Relational Righteousness
“Relational Righteousness”
Isaiah 42:1-9 Matthew 3:13-17
Baptism of the Lord Sunday, Year A, January 12, 2020
First Presbyterian Church of Sandpoint, Idaho
Andrew Kennaly, Pastor
This has been a busy week, with study groups and committees early in the week, and then a couple meetings in Spokane, a car appointment at the dealership, and a major snow storm, which usually involves snow shoveling and snow blowing, and thankfully, this time, a bit of skiing in the powder. Through texting I coordinated the replacement of a door here in the church, in the retreat room. I was in Spokane while Todd Vorhies and his crew did their work. Then the locksmith came and put the new door knob and dead bolt in, again coordinating over the phone while in Spokane. A busy week, lots of details and logistics and travel and meetings and talking and wrestling in the spirit for silence, perspective, and peace.
This is Epiphany, a season we focus on God with Us. Today is the Baptism of the Lord Sunday, which comes every year and includes John and Jesus at the Jordan fulfilling all righteousness. But what does that mean? Fulfilling all righteousness? It really depends on what angle you’re coming from in terms of assumptions, paradigms, and doctrinal understandings. But before we get too theological in our ontological reflections of Christology and Incarnation, I want to tell you more about my week, and see if you also make connections as this text from Matthew, along with Isaiah’s amazing images, weave in and out of ordinary experience.
Let’s go backwards, from yesterday and skiing on the mountain. Shawna and I were able to take one run together, but then she needed to go teach skiing. This means, for the other runs, I rode up the chairlift with people I didn’t know because I was skiing by myself most of the morning. One of the chairlift conversations involved a person who was an older guy, from around here, and we were going up one of the brand new chairlifts on the backside. The more he talked about the mountain, the new chairlifts, the terrain, the more negativity came out. Even when he had something positive to comment on, he did it in a negative way. He was a real downer, a grumpy old man, critical, cynical, and selfish. He used foul language, and had a idealized view of the past, the good old days, which makes the present not very good by comparison. He continually judged, and illustrates dualistic thinking, which is not very content because it involves labeling everything as good or bad, and in black and white, cut and dry ways. I felt sort of bad for the guy because his brain has neuropathways of negativity pretty entrenched at this point. I was glad to get off the chairlift, and get away from his cycles of negativity and stinkin’ thinkin.’
Back on the front side of the mountain, I skied down to the bottom of the beginner run and there was a class of kids ready to load the chairlift. The instructor asked if I would ride up the lift with Sophie, a little girl. Ok, that’s fine, so we made it onto the chair and as we rode along I mentioned that her name was very similar to Sophia. She said that’s her real name. I said that is a very special name because it means, Wisdom. Then she asked, “What is wisdom?” What is wisdom? I said a few things, and mentioned that wisdom is what you have when you are wise. “What is wise?” What is wise? I said a few other things and we had a great conversation, at the level of a child who is not ignorant, but is innocent, and hasn’t gotten sucked into prideful patterns, but remains open, questioning, bright eyed, and trusting as she talked about her parents, her family, and skiing.
On Friday I went to the Fiat place in Spokane. I’d stayed at my sister’s house, and my other sister was also there because she was catching a plane to head south where she will stay with my parents while she has surgery on a cancer tumor. Thursday night we went down to Shadle Park Presbyterian Church and met with the pastor and some elders and had a time of prayer for my sister, asking God to help her in this time, seeking healing, and supporting one another. A prayer meeting seeking righteousness.
Back to the car dealer. Time for an oil change and other maintenance at the threshold of mileage that car is at, so I waited while the work was getting done. A few hours later, I drove away in a car that had been made righteous once again. A righteous car. That’s because “righteous” means everything is working in proper relationship. The fluids are full, the metal parts are lubed, the bolts are tight, the tires have air. All the parts and pieces are doing what they are designed to do, and the car is working.
In the baptism of Jesus, John is questioning why Jesus even wants this. John, who gives a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, he thinks Jesus should baptize him. But Jesus insists that John baptize Jesus “for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”
To fulfill all righteousness, to get everything working properly together. Is this relational in focus, or is this behavioral in focus? In baptism, being marked as Christ’s own forever through the blessing of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, symbolized by the washing of water, we participate in fulfilling all righteousness because we die and rise with Christ. The fancy, theological word for this is “Atonement.”
It seems most of Christianity, especially in the Western branch of the larger church, atonement is based on the sin-redemption paradigm. This usually involves some form of substitution, where Jesus takes punishment to make us right with God, as if God needs appeasing in order to love us. Or, atonement could also involve a dualistic battle, spiritual warfare with Jesus fighting the devil, and the more we pray for God to bind Satan, the more Jesus wins. This makes things right and gives Jesus the ultimate victory, and some day in the future, Jesus will come back and the devil will be totally destroyed forever.
A third option for atonement, seeking the fulfilling of all righteousness, leans more on the relational aspect, and Jesus getting baptized makes more sense when seen through relationship, that Jesus is claiming the original blessedness of life, the love of God that always unites to the point where the word “atonement” sounds even more accurate, pronounced “at-one-ment.” As Jesus comes out of the water, a heavenly voice declares relationship, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” This is an archetypal statement, and we, too, participate relationally in fulfilling all righteousness.
But our participation is also a call to trust, even through very challenging times of struggle and suffering, and even as we learn to face one of the most difficult aspects of being human: which is, our own thinking. Human pride, opinions, judgments, are all indicators that we have bought into dualism, assuming there is a separation between God and everything else, between us as individuals experiencing life in the world, and it’s unsettling.
Baptism involves water, for us either by sprinkling or immersion. Jesus was in the water of the Jordan, and in that culture water symbolized death and chaos. Like Genesis opening the bible story of creation by the Spirit hovering over the waters, bringing order out of chaos as God says one aspect of creation after another. That Jesus does enter the water, goes under it in baptism, this is a visual that Jesus is dying to his self, and for the eastern branch of Christianity, this moment is the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, and the pivotal action of God, who is with us through Christ in baptism.
It is hard work, dying to ourselves. It’s hard work partly because we start out with mixed up assumptions. Even John was mixed up, confusing repentance with relationship, confusing conduct with covenant, and confusing behavior with Beloved-ness. Jesus gets everything working in proper relationship once again, and God is well pleased.
In Matthew Chapter 2, John cries out “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” In Matthew chapter 3, Jesus is baptized. In Matthew chapter 4, Jesus repeats what John was saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near. The word “repent,” is metanoeite (meta-noy-ite) in Greek. We need to change our understandings of what that word means if we want to experience the fullness of righteousness in a relational sense.
Richard Rohr reminds us in his book, The Universal Christ, that
“Jesus quite clearly believed in change. In fact, the first public word out of his mouth was the Greek imperative verb, metanoeite, (meta-noy-ite) which literally translates as ‘change your mind’ or ‘go beyond your mind.’ Unfortunately, in the fourth century, St. Jerome translated the word into Latin as paenitentia (pay-nin-tentua), [meaning] (‘repent’ or ‘do penance’), initiating a host of moralistic connotations that have colored Christian’s understanding of the Gospels ever since. The word, metanoeite (meta-noy-ite), however, is talking about a primal change of mind, worldview, or your way of processing – and only by corollary about a specific change in behavior. The common misunderstanding puts the cart before the horse; we think we can change a few externals while our underlying worldview often remains fully narcissistic and self-referential. This misunderstanding contributed to a puritanical, externalized, and largely static notion of the Christian message […]. Faith became about external requirements that could be enforced, punished, and rewarded, much more than an actual change of heart and mind, which Jesus describes as something that largely happens ‘in secret, where your Father who sees all that is done in secret can reward you’ (Matthew 6:4,6,18). Jesus made […] religion about interior change and ‘purity of heart’. (Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ, Convergent Books, Center for Action and Contemplation, 2019, pages 92-93).
It’s hard work to have a paradigm shift. It’s upsetting if you learn assumptions may be wrong. But to fulfill all righteousness, we die and rise with Christ, and this involves dying to our self, our false self, our ego-centered worldviews and our opinions that betray the fact that we’re often stuck in dualism rather than unitive consciousness that claims relationship at all levels of reality held together by God, who is love’s essence and is the subject, not the object, of devotion and covenant life.
In the week ahead, look for your own stories, and ask God to help you become aware of those moments in which Jesus is nudging you deeper into the waters of renewal. And God’s humble love is good, Now, as always.