Sunday, February 8, 2015

February 8, 2015--Blessed Right-us-ness

From Pastor Tom Ott

Do you find yourself exhausted trying to keep all of your relationships in "right-us-ness?". Good. It is really hard work. Here are some thoughts about Jesus'beatitude blessing righteousness.
February 8, 2015
Matthew 5:8
Blessed Right-us-ness
Finally we get a beatitude that seems to make sense to us! “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”
Up until now, all of the qualities that Jesus has blessed in the Beatitudes are qualities that we don’t typically consider sources of blessing. He blessed the poor in spirit when we typically bless the confident, the self-assured, those with a positive, can-do outlook on life. We diagnose the poor in spirit as depressed and start them on medications and talk therapy. Jesus blessed those who mourn but we treat grief as something harmful to the soul, something that we need to get over and put behind us as quickly as possible. Jesus blessed the meek and promised that they would inherit the earth, but we equate meekness with weakness and expect the meek to get trampled on by those who aggressively pursue the things they want for themselves.
Up until now, all of the beatitudes we’ve looked at contrast with the values of our culture, but today’s beatitude makes sense to us at face value: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” Blessed are those who “do the right thing,” who don’t lie or cheat or steal. Blessed are those who obey the teachings of the bible and the laws of the land.
We are a country that is organized by the rule of law. That is what has made us a great nation. We don’t have one set of rules for royalty and another set of rules for peasants. We don’t have one set of rules for the wealthy people and another set of rules for the poor. We don’t have one set of rules for white people and another set of rules for black people. We are entitled to equal protection under the law, and even if those equal protections are not always equally enforced, they remain a cornerstone of Democracy.
Whenever a dispute arises between us, we appeal to the law; whether that law is written in the church bi-laws, or the city building code, or local, state or federal statutes. We don’t settle disputes with duels, or mob violence, or rock/paper/scissors…we appeal to the authority of agreed upon laws and when we can’t agree on the law, we entrust its interpretation to an impartial judge or jury.
This past week member nations of the NATO alliance have been struggling to come to consensus over how to deal with Russia’s unrighteous behavior in eastern Ukraine. One of the obligations that nations accepted under the Geneva Convention is to honor the autonomy of sovereign nations, but last year Russia invaded and annexed the Crimean peninsula and now is fueling violent revolution in other areas of eastern Ukraine. It is unrighteous behavior to be interfering in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation and the US and its allies are trying to decide how to intervene. Should we seek diplomatic solutions, impose stronger economic sanctions against Russia or supply Ukraine with weapons and finances to strengthen its defense against Russia’s aggression? Bad things happen when people and organizations and governments ignore the rule of law and behave in unrighteous ways. Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”
But in the Bible, righteousness isn’t simply behavior that complies with an external list of commandments, laws, norms or expectations. Righteousness in the Bible is always relational. It is behavior that brings us into right relationship with each other. Righteous behavior preserves our covenantal obligations to each other and to God. Instead of thinking of rightness as following the right rules, the scriptures challenge us to think of righteousness as right-us-ness. They always press us to consider what behaviors are necessary to make things right between us?
Sometimes right-us-ness means exceeding the requirements of the law. Right after the Beatitudes in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus goes through a list of the laws of Moses and insists that they don’t go far enough to attain the righteousness of God. If we truly want to be in right-us-ness, then we have to be willing to “go the second mile, turn the other cheek, love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you…unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”
Sometimes right-us-ness means setting aside the requirement of a law in order to preserve a greater good. When Jesus was challenged about healing on the Sabbath he argued that the urgency of restoring person to wholeness was greater than that of preserving Sabbath rest: “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?”
All of this makes righteousness much more complicated than it first seemed. It means that righteousness is always contextual. What is right in one instance may or may not be right in another instance. The question is always, will the behavior bring us into right relationship?
On Friday afternoon, David Schweitzer and I made plans to go out cross country skiing on Saturday morning. The snow conditions were perfect. The trails at Binder Park had been groomed and track set. We had some cold days earlier in the week to form a good ice base but there was enough powder on top to give the edges of the skies enough grip to steer. Saturday morning’s conditions were the best I’ve skied on since we moved Battle Creek seven years ago.
But Saturdays are the only days when Patrice and I have off together. I work on Sunday’s when she has off and she works on Monday’s when I have off. I’m usually pretty careful about protecting time to be with Patrice on Saturday.
But righteousness isn’t about following a rule for what is and is not acceptable behavior on weekends. If my relationship with Patrice is in a good place, if we are both feeling appreciated and cared for by the other, then spending a Saturday morning skiing with a friend is perfectly fine. But we haven’t had enough time together recently, if we’ve been too busy with work or have been away too many nights during the week, then going off with a friend to ski on Saturday morning can be hurtful. Righteousness isn’t a hard and fast rule about how I schedule my Saturdays. What is fine on one Saturday may not be on another.
And, just to make things even more complicated, no one relationship can be considered in isolation from all of our other relationships. If I ignore my friendship with David in order to spend more time with my wife, then I’m not in right-us-ness with David. If I always say yes to David and neglect my time with Patrice, then I’m not in right-us-ness with my wife. Righteousness is about behavior that honors all of the covenantal relationships that we share.
The righteousness that Jesus blessed is rooted in a deep hunger and thirst for being in right relationship with others. It isn’t about playing by the rules, it is about being mindful of how our words and decisions and actions impact the people with whom we are in covenantal relationship.
For the past month, Jeanie Reid has been leading a group of us through a racial justice study using the book, “Waking Up White,” by Debby Irving. One of the lessons that the author passes on is covered in a chapter entitled, “Intent verses Impact.” Sometimes we imagine that as long as our motives are pure, our actions are justified. If I say or do something that you misinterpret, that is your problem, not mine. You are being overly sensitive, or overly defensive, or allowing your past experiences to cloud your perceptions of the present circumstances. Sometimes we dismiss the injuries that we cause when the impact that our words or actions have on others doesn’t match our intentions, particularly when we engage people of a different race. Because race has shaped our histories in profoundly different ways, the risk of our words and deeds having an impact that is different than what we intend is much greater.
But righteousness isn’t about purity of intent. Righteousness is about the relationship between us. It is about right-us-ness, and right-us-ness requires that we take responsibility, not only for the intention behind what we say and do but also for the impact that our words and deeds have on others. Asking someone what they do for a living might be intended as nothing more than a way of initiating polite conversation, but if that person interprets the question as a way of measuring their social status in order to judge their worthiness, then we need to accept responsibility for the detrimental impact that our inquiry had on the relationship between us.
Right-us-ness is really hard work. It requires our constantly checking in with each other to make sure the impact has been what we intended, it means holding the right boundaries in all of our relationships with each other, it means discerning what rules to apply and what rules to set aside in order to remain in right relationship. Only those who truly hunger and thirst for right-us-ness will ever be filled. Amen.

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