Baptism of the Lord Sunday, 2023 - Remember Your Baptism

Righteousness. It’s an old fashion religious word not used much anymore. Back in the day, it was used in a negative way, i.e., self-righteous. My guess, most people today don’t know what the word means. In the gospel of Matthew, however, it was a key word – central to the gospel’s unique message.

We find the word in the gospel’s account of Jesus’s baptism – the liturgical focus of this second Sunday of 2023 (the first Sunday after Epiphany on the liturgical calendar). According to the gospel of Matthew, John balked at baptizing Jesus, arguing that he (John) needed to be baptized by Jesus. John’s resistance reflected his view that Jesus was greater than he was. In spite of John’s resistance, Jesus insisted on being baptized. His reasoning was “for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness,” Matthew 3:15.

The gospel of Matthew is the only gospel to record this detail of Jesus’s baptism. This fact is evidence that the word “righteousness” is a key word and concept in the gospel. Which raises the question: what is the meaning of “righteousness?” How does Jesus’s baptism fulfill it?

A clue to our questions lies in the backdrop of the gospel.

The gospel was written to Jewish Christians following the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. That event - the destruction of the Temple – drastically changed the religious life of the Jewish people in Judea. It robbed them of the central focus of their worship (the Temple), leaving only their local synagogues as a place of worship. It also broke the power of one of the key religious groups in the nation – the priestly families known as the Sadducees. By default, the dominant power fell to the scribes and Pharisees who controlled the local synagogues.

The scribes and Pharisees interpreted the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE in the same way their ancestors – the founding members of their two groups – interpreted the destruction of the Temple and the nation by the Babylonians in 587 BCE. They viewed it as God’s judgment on the nation for their failure to keep the law. Acting on this understanding, they resolved to do a better job of keeping the law. They would “try harder” as so many church members through the years have resolved to do. In addition, they targeted those whom they viewed as not keeping the law, blaming them for God’s judgment on the nation.

Among those they targeted were Jewish Christians who followed the teachings of Jesus rather than the teachings of Moses. The Pharisaic Jews who controlled the synagogues pressured the Jewish Christians to abandon their identity as the disciples of Jesus, returning to being the disciples of Moses who lived by the law. Their pressure included the threat of excommunication from the synagogue, a form of shunning that involved the refusal to do business with the ones who were excommunicated. The excommunication was a guarantee of economic failure for the individual and his family.

Underlying this conflict was the question “What does it mean to be righteous?” Another way of asking the question is “What does authentic spirituality look like?”

Among the Jewish people, and especially for the scribes and Pharisees, righteousness was a term associated with the Law. One could not be righteous without living by the Law. For the Pharisaic Jews, righteousness meant keeping the law, i.e., doing what the law said. Righteousness was conforming to the demands of the law and the religious expectations of their tradition. The righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees was a law-based righteousness that focused on behavior, i.e., what one did. BTW: this kind of righteousness is generally what people back in the day understood the word to mean.

Jesus taught a different kind of righteousness. Jesus taught a righteousness of the heart. His kind of righteousness focused on the spirit and attitudes of the heart, not on a person’s behavior or their conformity to religious expectations and norms. It was expressed in how we view and treat others, i.e., in our relationships.

Jesus’s kind of righteousness did not discount the law. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill (the law),” Matthew 5:17. He also spoke of a righteousness that “exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees,” Matthew 5:20. Jesus’s kind of righteousness – i.e., what righteousness really is – went beyond the behavior-focused conformity of the Pharisees. His kind of righteousness fulfilled the law, that is, did what the law intended.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gave six examples of what it meant to fulfill the law. In his examples, he pushed beyond the behavior the law described to the principle underlying the law. The law is fulfilled by living by the principle, not by conforming our behavior to its demands. We can do what the law says (behavior) yet violate the principle upon which it is built. For example, Jesus said our anger and devaluing of another is the same as murder even though we do not physically take the other’s life. These attitudes violate the intent of the command “Do not murder” (Matthew 5:21-26).

Jesus’s understanding of righteousness was ground in the Hebrew Scriptures, particularly the prophets. Righteousness is a key term in the Hebrew Scriptures. In the writings of the prophets, it was commonly paired with the term justice. Both are covenant terms (as opposed to a moral or legal term). Righteousness meant to live in right relationship with those in the covenant community. Justice was to use one’s power to advocate for, provide for, and empower the powerless – the orphan, the widow, the oppressed, the alien (see Isaiah 1:17) – within the covenant community. To be righteous was to live rightly in relationship with the powerless in the covenant community. Righteousness was to use power on behalf of “the least of these” – Jesus’s term for the powerless in his parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25:31 – 46.  

Which brings us back to the baptism of Jesus. How did Jesus’s baptism fulfill all righteousness? In his baptism, Jesus identified with those being baptized. He chose to live in relationship with those who were the powerless, fringe people in their society. He aligned himself with those who desired to live a life pleasing to God.

Righteousness is about relationships, specifically how we live in relationship with those who are devalued and powerless in our society. It is more than moral piety based on keeping the demands of the law. It is about responding with compassion and mercy to others. (See Matthew 12:7 where Jesus quoted Hosea, “I desire mercy not sacrifice.”)

Righteousness is a matter of the heart – the spirit and attitudes out of which we live – rather than an issue of behavior.

On this Baptism of the Lord Sunday, we are told “Remember your baptism and be grateful.” We remember our need for the cleansing, transforming work of the Spirit in our lives – symbolized by our baptism - by which we too can respond with compassion and mercy to others, thereby fulfilling all righteousness.