Tag Archives: righteous

Emmanuel (“God is with us”) = “Boldly go where no one has gone before” (4th Sunday of Advent, 12/21/2025)

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Readings

As you probably guessed, our first reading was chosen because today’s Gospel quotes from it. Ahaz is the king of Judah—what’s left of Solomon’s kingdom after the northern tribes left to form Israel.  Everyone in the region is afraid: the hungry Assyrian Empire (modern Iraq) is expanding. It’s something like having Russia as your next-door neighbor. Israel and Aram (modern Syria) want to fight, and, since Ahaz doesn’t, they plan to invade Judah.

In our text Isaiah is imploring Ahaz to trust the Lord. And, despite Ahaz’ refusal of a sign, the Lord offers one anyway: a young woman is now pregnant and will bear a son who will be named Emmanuel (“God with us”). The child will serve as a sort of calendar: before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, Israel and Aram will be non-issues. But Ahaz doesn’t trust. As the Book of Kings tells it Ahaz sent messengers to the Assyrian king: “I am your servant and your son. Come up, and rescue me from the hand of the king of Aram and from the hand of the king of Israel, who are attacking me” (2 Ki. 16:7). Servant and son, no longer of the Lord, but of the Assyrian king. What a fall!

But the question still hangs in the air: Emmanuel (“God with us”): what will that turn out to mean?

Some 700 years later the question is not how to respond to the Assyrian Empire, but how to respond to the Roman Empire. (The factions we meet in the New Testament, the Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians, Zealots, etc. separate by how they answer that question.) And in the middle of all that Mary is pregnant. For Matthew it’s an Ahaz moment, with Joseph and his generation facing the same choice Ahaz and his generation faced: trust or not. Emmanuel (“God with us”): what will that turn out to mean?

Joseph is the first to have to choose. Matthew describes Joseph as a righteous man. That’s important, because the argument about what righteousness means runs through Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount: “unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (5:20). For Joseph, “righteous” means not exposing Mary to disgrace, but quietly dismissing her. Ahaz had Isaiah; Joseph has “an angel of the Lord,” who redefines “righteous” behavior. And Joseph—thank God—trusts, and takes Mary as his wife.

“Emmanuel” (God with us): whatever that means, it doesn’t mean “business as usual.” Business as usual for Ahaz was a matter of arithmetic: how many divisions do we have? How many do Israel and Aram have? How many does Assyria have? Emmanuel? Hard to quantify that. Business as usual for Joseph meant a compassionate dismissal of Mary. But “Emmanuel” significantly shifted “righteous.”

Now, a sidebar. What does Matthew’s “fulfill” mean? There are plenty of examples of prophets speaking about the future and those words proving true. Isaiah’s words in today’s reading about the fate of Israel and Aram is an example. But that’s not the only way “fulfill” works. In the case of Isaiah’s young woman, the child simply serves as a calendar. So Matthew’s just taking advantage of the Greek text’s translation of “young woman” as “virgin” to support his Jesus-fulfills-prophecy agenda? No. What Matthew has recognized is that the situations Ahaz and Joseph face are similar, and that this time around God’s action is even more breathtaking. This time around “Emmanuel” points to a far more profound “God with us,” and Matthew writes his Gospel also to help us discover some of what that means. Isaiah’s words have been filled fuller than he could have imagined.

Notice, by the way, the choices Matthew has made as a narrator. “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way” sets us up to expect an account of the birth. But Matthew focuses on the choice Joseph faces. Why? Perhaps because Matthew’s audience is in a similar situation. For the Jewish Christians in Matthew’s audience “righteousness” had meant having as little to do with the gentiles as possible. But Emmanuel, and now they’re part of a renewed Israel in which Jew and Gentile call each other “brother” and “sister.” They might be excused for thinking Joseph had it easy.

Where am I going with this? Since 1966 I’ve been a Star Trek fan: “boldly go where no one has gone before.” That’s not a bad weak analogy for the journey to which the Christmas story invites us. The Messiah, the Christ, has come. There were plenty of scripts for how that was supposed to play out. But since this is a matter of Emmanuel (“God with us”) it’s not about following a script, and one of the first ones who has to deal with this is Joseph. Sometimes, as in our Gospel, there’s a direct command to be obeyed. Sometimes it’s a matter of Spirit-led discernment. Paul in Ephesians: “Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord” (5:10). We continually turn to Holy Scripture for nourishment, not because it’s the script, but because—under the guidance of the Holy Spirit—it enables us to faithfully improvise as we follow our risen Lord.

Joseph’s feast day is March 19; let’s use the collect for that feast to take us out:

“O God, who from the family of your servant David raised up Joseph to be the guardian of your incarnate Son and the spouse of his virgin mother: Give us grace to imitate his uprightness of life and his obedience to your commands; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”

Hope (1st Sunday of Advent, December 1, 2024)

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Readings

And so we begin another year, with all the hopes and fears anything new brings. The readings and the liturgy can pretty much carry us along; perhaps what the sermon can offer is attention to three of the images in or behind our readings.

The first is that word “righteous” in Jeremiah. “A righteous Branch… execute justice and righteousness… Jerusalem… called: ‘The LORD is our righteousness.’”

“Righteous” and “Righteousness” are today pretty much restricted to religious contexts. That’s a pity, because ‘righteous’ (tsaddiq in Hebrew) is a remarkably useful word. A person who is righteous (a tsaddiq) is a person who does what needs to be done to fulfill the obligations of a relationship, even if it means coloring outside the lines.

In the Old Testament one of the classic examples of the tsaddiq is the widow Tamar. She owes it to her dead husband to have a son who’ll carry on his name. But her father-in-law, Judah, is standing in the way, and has shown no sign of budging. So, off with the widow’s garb, on with the prostitute’s garb, and she has the son by an oblivious Judah. Judah’s outraged—until she shows him the credit card receipt—but then has to acknowledge her as the more righteous: she’s done what’s necessary to carry on her husband’s (Judah’s son’s) name. She’s the Tamar who shows up in Jesus’ genealogy in Matthew.

The Lord, precisely in this sense, is righteous. It doesn’t matter how powerful Israel’s enemies are. It doesn’t matter how deep a hole Israel has dug herself in. The last thing the Lord will say is “Well, you brought this on yourself; what do you expect me to do?” The Lord is righteous. If that means bringing Israel out of Egypt, opening a way through the sea, the Lord will do it. If that means toppling the Babylonian Empire so the exiles can return home, the Lord will do it. If it means taking on human flesh to live as one of us, the Lord will do it. The Lord is righteous.

It’s that confidence in the Lord’s righteousness that animates the psalm. It doesn’t matter what combination of external enemies and self-inflicted wounds the psalmist is dealing with: the Lord can and will sort it out. That’s the confidence the psalm—and our tradition—invite us to share. The Lord is righteous, creative, stubborn; the Lord will sort it out.

The second image is from the Gospel, “the Son of Man coming in a cloud.” We heard those same words last Sunday in vision from Daniel 7. Recall the vision: Daniel sees a series of four beasts, each more terrifying than the last, with the last one hounding God’s people. But then the Ancient One comes onstage, the beasts are dealt with, and “the Son of Man coming in a cloud”—that one receives kingship. (And so we heard the text at the Feast of Christ the King.) It’s a remarkably hopeful vision: the face of the human future is not bestial, but human. The terrorists don’t win. The surveillance state doesn’t win. God bats last; God and humanity win.

You see, if the future that awaits us is bestial, then the dissipation and drunkenness Jesus warns us against in today’s Gospel sound like pretty good options. If the future that awaits us is bestial, then the invitation “to cast away the works of darkness” is futile. But the future that awaits us has a human face, Jesus’ face, so hope—with the swimming upstream that it entails—is the rational response.

The Lord is righteous. This Son of Man secures a human future. Two images from our readings. The third image lies just below the surface and serves as the motor. It’s captured in one of the carols that didn’t make it into our hymnal: “Tomorrow shall be my dancing day: / I would my true love did so chance / To see the legend of my play, / To call my true love to my dance: / Sing, O my love, O my love, my love, my love; / This have I done for my true love.” That’s the story we’re in, “we” as the human race, “we” as each individual. How the Nicene Creed manages to summarize this romance, this love story, without using the word ‘love’ is a head-scratcher. Anyhow, as love is necessarily a joint project, God’s standing invitation: let’s write this story together. And in that spirit the Church invites us into this season of Advent.

The First Sunday of Advent: A Sermon

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Readings

This morning’s readings set before us a feast, beginning in our first reading from the prophet Jeremiah. King David will have a descendant—we might mentally cue up “Once in royal David’s city” as the sound track—through whom through God will establish, well, righteousness. “A righteous Branch… execute justice and righteousness… Jerusalem… called: “The LORD is our righteousness.”

“Righteous” and “righteousness” are today pretty much restricted to religious contexts. That’s a pity, because ‘righteous’ (tsaddiq in Hebrew) is a remarkably useful word. A person who is righteous is a person who does what needs to be done to fulfill the obligations of a relationship.

The Lord, precisely in this sense, is righteous. It doesn’t matter how powerful Israel’s enemies are. It doesn’t matter how deep a pit Israel has dug herself in. The last thing the Lord will say is “Well, you brought this on yourself; what do you expect me to do?” The Lord is righteous. If that means bringing Israel out of Egypt, the Lord will do it. If that means toppling the Babylonian Empire so the exiles can return home, the Lord will do it. If it means taking on human flesh to live as one of us, the Lord will do it. The Lord is righteous.

It’s that confidence in the Lord’s righteousness that animates the psalm. It doesn’t matter what combination external enemies and self-inflicted wounds the psalmist is dealing with: the Lord can sort it out.

The psalm—and there’s more to it than we read a moment ago—does a good job of balancing awareness of being a sinner and being sinned-against. That language is Raymond Fung’s, who served for years as the WCC’s Secretary for Mission and Evangelism. We are both sinners and sinned-against, and as we acknowledge both the Lord’s righteousness is good news.

It’s that confidence in the Lord’s righteousness that animates the Gospel reading. For this reading, however, we need a bit of context. It occurs in the conversation that starts with some touristic oohing and aahing over the temple. “Not one stone—says Jesus—will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.” Asked for more information, Jesus responds with a collage of images and instructions that—like most prophecy—intermingle the immediate and the distant future.

Toward the end of this we get “Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory.” The NRSV sets off ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ in quotation marks since it’s a quote from one of Daniel’s visions. In that vision four monsters, each worse than the last, stake out their turf. That’s Daniel’s take on about 500 years’ worth of empires in that region: four ill-tempered beasts. But God intervenes and vindicates a human figure: “with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and kingdom.”

Our future is not bestial but human. The terrorists will not have the last word; the institutionalized terror of the nations will not have the last word. The advertisers with their pictures of happy mindless consumers will not have the last word. Alleluia!

Jesus has been using “Son of Man” as a way of referring to himself; he hears the phrase in Daniel’s vision as pointing to himself, and so uses it later in the week when, now a prisoner, he’s questioned by the council about his identity: “But from now on the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the power of God” (22:69), at which point the council either turns leadership of the meeting over to Jesus or sends him off to Pilate for crucifixion.

Scriptures like today’s second reading, together with our creeds and Eucharistic prayers confess that Jesus “will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.” Through repetition it can easily go right over our heads, but it’s profoundly good news: our future, the future of this world, is human, not bestial. It’s good and dependable news: this Jesus is righteous, and will continue to do what it takes to make it happen.

Alleluia. Notice, though, Jesus’ warnings toward the end of the text: “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap.… Be alert at all times…” Why be on guard/be alert? Mark’s account spells it out: “But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (13:32). So these elaborate interpretive machines into which we dump Jesus’ collage of images and instructions so that they can spit out a precise timeline? Save your money.

We do know what Jesus’ coming again will mean. It is the definitive triumph of God’s righteousness, God’s willingness and ability to move heaven and earth for our salvation. Our salvation: the people who harvest our crops not themselves suffering from malnutrition, the people who build our homes not themselves living in leaking shacks, all of us offering worship not to the idols that teach us to hate, and rob us of our humanity, but to God alone, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

That’s not a future we can bring about. It is a future to which we can—and must—witness, a witness expressed also in response to Jesus’ words: “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly… Be alert at all times…” To the degree that we believe in this future, dissipation, drunkenness, etc. are not temptations. But, if all we can expect is one more ill-tempered beast after another, then dissipation etc. begin to sound pretty good. Advent is about there being a better future for this world than it deserves, a better future than any of its current trajectories would lead us to expect. Because of that better future, that Jesus-shaped future, it makes perfect sense “to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light.”

Someone once asked Bishop Lesslie Newbigin whether he was an optimist or a pessimist on some issue. His answer was “I’m neither an optimist nor a pessimist. Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.” The Lord has acted and will again act in righteousness, remaking heaven and earth. “Be alert at all times?” Sounds like good advice.