Whose Righteousness?

Calvin College Worship Symposium

 

WHOSE RIGHTEOUSNESS?

 

Sermon by Fleming Rutledge                                                                January 27, 2005

 

Texts: Psalm 118, Ezekiel 21

 

Whenever there is a war, the universal human tendency to divide up the world into “we” and “they” becomes even more pronounced than usual. “Our” side is good, “their” side is evil. We measure everything by ourselves, by our own assessment of what is good and right. This has become a hallmark of our present national mood. We are sure that God is on the side of America. After all, we Americans—as the president constantly reminds us—are good people. To use the phrase from Psalm 118, our soldiers on the battlefield dwell “in the tents of the righteous.” In his press conference on Wednesday, the president spoke of militant Islamists as “those who have this vision of the world that is the exact opposite of ours.”[1] A categorical statement like that, when repeated often enough, creates an atmosphere in which we feel that we are justified in treating our captured prisoners as less than fully human.

 

When I was asked to choose a text for my sermon on the theme of thanksgiving, I chose Psalm 118. I am now going to embarrass my hosts a little bit, because when I looked at the program for this evening, I noticed to my bemusement that the verses I was going to preach on had been omitted. Do you see those little dots? That’s where verses 5a-7 are supposed to be, but a gremlin has cut them out. Let me read them now:

 

Out of my distress I called on the Lord;

the Lord answered me and set me free.

With the Lord on my side I do not fear.

What can man do to me?

The Lord is on my side to help me;

I shall look in triumph on those who hate me......

 

Then we continue with the verses that were read in our service:

 

All nations surrounded me;

in the name of the Lord I cut them off...!

They surrounded me like bees,

they blazed like a fire of thorns [wonderfully vivid, isn’t it?];

in the name of the Lord I cut them off!

I was pushed hard, so that I was falling,

but the Lord helped me.

The Lord is my strength and my song;

he has become my salvation.

There are glad songs of victory

in the tents of the righteous...

 

Now on the face of it, this seems straightforward enough. The Psalmist is filled with thanksgiving to God because God is on the side of the righteous man and delivers him from all his enemies. Any faithful Christian anywhere, anytime, can identify with this joyful trust that God is on her side. The Lord is on my side to help me...This is the gate of the Lord; the righteous shall enter through it.

 

But the word righteous in the scripture is not exactly as it seems. To be sure, the Old Testament, and the Psalms in particular, are full of references to the righteous. We read a verse like this,  The Lord tests the righteous and the wicked, and his soul hates him that loves violence (Psalm 11:5), and we think we know what it means. It seems to divide humankind neatly, like Santa Claus, into “naughty and nice.” But it is not quite as simple as we think. In Psalm 143, for instance, the Psalmist prays fervently, Enter not into judgment with thy servant, for before thee no man living is righteous. Think also of the words of Isaiah (64:6): all our righteousness is as filthy rags. And remember how the apostle Paul, in Romans 3, says There is no one righteous, no, not one. Clearly it is not so easy to sort out what is meant by righteous and wicked, good and evil.

 

And think also of how Psalm 11 says that God hates the one who loves violence. This is confusing. The Old Testament is full of violence committed by those whom God loves. Well, maybe it means not those who do violence but those who love violence. But any honest observer of the American scene will admit that Americans seem to love violence. I have made a study of what goes on in video games, and it really is almost unbelievable. And what about the movies? When the second Quentin Tarantino Kill Bill movie was released, a reporter went to interview the young men standing in line at the box office. One of them said, “I like violence. That’s why I wanted to see it. And I don’t think that’s anything to be ashamed of.”[2]

 

War itself teaches nice American boys, and now increasingly nice American girls, to love violence when it is directed against those whom we have identified as our enemies. Many thoughtful writers like Chris Hedges, the distinguished war correspondent, and Anthony Swofford, the Marine who wrote the acclaimed book Jarhead, have shown us this. So who is it exactly that God hates? And who exactly are the righteous who will enter through the gate of the Lord?

 

Whenever we speak of war and of making distinctions between the righteous and the wicked, Abraham Lincoln can help us. He saw, as clearly as anyone ever has, the danger in being certain that one is on God’s side. During the Civil War he wrote an essay called “Meditation on the Divine Will” containing these words: “In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong. God can not be for, and against the same thing at the same time.”[3] Lincoln struggled with this, knowing that there were deeply religious men on both sides of the conflict. Not every one is aware that Lincoln was a truly great theological thinker—and clearly Calvinist in his inclinations. Part of what made Lincoln’s thought so profound was that he was able to see several perspectives at once, including the perspective of God¾insofar as God has revealed himself in the Bible. He saw that although God does take sides, he does not do it the way we do. And so Lincoln went on to write that since God cannot be on both sides of the Civil War¾and here is the real depth of his thought¾”in the present civil war it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something different from the purpose of either party.”

 

Now the Psalm chosen for this evening’s worship is a Psalm of thanksgiving, and in particular it is thanksgiving for God’s intervention on the side of the Psalmist, against the enemy. The enemy is described as legion—as “all nations.” This can be understood in several ways. “Nations” in the Old Testament usually refers to the Gentiles. It refers to everyone except Israel, the elect people. This suggests America today. We have been taught to think of ourselves as the elect, the “indispensable nation.” It is therefore an easy step to conclude that God is on our side, even, if need be, against “all nations.” But is this really what is meant in the Psalm? Some of you may be reminded of the word spoken by the Lord to Israel through the prophet Amos: You alone have I known of all the families of the earth, therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities (Amos 3:2). Perhaps the enemy is actually the enemy within.

 

In the passage from Ezekiel that was read tonight, we hear another indictment of the chosen people:

 

The word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man [human being], you dwell in the midst of a rebellious house, who have eyes to see, but see not, who have ears to hear, but hear not; for they are a rebellious house. Therefore, son of man, prepare for yourself an exile’s baggage, and go into exile by day in their sight...for I have made you a sign for the house of Israel.”(Ezekiel 12:1-3, 6)

 

And a few verses later it gets worse:

 

Thus says the Lord God concerning the inhabitants of...the land of Israel: They shall eat their bread with fearfulness, and drink water in dismay, because their land will be stripped of all it contains, on account of the violence of all those who dwell in it. And the inhabited cities shall be laid waste, and the land shall become a desolation; and you shall know that I am the Lord.” (12:19-20)

 

How remarkable this is. We will know that God is Lord, not in his blessing but in his judgment. How utterly opposite to the usual rosy picture we have of ourselves before God! The picture here is one of a rebellions house, an intractable and indeed unredeemable people who have thanklessly appropriated and then perverted the Lord’s gifts, who have sunk into appalling idolatry, whose leaders have permitted God’s flock to suffer neglect and violence. Moreover, as false prophets have led the people to trust in their own devices, they have thereby drained away their trust in the Lord’s promises.

 

The book of the prophet Ezekiel should be better known among us. It is a difficult book, but it contains many profound passages of Old Testament theology (not to mention passages of great beauty). The prophet continues:

 

The word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, what is this proverb that you have about the land of Israel: ‘The days grow long, and every vision comes to nothing’? Tell them, ‘Thus says the Lord God: I will put an end to this proverb...The days are at hand, and the fulfilment of every vision. For there shall be no more any false vision or flattering divination within the house of Israel. But I the Lord will speak the word which I will speak, and it will be performed. It will no longer be delayed, but in your days, O rebellious house, I will speak the word and perform it, says the Lord God” (12:21-25)

 

This is the theme of the performative word of God. I will speak the word and I will perform it, says the Lord. Without this attribute unique to the God of Israel, there would have been no Hebrew prophets. But what is it that the word of the Lord will perform? It will be a prodigious cleansing operation, a wholesale assault on apostasy, a mighty reorientation of the people’s hearts. But it will indeed be wholesale, with no distinctions made. The whole people of God will be judged: This is what the sovereign Lord says: I will deal with you as you deserve, because you have despised my...covenant (Ezekiel 16:59).

.

There are plenty of places in Ezekiel, as in the Psalms, that seem to speak of a neat division between the righteous and the wicked (chapter 18, for example). That’s why all of us who preach and lead God’s people need to have a coherent, holistic Biblical theology. There are places in Ezekiel where God says “get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit” (18:31) and other places where he declares unconditionally, “I will put a new spirit within them; I will remove their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh” (11:19). Which of these statements should receive priority? Who is the active agent? The overwhelming tendency of the human being is to prefer the first. We are going to do it ourselves. We are going to work out our own salvation. We prefer the satisfaction of deserving God’s favor. We want to identify ourselves among the righteous. But here at Calvin College you have a powerful tradition which celebrates the prevenient agency of God—the active agency that “goes before” anything that we can contribute. Ezekiel, who admittedly loves lurid imagery, compares God’s people to a newborn abandoned by the roadside, lying in its own mess (kicking in your own blood—Ezekiel 14:3-6), utterly helpless and desolate in a condition that we can only call pre-moral, pre-virtuous, pre-righteous. And so the apostle Paul writes, Before we could do anything either good or bad...God’s purpose in election was already at work (Romans 9:11).

 

            With this background let’s look again at Psalm 118.

 

I shall not die, but I shall live,

and recount the deeds of the Lord.

The Lord has chastened me sorely,

but he has not given me over to death.

Open to me the gates of righteousness,

that I may enter through them

and give thanks to the Lord.

This is the gate of the Lord;

the righteous shall enter through it.

I thank thee that thou hast answered me

and hast become my salvation.

 

            Do you see how thanksgiving is evoked as we recount the deeds of the Lord? And what is his greatest deed of all? It is making the unrighteous to be righteous. It is taking you and me and, yes, chastening us sorely, but in doing so he is opening the gates of righteousness to us so that we may enter through them. I thank thee, Lord, that thou...hast become my salvation. The Lord has spoken the word and performed it; he has reckoned us righteous.

 

            But the tantalizing question still remains, what does it mean to say, as the Psalmist does, that the Lord is on my side? If I had thought of it soon enough, I would have asked to sing the hymn “Be still, my soul” tonight. It was written by a woman in German in the early 18^th century and translated into English by another woman in the 19^th. It has a lot of wonderful words, as I’m sure you know, but the ones I’m going to quote tonight are from the very first line: “Be still, my soul, the Lord is on thy side.”

 

            Does that mean, as we so often say today, that “the Lord accepts you just as you are”? Well, yes, of course it does mean that. It’s clear from the ministry of Jesus that there was nothing whatsoever that could make a person unacceptable to him, no matter what their sin, crime or condition. He had a heart of love equally for every person and, as he said himself, I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. But it is also clear that he did not leave people just as they were. He transformed them. Being reckoned righteous by our Lord does not mean (to continue with lurid imagery) returning like a dog to its own vomit (that’s from Proverbs 26:11). Being reckoned righteous by Jesus Christ means being assimilated into his righteousness. Think of what Paul says in the great eighth chapter of Romans: If Christ is in you, although your bodies are dead because of sin, your spirits are alive because of righteousness (Romans 8:10) This makes absolutely no sense if we think of righteousness in the usual way, as human righteousness. If we believe that our spirits are alive because we have attained human righteousness, we have abandoned the Christian gospel altogether and we are thrown back on the false visions and flattering divinations against which Ezekiel thunders. There is an awful lot of flattering divination around, isn’t there? It’s a billion-dollar business; just take a look at the self-help shelf in any bookstore. Even Christian bookstores carry books full of this flattery about how we have the potential within ourselves to be all that we want to be. Let me tell you, when you get to be my age, if you think you’ve become all you wanted to be, you’re a damned fool. May God deliver me from my own righteousness. I don’t want my righteousness, I want his righteousness. And that is exactly what he has promised me. He has promised me himself. I am a rebellious house all wrapped up in one person, but through no merit of my own I am being conformed into the likeness of God’s own Son. He never stops breathing life into my dry bones.

 

            I [the Lord will put a new spirit in [my people]; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. Then they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. (Ezekiel 11:19). The commandments will cease to be tablets of stone that judge us and they will be written in our hearts as Jeremiah prophesied (31:33). My most heartfelt concern for the churches of America is that we would understand better and proclaim more forcefully that God is on the side of all human beings everywhere. He is on the side of what he is doing in us and he is against what we are continually doing in ourselves to spoil his work. And he will win this struggle that goes on within us, because he is God and we aren’t, and his word will perform what it requires.

 

Remember the verse from Ezekiel that we quoted earlier: I [the Lord] will deal with you as you deserve, because you have despised my...covenant. This does not refer to the enemies of Israel. It refers to Israel itself, to the elect people of God. As we deserve. If we begin dividing up human beings into the deserving and the undeserving, the righteous and the unrighteous, that means that we have forgotten our own condition before God, and this failure of understanding will show up immediately in our conduct toward others, particularly toward others who are in our power. Before God tonight, we are all equally powerless before him, yet he loves us all and loves us each, in our singularity and in our solidarity. At his Supper tonight, the distinctions among us are utterly broken down and assimilated into his Body. Once you were no people but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy but now you have received mercy. (I Peter 2:10). While we were still helpless, Christ died for the ungodly. (Romans 5:6)

 

Open to me the gates of righteousness,

that I may enter through them

and give thanks to the Lord...

 

This is the Lord’s doing;

it is marvelous in our eyes.                  AMEN.