“What is Righteousness?”
Matthew 1:18-25
What is the first image that pops into your head when you hear the word “righteous?”
Do you think of some fire and brimstone preacher with a red face who points a finger at sinners and declares them guilty in the eyes of an angry god?
Or do you think of angels, harps and clouds?
Perhaps you think of righteous indignation—anger in the face of injustice.
***Put up on the Screen the Picture of the Church Lady***
Maybe the first image to pop into your head is someone who comes off as self-righteous—thinking they are better than others when it comes to morals and character—someone like “The Church Lady” from Saturday night live.
Or perhaps you think of a good and virtuous person—someone like Mother Teresa or Saint Francis.
We don’t tend to use the word “righteous” much these days.
At least, I don’t hear it in everyday conversations, do you?
In any event, Matthew describes Joseph as a “righteous man.”
What does Matthew mean by this?
Originally, the Hebrew word for a righteous person would mean that Joseph was ethical and chose the right path.
But by the time of Jesus the religious system was such that a righteous person was known for their uncompromising strict obedience to Torah, the Law of Moses as it was interpreted by the leading sect at that time—the Pharisees.
And the Pharisees were what we would call today: Fundamentalists or Literalists.
Jesus called them, “Whitewashed Tombs that look clean on the outside but on the inside are filled with dead man’s bones.”
He said they were hypocrites and were leading people away from God’s Kingdom rather than toward it.
And ultimately, they were the ones who would force Pilate to have Jesus arrested and killed for....according to them, “Breaking God’s Laws.”
So, speaking from the perspective of the religious system of Joseph’s day--righteous would mean that Joseph didn’t eat unclean food.
It would mean that Joseph didn’t mix with the wrong kinds of people, which—when we are honest about this—would have naturally caused him to look down on others, judging them and so forth.
It would also mean that Joseph wouldn’t have kept his carpentry shop open on the Sabbath, nor would he have helped a neighbor fix their fence on the Sabbath.
No one would have invited Joseph over to have ham sandwiches with tax collectors and prostitutes, or if they had, he would have said: “No!”
Most every Jewish person of Joseph’s day who took their religion seriously wanted to be righteous or at least seen by others as righteous.
Being thought of as righteous meant you were admired and looked up to.
You were respected.
You were SOMEBODY.
And that was Joseph…
…or was it?
One thing is for sure.
If Joseph was, indeed, righteous he was turning the 1st Century Religious System’s understanding of righteousness on its head and taking us back to the original.
When Mary found out she was pregnant she must have told Joseph that she had become pregnant through the Holy Spirit.
It doesn’t appear that Joseph believed her.
Would you?
Of course, Joseph thought Mary had been unfaithful to him, and of course this broke his heart…
…and since he was just a human being it must have also made him feel utterly betrayed, humiliated and angry.
He very easily, in his anger and in following the letter of the Law could have had Mary put to death.
This would have saved his reputation.
But instead, Joseph, did not want Mary publicly disgraced nor killed.
So, he planned, instead, to end the marriage quietly.
And, in doing this, instead of making Mary look bad—Joseph is the one who was about to lose his good reputation.
At first, people would just think Mary and Joseph had a falling out.
But as soon as people started to notice that Mary was pregnant, they would come to believe that before their actual wedding ceremony Joseph and Mary had been intimate and then Joseph dumped her.
Joseph would take the blame.
He would look like the bad guy.
Mary’s dignity would be intact and no one would be put to death.
This implies that the real meaning of righteousness in God’s eyes is to be merciful, forgiving, loving—and to believe that these things TRUMP the literal words written in Torah or the Hebrew Bible—our Old Testament since Leviticus 20:10 clearly and literally says that Mary, for committing adultery should or must be put to death.
Joseph, the person who is called “a righteous man” in our passage for this morning wasn’t a biblical literalist and neither was Jesus.
For example, when the Pharisees criticized Jesus for making friends with and eating with tax collectors, prostitutes and “sinners”—which would have been anyone who broke one of the 661 Laws in the Old Testament Jesus explained Himself to them in this way: “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’”
When the Pharisees criticized Jesus for allowing His disciples to harvest grain on the Sabbath—breaking another Law—Jesus said the same thing.
Leviticus is the same book of the Bible that people today use to condemn homosexuals and claim that they are going to hell.
Is that righteousness?
Many would say it is.
It is easy to use the Bible to justify all sorts of things…
…if we want to go all literal.
***PUT Screen with the Picture From the Paper “Earth’s Final Warning” up on the screen******
I was in Denver Colorado the week before last, and while I was waiting for my hotel room to become available I came across this Advertisement in the paper.
The Church or Ministry that paid for this Ad is called “Christ our Righteousness Ministry.”
This is their interpretation of righteousness.
And they get the idea from an unbending literalist reading of the Bible.
If we were to look at Exodus 20 we would find the infamous Ten Commandments.
And the Sixth Commandment reads: “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.
Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to your God.”
The seventh day is of course—Saturday.
That is the literal biblical Sabbath.
And this is the day that the Jews originally worshiped God.
They still do.
And remember, Christianity is actually a sect of Judaism.
Our Old Testament is the Hebrew Bible which makes up a lot more of our Modern Day Bible than the New Testament.
At some point, Christians started worshiping God on Sundays—probably since that was the day of the week that Jesus rose from the dead—but we don’t know for sure.
There is no place in the Bible that says “The Sabbath is now on Sunday.”
In any event, this group and a lot of other groups like it think most church people are breaking God’s Law by worshiping on Sunday rather than Saturday and they build their entire theology around this one thing.
Thus, these poor folks are so weighed down by the Law that they actually believe what this ad says and pay good money to try and get others to believe it.
They live in fear.
If they were to worship God on Sunday they think God will ultimately send them to hell.
One of their problems and the problem for many of us is that they worship the Bible rather than the Living God.
We have the capacity to be so cruel to one another, so unforgiving, so vicious, but that wasn’t Joseph.
And that wasn’t Jesus either.
When the Pharisees criticized Jesus for making friends with and eating with tax collectors, prostitutes and “sinners”—which would have been anyone who broke one of the 661 Laws in the Old Testament Jesus explained Himself to them in this way: “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’”
When the Pharisees criticized Jesus for allowing His disciples to harvest grain on the Sabbath—breaking another Law—Jesus said the same thing.
God is often depicted as being a moral policeman who is out to get us, and Christianity has been used to judge, condemn and humiliate people and still is.
When I was in grade school we lived in an area of the country where corporeal punishment was legal and used regularly.
The Principal of our school, Mr. Dexter was a man we all feared.
I remember him walking through the crowded cafeteria in the morning when all the kids were to sit in perfect single file lines and stay quiet carrying a huge paddle with holes in it.
If a kid was talking when he or she was not supposed to—Mr. Dexter would lift that child up in front of the entire school and paddle them and then violently throw them back down to the floor.
The child would be left red faced and humiliated in front of everyone.
The Bible is often used as if it were a paddle in the hands of an angry God.
And this anger and judgement masquerades as something called “righteousness.”
Thankfully, Jesus looks nothing like this God.
Jesus looks like the God Who is Love—unconditional and unearned love.
It was because of this love, that Joseph had mercy on Mary.
And Jesus is all about mercy.
And mercy is a universal human need.
Often times people think God doesn’t love them or accept them if they mess up or sin.
This can lead to self-hatred and can cause mental illness.
This dark view of God is the weapon used by cults and the Fundamentalist Church.
Jesus teaches that the concern of God is not about how many rules we can correctly follow, but with reaching out to others with God’s steadfast love and mercy.
God loves it when we live this way.
Joseph is called a “righteous man” because this is the way he reacted to Mary in the face of what must have been the worst kind of assault to his heart, his life, his ego.
We are told that after finding out Mary was pregnant Joseph “had in mind to divorce her quietly.
But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit…’
…All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: ‘The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and they will call him Immanuel’ (which means ‘God with us’).”
And so, God is with us.
And God is Righteous.
This means God is love.
This means God is full of mercy.
This means we need not fear God.
And if we follow and seek to imitate this God, it will transform our lives and the lives of others into something good, merciful and filled with compassion and love for God and others.
Let us pray:
Dear God, we thank You, that You are not an angry and mean tyrant who is out to get us, but instead, you are on our side.
You love us unconditionally.
And You want us to love You and others with the same love You show us.
May it be so.
In Jesus’ name we pray.
Amen.
