Jul 02, 2017

 

Follower of Jesus (25)

Blessed are those who hunger

And thirst for righteousness,

For they shall be satisfied. (1)

               Matt. 5:6

Ahh! This is one, just by the title, that makes those who consider themselves ‘righteous’, bristle with what they consider proper pride and indignation at all that they consider ‘non-righteous’. For instance, all those who proclaim their indignation and anger at the gay world, quoting from an obscure passage in the Old Testament, whole ignoring all the proclamations around it that make no sense in the modern world (such as the prohibition of two different types of thread in a garment), feel justified in their ‘righteous anger’, as they call it and themselves. These are the same ones who proclaim loudly the ten commandments, while ignoring the Sermon on the Mount as being irrelevant. Except that they point proudly at this statement by Jesus as justifying their blindness, and point at themselves as being the only ‘righteous ones’ in our society.

From what I have read, it is a shame that the translators from the Greek to the modern languages of the bible used the word ‘righteous’ in this form, because the way that the language is structured it led to several ways of interpreting this phrase, and the modern usage of ‘righteousness’ is not what Jesus meant in this context.

The definitions of the word ‘righteous’ is as follows:

1. : acting in accord with divine or moral law: free from the guilt of sin
2. a: morally right or justifiable – a righteous decision

b: arising from an outraged sense of justice or morality – righteous indignation

3. slang: genuine, excellent

many spiritual thinkers believe that this phrasing was used to keep the wording concise, but the way the words have changed over the years a wrong sense has risen that has given the opposite slant to the meaning that Jesus was intending with this strong statement. Strictly speaking, the word, according to the dictionary definition, fits well. “To act without sin” sure seems like a good way to phrase it, but who defines what is ‘sin’ or not? It is easy to pull obscure phrases out of the bible (there are lots of them) and twist them to suit ones’ feelings, but that does not make it right. Instead, it requires a look at the overall path being trod to understand how that term that we now call ‘righteous’ was meant when uttered by Jesus.

Jesus was the model of a righteous one. Let us look at the one time where Jesus expressed ‘righteous anger’ – the eviction of the money changers and the sellers of offering goods in the temple. “Then Jesus went into the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those selling doves. And he declared to them “It is written ‘My house will be called a house of prayer’. But you are making it a den of robbers.”” (Matt. 21:12-13). The anger displayed by Jesus was because all should have been part of the cycle of prayer, but it had been turned into a circus of buying, selling, haggling, probably shouting, and all the usual market place events of the day. (Anybody who has been to the Near East understands the noisy hubbub present in the market place.) The people being displaced by Jesus were doing nothing wrong or against the temple rules. Indeed, this was the rule of the temple: all sacrificial offerings were to be bought there in the entry way to make things more efficient in the streets and byways around the temple. Besides, the temple received a percentage of the price. The forecourt of the temple was a convenient place for all this to take place; but none of this furthered the purpose of the temple: a gathering place for the believers to pray and give thanks to God.

So who is a righteous one? Martin Luther King was certainly one. Gandhi was another. They are ones who saw a wrong, and proclaimed it, despite the dangers involved, leading eventually to their assassinations. This particular point in the sermon on the mount was meant to portray an action person who puts themselves in the front line for stopping or preventing cruelty to others or the environment.

We will look deeper at this next time.

Meditation

O Holy Wisdom, I bow before You in the midst of the chaos of this world. We fail to recognize Your face in all around me; we desecrate Your holy ground claiming our right; we despoil the very air we breathe for we cannot imagine running out of oxygen, and in general destroy the very home that supports us as well as believing all should be mine, mine, mine. I am grateful that Your Love envelopes us no matter how we act, it is in that steadfast Love that I lay myself in peace and joy. I ask Your continued aid in seeing and working to correct the injustices that surround me, and I place myself in Your care for keeping me in peace despite the chaos. I thank You at all times.