Getting It Right

Pineda Presbyterian Church

January 8, 2017

“Getting It Right”

I’m reading a book right now by Michael Lewis titled “The Undoing Project.”  It’s about a pair of Israeli psychologists who sort of pushed the bounds of psychology.  Their work changed the face of modern medicine while knowing nothing about medicine and one of them earned a Nobel Prize in economics despite never having taken an economics course in his life. 

Their study interest was how the human mind makes decisions especially in the face of limited data and uncertainty.  They asked questions that no one had ever asked before in the recognition that we bring bias – generally unrecognized bias - to every decision that we make.  And we are inclined to want to express certainty about the decisions.

Let me share a bit of their wisdom:

“People are very good at detecting patterns and trends even in random data [in other words even where there are no real patterns].  In contrast to our skill in inventing scenarios, explanations, and interpretations, our ability to assess their likelihood, or to evaluate them critically, is grossly inadequate.  Once we have adopted a particular hypothesis or interpretation, we grossly exaggerate the likelihood of that hypothesis, and find it very difficult to see things any other way. [P 205f]”

They are describing universal traits that impact how we buy things, why we believe things, how we think the stock market will move, how physicians decide what’s wrong with us and how to treat us (that’s a particularly unnerving part of the book!), and even how we decide matters of faith. And always we express certainty.

Even when we read words – words that are right there in front of us on a printed page, or on the screen of a e-reader – we make assumptions about those words.  The first assumption is that we know what the words mean!  The second assumption is that we know objectively what the words mean.  When we say our faith is based upon the revelation of scripture very few of us ever take the time to actually understand what scripture is saying.  (One of the most fascinating statistics I’ve ever seen is the very large percentage of people who say the Bible is the literal word of God and have never read the Bible.)

When Jesus came to John to be baptized, John didn’t think that it was proper.  Jesus replied: “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness. [Matt 3:15]”  In the English Bible “righteousness” is a very frequently occurring word.  In fact, English has a hard time translating either the Hebrew or the Greek words that we translate as “righteousness.”  The use of “righteousness” is a judgment call, a considered opinion, a decision made in an environment of uncertainty. 

In Isaiah we read:

He will faithfully bring forth justice [fair judgment].
He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice [fair judgment] in the earth;[Isaiah 42:3-4]

I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness [saving justice], I have taken you by the hand and kept you;[Isaiah 42:6]

And as we just pointed out, in Matthew it says: “But Jesus answered him, ‘Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness. [do all that uprightness demands]’ [Matt 3:15]”

The texts from Isaiah that we translate as “justice” and as “righteousness” can also be translated as “fair judgment [JB] and “saving justice[JB].”  And the Matthew text in which Jesus tells John that John must baptize Jesus to “fulfill all righteousness” can also be translated that they may do “all that uprightness demands [JB].”

The root of this word “righteousness” is “law.”   Through several variants in both Hebrew and Greek, it moves from law, to doing the law, to fulfilling the demands of the law, to doing justice, to aligning with God’s law, to treating everyone without favor and expressing judgments that are fair to everyone in both legal matters and economic matters, to being at one with God’s law and God’s will. 

But God didn’t just send down a legal code and say “Here. Do this or else.”  God established a covenant with His people, a relationship of mutual obligations.  He was also bound in loving response to the way the people remained faithful to the covenant.  So “righteous” is also a word applied to God.  In remaining faithful to the covenant, God is in a righteous relationship with us. 

Another interesting word: relationship.  Jesus sought to be righteous, that is he sought to be in a relationship with God that was in harmony with the covenant and God’s will.  That’s why Jesus was called “beloved.”  He was seeking to love God in the manner in which he lived and was pronounced beloved by God.

When Jesus came to John, he came as a sign of assent to the mission for which had come among us.  This wasn’t some romanticized vision of baptism in the river.  Baptism among the Jews was an act of repentance.  Jesus comes humbly, as a repentant human – one of us – seeking to fulfill God’s will for him. 

Because he was human his ministry willed by God could only begin with repentance, and that is what is being acted out here.  Even though John recognizes that Jesus is the one whose way he is preparing, the one who comes after him, the one who is greater than any human, Jesus acknowledges to God and instructs John that because of the fullness of his own humanity he too must repent, that is turn around and move toward God.  He has willingly come to complete God’s desire for his ministry and that confirms his acceptance of God’s call.  This is Jesus’ first step in the life that must lead to sacrifice and triumph.  His baptism expresses his faithfulness to God’s purposes and commission.

That’s why God is well pleased. 

We live with so many assumptions and misconceptions and biases.  We want to achieve a high level of certainty in our faith, although if truth were known what we want is a high level of certainty in our deliverance, our salvation. And since despite scripture we are convinced that somehow, something that we do – ritually or habitually or perhaps even socially – will impact our salvation, we have to be certain that the choices we make for our religious expression are the absolutely correct ones.  The more certainty we carry – more likely out of fear than out of love – the more certainty we carry the less likely we are to ever see things any other way.  And the more convinced we are of our own certainty the more likely we are to want to impose our choices on others as a way of confirming our certainty.

Well here’s a little secret for you.  We live our immortal lives every moment of every day with ultimate uncertainty.  Let me read the simplest and most complicated piece of Christian theology in all of Scripture.  It’s from Romans 3:

21 But now, irrespective of law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, ²²the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ - for all who believe. For there is no distinction, ²³since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; ²⁴they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, ²⁵whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement - by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; ²⁶it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus.

I spent a year on those few sentences once.  I don’t claim to fully understand them, but I know this.  All have sinned and fall short.  Every human being falls short.  Martin Luther said if you want to know if you are a sinner, here’s a very simple test.  Take your thumb and first finger and place them at your breast.  Now push against your breast and pinch the two fingers together.  If perchance you feel flesh – I’ve always loved that phrase: if perchance you feel flesh -  you are a sinner. 

The first step back to God is repentance.  Just as it was for Jesus, it’s our initial acknowledgement that we want to pursue God’s will for us.  It’s the acceptance of God’s grace for you.  It’s that first step of the journey of 10,000 miles, or however long your journey on God’s path becomes.  That is the first act of faith, and without it there is no journey, there is no real faith.  That’s the first decision that a Christian must make. 

After you take that step you will have given up control of your life  -  including all the variables that you feel you must know about and all your certainties – and turned your daily existence over to God.  The only certainty is God’s faithfulness.  We have been made righteous – that is to say we have been justified – by the sacrifice and triumph of Jesus. That is the righteousness of God.

Paul often referred to the early Christians as the righteous.  They were the ones who pursued God’s will for their lives.  Sometimes they were persecuted for their righteousness.  They were persecuted for putting God’s will ahead of the will of the religious leaders or even the will of the Empire. Once they had turned back to God, once they had repented, they didn’t want to turn back to their old ways.  They wanted to keep and nurture their relationship with God and love God by aligning their will with God’s. 

They repented every day because they didn’t have certainty about how they were living.  They repented every day to turn again to the Lord and ask to try again to seek God’s will in their lives.  They repented every day because nothing they could do could earn them a place in God’s Kingdom.  They repented every day to recommit their lives to the pursuit of God. 

That’s how it begins.  There isn’t much certainty in the life of a Christian because there is a lot of trust, a lot of faith.  We receive that trust through the grace of God.  We build our covenant relationship with God through prayer and faith.  By the grace of God we discern God’s will for us through prayer and we live it out trusting in God’s faithfulness, God’s righteousness. 

Great is God’s faithfulness. 

Amen