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To Fulfill All Righteousness |
Matthew 3: 13-17
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© John Ewing Roberts |
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INTRODUCTION It is so right that next Sunday we are beginning the service with baptism and ending with a report on Cuba by the Missions Committee. Jesus' first words in Matthew are at his baptism; Jesus' last words in Matthew are about missions and baptizing. The words of Jesus which form a kind of bracket in Matthew give us a basis for unifying our service next Sunday. Today is the Sunday in the church year to celebrate the baptism of our Lord, an act in which he engaged "to fulfill all righteousness." I would like to approach this subject by noting that in our country today there are great divisions. The way people analyze and comment on appropriate punishment for the president of the United States - impeachment or censure - reveals much about the basis for making decisions in their own lives. One quickly picks this up by listening to talk radio, which can be a very discouraging enterprise. For example, I have heard a Republican caller declare that all Democrats are unrighteous. The very next caller, a Democrat, asserts that all Republicans are self-righteous. Between these extremes of unrighteousness and self-righteousness, the word "righteousness" suffers mightily. I hope today to recover the good word "righteous" from its bad reputation. "Righteous" has gotten the same sort of bad reputation that the word "sermon" undergoes. In a domestic argument a spouse may shout to the partner, "Don't preach at me." But just as a sermon doesn't have to be a strident lecture, neither does righteousness have to be kind of mean spirited self-righteousness that slips easily into unrighteousness. THE MUSIC OF RIGHTEOUSNESS A piano teacher had taught the little boy how to hit every note just right. He had the fingering right, the tempo right, the phrasing right; he even kept his thumbs off of black keys, but when he played the piece without missing a note, it just wasn't "right." "You just haven't got it right," says the exasperated piano teacher. And we know intuitively what she meant - it's possible to got everything right and still not have it "right." His fingers were in it, but his heart wasn't. And that was the difference between music that would get toes tapping and throats humming and music that leave us unmoved and silent.[1] Self-righteous behavior may be absolutely right, moral behavior, but if the heart is not in it, it won't set lives aglow anymore than our piano student was able to make his music lively. The difference between having fingers in a piece versus playing it with heart is the difference between self-righteousness and true righteousness. Hands and heart together make music infectious; we hum along, we sing along, we move along. Jesus said, "Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the religious right, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven." That, of course, is not a verbatim quote, but a perfectly accurate paraphrase. What Jesus actually said was, "Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven."[2] Jesus was going after the religious right of his own age, the people whose self-righteous posturing was so off putting that there was nothing engaging, nothing attractive about their faith. Equally repulsive is the unrighteous behavior of reckless, immoral persons; it is offensive and disgusting. We turn away in repulsion both from the immoral, the unrighteous, and from the extremely self-consciously moral, the self-righteous. Christian outreach to the unrighteous becomes harder and harder as religious people become more self-righteous. Our joy and delight is to "get it right" with head and heart in such a way that people are drawn to the Christian life, not repulsed. THE STRAIGHT LIFE A righteous persons in the best sense of the word lives "a straight life. This is a term from the early work of James Dobson. I would like to offer you an extended quote from his writings on the straight life, words which describe many persons in this congregation. "The straight life for a homemaker is washing dishes three hours a day; it is cleaning sinks and scouring toilets and waxing floors; it is chasing toddlers and mediating fights between preschool siblings...The straight life is driving your station wagon to school and back twenty-three times per week; its is grocery shopping and baking cupcakes for the class Halloween party. The straight life eventually means becoming the parent on an ungrateful teenager, which I assure you is no job for sissies... "The straight life for a working man is not much simpler. It is pulling your tired frame out of bed, five days a week, fifty weeks out of the year. It is earning a two-week vacation in August, and choosing a trip that will please the kids. The straight life is spending your money wisely when you'd rather indulge yourself in a new whatever; it is taking your son bike riding on Saturday when you want so badly to watch the baseball game; it is cleaning out the garage on your day off after working sixty hours the prior week. The straight life is coping with head colds and engine tune-ups and crab grass and income-tax forms; it is taking your family to church on Sunday when you've heard every idea the minister has to offer; it is giving a portion of your income to God's work when you already wonder how ends will meet. The straight life for the ordinary, garden-variety husband and father is everything I have listed and more...much more. "Consider, now the straight life for those who carry an especially heavy burden. I think of all the single parents who deserve our admiration. They must complete the tacks ordinarily assigned to husbands and wives, without the support and love of a partner. The straight life for them runs not on level ground, but uphill seven days a week."[3] He goes on to examine four voices that try to call people away from the straight life: pleasure, romanticism, the desire for extramarital sexual relations, and ego needs. How does a person live a straight life, a righteous life? It just won't wash for me to read you from Dobson and tell you it's your duty to live the straight life. You need the energy to do get your toe tapping. A stern call to duty is not enough to get you to sing along. There has to be something deep, down inside of you that gives you joy in the straight life in spite of its rigor. I'm still talking about righteousness, that issue Jesus fulfilled in baptism as he identified with the very straight life John the Baptizer called persons to adopt. People often ask why Jesus had to be baptized. After all, wasn't he supposed to have been sinless?[4] A Baptist seminary professor named Ray Frank Robbins had the odd hobby of collecting reasons for Jesus' baptism. At one time he was up to seventeen reasons.[5] I will spare you from such a list! Just go with "to fulfill all righteousness." Here's how it works: remember Christmas? "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us...."[6] That birth was God identifying with our humanity. Now, the Word has become flesh and comes to be baptized. This baptism is God in Christ identifying with our unrighteousness. All of us need forgiveness, and Jesus is showing his solidarity with all of us when he undergoes baptism, a righteous man fulfilling righteousness by doing something that all of us unrighteous people need to do. BAPTISMS TO THINK ABOUT Think about all the baptisms you have ever seen. To witness a baptism is for a Christian rather like a married person going to a wedding - it becomes an occasion to think of your own, to renew your commitment. Some baptismal memories are humorous. If anything can go wrong in a service, it will go wrong in a baptism. Watch out next Sunday - our railings for the baptistery are broken. Will we get in and out without slipping? Our former associate pastor, David Hughes, used to tell of a service he saw in a creek in Kentucky. A lady who was being baptized was wearing a wig. It came off in the water, and was carried quickly down stream by the current until a deacon chased after it and fished it out with a long stick. Once a rather large person I was baptizing gave me a bump and almost knocked off my glasses. I feared they would sink to the bottom and that I would have to make a surface dive to recover them. It is more instructive to remember more inspirational moments. I remember the first time I ever baptized someone. How fitting that she is here today, and, as a Deacon, Barb Denham Gross gave our offertory prayer. My own baptism was tough. I was very nervous. At that time I did not know how to swim, and I was afraid of the water. (Don't worry about next Sunday - I am an Eagle Scout with Life Saving merit badge!). My mother assured me that our pastor, Charles Maddry, who was 6 feet 8 inches tall, would not let me drown. My best memory, though, is of my father who was baptized with me. For him it was also an act to fulfill righteousness. He really did not have to baptized. He had been sprinkled as a baby and later confirmed in the Presbyterian church. He was a good a man as I have ever known. He was a travelling salesman and a righteous man, who was as irritated by travelling salesman jokes as I am by comparisons to televangelists or as physicians in the church are by comparisons to the bad doctors in the film Patch. Dad wanted to be baptized and become a member of the Baptists church for family solidarity and to encourage me. He went on to be a Deacon and a Trustee in our home church. This memory presents an opportunity to comment on the fact that at Woodbrook we do not put pressure on persons to be immersed when they are Christians who come from other denominations. If someone wishes to be immersed, we are delighted, but it is not a matter of insistence. When some chooses to do so, as Jeanne Wolfe recently did, it is wonderful. Let me be clear that such a baptism in no way invalidates any previous religious experience. We are to understand such a baptism as analogous to a married person who renews wedding vows. Such a ceremony in no way invalidates the original marriage; it simply and beautifully renews the previous commitment. But I still haven't told you how to get that inner experience of fulfilling righteousness. THE KISS Psalm 85: 10-11 says: "Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other; truth shall spring out of the earth; and righteousness shall look down from heaven." I hope the members of the United States Senate remember that Psalm this week as they go about their business. Mercy and truth! Righteousness and peace! But zero in on righteousness and peace kissing, a much more attractive image for righteousness than the all too frequent association of the word with self-righteousness. There's more help from the best known of all Psalms, the 23rd in verse 5. "He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness." To become righteous is to accept the leadership of the Good Shepherd. Righteousness is not something we choose to do or be. It is something that comes from following the One who leads in its paths. Righteousness comes from follow Jesus, who is righteous. Let me put it very bluntly - We don't make ourselves righteous, but if we hang around Jesus long enough and follow Jesus closely enough, it rubs off on us; it becomes internal. We get in step with him. We move to the rhythm of the music of his life. His righteousness informs us and forms out lives. A DEFINITION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS I have been looking for some time for a definition of righteousness. Then recently I heard someone say that this person's goal was to be able "to look someone straight in the eye and to give of myself out of that straightness." That's righteousness! To look someone straight in the eye and to give of oneself out of that straightness! But how can you be straight when you know that deep down inside you're shifty and your heart is full of dark places? This is where Jesus comes in again - when he enters our hearts, when he transforms us, when his grace is there, when we know the baptismal blessing - that is, when he know that he is delighting in us as his beloved children, even as his Father delighted in him as the beloved Son, then we have something inside us that enables us to look someone straight in the eye and to give out of that straightness. There is lots of talk these days about "obstruction of justice." I "agin" it, but as a Christian I have to be also very concerned about "obstruction of grace." When God says, "you are my son, my daughter, and I delight in you," and offers us the grace to enable us to follow Jesus in the straight, righteous life, we dare not obstruct such grace. God forgive all the religious people who in self-righteousness obstruct grace. God empower us when words of grace are spoken to us that we may respond. THE PULL OF GRACE There is a lovely first prayer of a new Christian to illustrate the pull of grace in the Christian's life. It goes like this: "O God, I am Mustafah the tailor and I work at the shop of Muhammad Ali. The whole day long I sit and pull the needle and the thread through the cloth. O God, you are the needle and I am the thread. I am attached to you and I follow you. When the thread tries to slip away from he needle, it become tangled and must be cut so that it can be out back in the right place. O God, help me to follow wherever you may lead me. For I am only Mustafah the tailor, and I work at the shop of Muhammad Ali on the great square."[7] I love the sense of following Jesus as the pull the draws us forward into righteousness. Righteousness is the by-product of following Jesus, of being attached to him, wherever he leads. Mustafah had it right! CONCLUSION Another way of getting at the same thing comes from a verse of a hymn we usually sing at Thanksgiving, We Gather Together. "Beside us to guide us, our God with us joining, Ordaining, maintaining His kingdom divine; So from the beginning the fight we were winning, Thou, Lord, wast at our side; all glory be Thine!"[8] Beside us...our God with us joining...from the beginning...at our side... In baptism Jesus is at our side from the beginning joining with us at the outset of our Christian journey. In baptism we are doing something Jesus did in the way he did it. From the beginning of our relationship with him, we have him at our side, our God with us joining to fulfill all righteousness. Notes: [1] Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking - A Theological ABC [New York: Harper and Row] 1973, "Righteousness," p. 82 [2] Matthew 5: 20 [3] James C. Dobson, Straight Talk to Men and Their Wives [Waco, Texas: WORD Books] 1980, pp. 114ff. [4] Hebrews 4: 15 [5] Lectionary Homiletics, January 1999, "Exegesis of Matthew 3: 13-17," Joe E. Lunceford, p. 8 [6] John 1: 14 [7] quoted by William H. Willimon, Pulpit Resource, Vol. 27, No. 1, January, February, March 1999, p. 7, from The Oxford Book of Prayer, George Appleton, gen. ed. [New York: Oxford University Press] 1985, p. 88 [8] "We Gather Together," The Baptist Hymnal, edited by Wesley L. Forbis [Nashville: Convention Press] 1993, No. 636 |