|
It’s All About Righteousness
The First Sunday after the Epiphany (Year A, RCL)
January 13, 2008
The Reverend Paul R. Abernathy, Rector
In this life, it oft has been said, there are two significant moments from which all else comes. Without the first, there is nothing else. Without
the second, there is nothing else that really matters.
The first. One’s birth. The inauguration of one’s life in this world. The second. One’s second birth. The revelation or awareness of who one is and
why one was born.
So, the Bible says, it was for Jesus.
It is no accident that the church first celebrates Christmas, the birth, the nativity of Jesus and follows with the season of Epiphany, the principal
proclamation of which is who Jesus is and why he was born. Epiphany declares that Jesus is one whose life and ministry of love, unconditional
benevolence, and justice, right and fair dealing, are universal. For all people. To the whole world.
And it is no accident that we, the church, in Epiphany, celebrate Baptism. Whatever we understand Baptism to be – a Christian rite of passage, the
initiatory rite of welcome into the life of the community of the followers of Jesus (yes, it is that) – it is more. It is that act by and through
which we, ritually, symbolically point to the very truth of our lives. That we, like Jesus, are to be incarnations, embodiments of love and justice.
For all people. To the whole world. We remind ourselves of this reality, our reality every time we ask ourselves, in the words of
the Baptismal Covenant, we will love our neighbors as ourselves and will we strive for justice and peace among all
people?[1]
For no other reason than to make this point about the universality of Jesus’ mission and that we are to share in it, do we read Matthew’s gospel
account of Jesus’ baptism,[2] which recounts one detail, a conversation, that no other evangelist – not Mark, not Luke,
not John – recalls.
John the Baptizer proclaimed that God’s Messiah was coming, the preparation for which was a baptism of repentance – being washed in water as a sign
of one’s decision to forsake selfish self-interest for the sake of God’s will. Matthew tells us that Jesus is God’s Messiah. Yet, he, who needs no
repentance, submits to baptism. Why? John, seeing, indeed, being shocked by the irony, verily, the nonsense of it all, would refuse. But Jesus says,
“Just do it, John! It’s all about righteousness!”
Righteousness. Not merely that moral quality of goodness, virtuousness, or even rightness. But rather that state of the fulfillment of God’s purposes
for humankind from the time of creation’s dawn. In other words, Jesus’ submission to a baptism he ostensibly does not need is a sign of his decision
to share in the truth of human life.
And that truth is all about righteousness. All about love and justice. All about whether you and I dare decide to share in that truth, being
incarnations, embodiments of unconditional benevolence to all and fair dealing with all, particularly those unlike us and those we don’t like.
This business of our earthly nativity, our being born in flesh in this world happens only once for each of us. However, our epiphany, our revelation
of who we are and why we are born is a decidedly repeatable historical event. As long as life lasts, there are epiphanies, revealing to us, clarifying
for us, deepening our awareness of why we were born.
My sense of why I was born, grounded in my interpretation of the gospel, is love and justice. I was born to do, to be love and justice.
Loving you. Being fair to you. And when I fail, loving justly and just loving you again.
And now, more than ever before, I want to practice what I have learned here with you, doing love and justice, being love and justice outside of our
community, for all people, to the whole world.
That is what righteousness is for me. What is it for you? Why have you been born?
[1] The Book of Common Prayer, page 305
[2] Matthew 3.13-17
|