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I.
As some of you know, I was a "first-born," and issues of birth-order have
always been important to me. One of the pervasive attitudes I carry, which I blame on this dynamic of being a first-born,
is a perpetual striving for perfection and righteousness. I always felt I had to be perfect, a positive example, good, responsible,
low-maintanence, user-friendly, infinitely forebearing, and problem-free. If I succeeded admirably in some of these areas,
I felt I at least had to look like I was succeeding in them all. I had to give at least the appearance of being righteous,
good, and perfect.
In other words, I was very hard on myself and tended to keep any conflict
or difficulty I was having with life a secret to be dealt with on my own, because to reveal such weaknesses was admitting
a certain imperfection, vulnerability, and unrighteousness. I was striving to earn acceptance, affection, trust, and love,
by being as perfect and righteous as I could.
You might say that I was sort of naturally following in the footsteps of the
writer of this letter to the Romans, after whom I was named. Because he too had striven mightily to be perfect. And he achieved
righteousness by the standards of his own faith and tradition. He was a Pharisee, and a very good one! He was dedicated to
the Law and the traditions of his people. And he was zealous in identifying and stamping out imperfection and unrighteousness
whenever and wherever he saw it, whether it was inside himself or in his community.
He stood by, holding people’s coats and nodding his stern approval as
a mob stoned a Christian named Stephen to death. And he made it his sacred calling to hound and harass these heretics whose
faith was contrary to the traditional standards. He was absolute in his dedication to being righteous, upright, perfect, pure,
and zealous for God. He was also a very angry, fearful, tight, closed, frustrated, and bitter individual, as we will see in
chapter seven of this book.
And so was I, when I emerged from my own adolescence. I was angry that all
this striving for perfection, all this compliance and doing what I thought other people wanted me to do, didn’t seem
to get me anywhere. Not only did it not get me any of the tangible benefits I expected, but I was very hurt and lost inside.
I had my righteousness, I had my perfection... but I was not happy.
Now, I did not have the benefit of being struck blind on the road to Damascus,
with the heavenly voice of Jesus ringing in my ears. But I was drawn into a position where I had to deal with God’s
Word in great detail and intimacy: I became a minister and I had to make some sense of this book for a bunch of people every
week. And, over years and years of grappling with this text, I began to realize that my assumptions about righteousness, among
other things, were completely wrong. In fact, my whole approach to life was based on assumptions that were simply not true.
II.
I think this approach was based on my understanding of God. And I suspect
that being a first-born was instrumental in bringing me to this understanding.
It is truly remarkable the way first-borns are depicted in scripture. They
are the ones who are striving to be perfect and good, but who usually just don’t get it. Think of Jacob and his older
brother Esau, or the older brothers of Joseph, or of David. Think of the elder brother in Jesus’ story of the Prodigal
Son. Think of the imagery of the Jewish Christians as the rigid, perfectionistic, older brothers and the Gentile Christians
as the younger ones who are acquainted with forgiveness.
I don’t know why I thought I had to be perfect. I don’t know why
I felt I had to earn acceptance through compliant behavior. I don’t know why I felt a deep need to be as righteous as
I could. But for whatever reason, I saw God as absolutely unchanging and unsympathetic, ultimately demanding, and supremely
willing to inflict punishment for the slightest transgression.
To understand righteousness as this kind of strict, perfectionistic moral
standard can only mean whipping yourself and others into line. And, when I think of it, the people I have met who were considered
the most "righteous" by this puritanical measurement, were also often the most sour, unhappy, angry, and even nasty and unforgiving
people. Like:
---The old ladies who yelled at us kids in Ocean Grove, and even summoned
the police, for the heinous crime of riding our bicycles on Sunday.
---The fundamentalist students at seminary, who, it seemed, were always trying
to burn somebody at the stake, always diligent and delighting in finding heretics, witches, perverts, pagans, and "secular
humanists" among the students and faculty, and who were most enthusiastic about condemning them in the name of God.
---The radicals I knew in college who had a pathological and self-righteous
need to believe the worst about everything, especially their perceived enemies, so they could be justified in trashing them,
but who had no sense of responsibility about their own actions.
---Those today who are quick to demand righteousness, self-discipline, civic
virtue, sacrifice, and moral rectitude from everyone else, especially the poor and minorities, but who like to overlook the
wasteful, profligate, irresponsible lives of themselves and other they deem as "successful." Wealthy people are inherently
sinless in their eyes, as far as I can tell.
Most of the folks we describe as "righteous" seem to be motivated by fear
and rage. They seem to have in common a conviction about the pervasiveness of human sinfulness which says that "I became righteous
by whipping myself into line and denying myself and punishing myself, and I can help others become righteous by inflicting
the same treatment on them." The stereotypical caricature of the traditional Calvinist as someone who was always worried that
somewhere someone might be laughing, is operative here.
III.
The righteousness of God is arguably the core message of Paul’s letter
to the Romans. And if we think that Paul is understanding righteousness according to any of the distorted and twisted examples
I just gave, we are going to misunderstand not only his whole book, but the whole Christian faith. More specifically, if we
think of righteousness in these purely judgmental and retributive terms, we are also going to profoundly misread the rest
of chapter one of this book.
So we need to get clear what’s going on when we talk about the righteousness
of God. And it immediately becomes apparent that it emphatically does not mean God’s harsh, vindictive, careless,
punishing judgment against us and our sins. Rather, the righteousness of God, for Paul, is good news. And at the beginning
of this chapter, we hear that the good news, or "gospel," is about the One "who was descended from David according to the
flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus
Christ our Lord."
In other words, God’s righteousness is revealed in the gospel,
the good news. It is shown, not in God’s violent wrath and judgment, but in God’s salvation and
deliverance. This is what is accomplished in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We see God’s righteousness more
clearly and frequently in God’s saving power, than in God’s anger and punishment.
In the resurrection, God reveals the truth about the world and about life.
And the truth is that it’s all good, it’s all blessed, all creation is redeemed and renewed. The resurrection
shows us God’s life sustaining and permeating all things. This new reality is not something that is "coming," strictly
speaking, as if it were relegated to the future, but the new reality is something that is already here, next to us, which
the resurrection reveals to us.
God’s righteousness is simply the way things really are. There is an
order, wholeness, harmony, purpose, direction, and integrity to reality. Everything that exists fits into the system and works
together for good. And we receive life and the ability to perceive and celebrate God in creation, not because we have earned
it by our righteousness or obedience, but as a gift.
In fact, our righteousness is not important. All that matters is the
righteousness of God. All that matters is God’s goodness, deliverance, and blessing. All that matters is that we and
our world are created in love, by love, and for love.
IV.
There is, then, a sense in which righteousness is the most literally "natural"
condition in the universe. God’s righteousness shows us the way things would be were there no interference from the
powers of evil or human sinfulness. Righteousness means the balanced, orderly, interactive, reciprocal, mutual, functional,
harmonious state of the creation according to God's will and plan.
In the Greek language Paul is using, the word for righteousness probably derives
from the word for what "shows" itself, what presents itself as natural, basic, fundamental, good; the way things truly are.
And by faith we live in harmony with this reality in integrity, virtue, purity
of life, rightness, and correctness of thinking, feeling, and acting. We are righteous when we are as we ought to be. When
we live according to God’s love and justice. When we dwell in communion with God, creation, and each other. When we
fit into our place in the created order. That, and not a judgmental perfectionism, is what true righteousness is.
In other words, you have to start with the premise that the creation, all
of life, each human being, and yourself, are good, blessed, and cherished by God. And in starting with the resurrection, Christianity
begins with just this assumption. Sin, death, and evil have been defeated. Satan has fallen and been disarmed. The darkness
flees the saving power of the Light.
This is what the righteousness of God is; we participate in that righteousness
when this same love and redemption, this same good news, flows through us and into other lives. We participate in it when
we start to dwell together according to the goodness of God and the goodness of creation. We participate in it when we worship,
pray, and sing together, seeing the unseen truth around us made visible in Word and Sacrament.
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