Joseph was engaged to Mary (yay!) but Mary was pregnant (oops). According to the law, Joseph should have exposed Mary’s sin. The village could have decided if she should have been stoned. But because Joseph was a ‘righteous’ man, Matthew says, he chose to deal with the situation quietly. We hear that today and think ‘how honorable’. The first Century Jews heard it and thought ‘how dishonorable. How could a person not carry out the demand of the law and be deemed righteous.’
Later on, Jesus steps onto the scene and says ‘unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of the heavens.’ Which works us up into a revolutionary fervor because Jesus just stuck it to the man. But, the scribes and the Pharisees were the first Century beacons of law-abiding morality and goodness. How could my righteousness exceed theirs?
Maybe most interestingly is how ‘righteousness’ shows up in chapter 25 – Matthew’s description of Judgment day. On that day, Jesus says, people will be separated into two groups: sheep and goats. The sheep are blessed and the goats are cursed. Why? To the sheep, Jesus says:
For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
Then, Matthew says, the ‘righteous’ sheep will answer him: when did all of that happen? Jesus will say: ‘whatever you did to the least of these brothers of mine you did to me.’
Righteousness, then, is less about something I attain and more about who God is and what God does. Righteousness is God’s right-making activity. We are judged righteous by God. We don’t earn it as we earn a status. He calls those whose lives are aligned with his coming kingdom righteous like he called Joseph and the sheep righteous.
All of which begs the question: how do we know on that day if we will be judged as a sheep or a goat? How do we know if we will be blessed or cursed? How do we know if we will be judged righteous or unrighteous?
Maybe the place to start is by asking a simple question: what do we hunger and thirst for? Do we hunger for, hope for, wish for, thirst for the kind of things that Matthew describes righteous folks doing – the care for the stranger, the poor, those oppressed, the outcast – those kind of behaviors, hopes, and dreams that are characterized by God’s coming kingdom.
Or, do we hunger and thirst for things not aligned with the kingdom.
Can we honestly pray: Your kingdom come? Is that appetizing to us? Do we hunger for that? Or, is a plate of ‘my stuff, my life, my kingdom’ more appealing?
May we be a people who hunger and thirst for right-eousness.
