Advent
December 5, 2014
Scripture Reading: 2 Peter 3:8-15a
Therefore, beloved, while you are waiting for these things, strive to be found by him at peace, without spot or blemish; and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation. So also our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given to him, — 2 Peter 3:14-15a
While we are awaiting the arrival of righteousness we must practice righteousness. The word “Righteousness” is an important word in our faith but, I fear, it does not raise images of hope in many people. It is rather like the word “carol” to me. I love music and I love singing Christmas carols but a deep seated prejudice lingers with me from a girl that attended grade school with me for only one year. She was much larger than all of us, my guess now is that she had been held back a few years. Her only joy in life seemed to be derived from pestering the other members of the class. We would call her a bully today. I was genuinely glad when I heard her family had moved away during the summer. I still have to clean my brain filters every time I am introduced to a new person named Carol even though I have never met anyone else in 60 years named Carol with whom I had a bad experience and one of my dearest mentors had that name.
I think we, people of faith, sometimes confuse righteousness with self-righteousness and sometimes we confuse our definition of righteousness with God’s definition. We also sometimes tend to use our definition of righteousness to judge others when I think Jesus was pretty specific about having drawn the assignment of judge himself (John 5:20-30). The word righteousness stems even into Greek from the Hebrew and refers to what is just in God’s eyes.*
This is a great season for cleaning up all those brain filters that are limiting our ability to live into righteousness and thus justice. God can make all things new and, I believe, can turn those bad experiences of life into tools we can use to work toward justice, perhaps because we have experienced its absence.
Prayer: Righteous God, I lay before you those things in my mind and in my heart that limit my ability to live fully into your righteousness and I lay before you those things that are perhaps even too difficult for me to face right now. Cleanse my being, heal my wounds, and turn any injustice I might have perceived into ministries of hope for the world. Amen.
*http://biblehub.com/greek/1343.htm
All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of American. Used by permission. All rights reserved.