Is anyone interested in or excited about the Academy Award show that’s on television tonight? Curious about who is going home with a coveted Oscar? Or maybe just to watch all the glitz and glam as Hollywood gloriously salutes itself yet again? There are some big contenders this year for best picture, all supported by great directors, scripts and actors. I’m quietly hoping it’s a big night all around for the quirky romantic comedy Silver Linings Playbook, but I know it’s in serious company with the likes of Lincoln, Life of Pi and Les Miserables. Among others.
Overall, I have to agree with a news article I read this past week that noted how this year the envelope is going to stories of loss and hope.[i] There is more to these contenders than what it calls “sentimental pablum.” There is the real and relevant theme of “great loss and heartache redeemed by grace and hope.” My understanding of this is that in various contexts of sin and suffering, there is a focus on characters who, in the end, exemplify morally upright decisions and actions for themselves and for a greater good. We emotionally and spiritually connect with them because we need to believe we’d do the same. We need to believe that we can be good light in the world, that we can help bring about the redemption of dark realities.
Let’s put this in biblical perspective. What we are talking about is being righteous. When thinking about how to live righteously, we have to be very careful. In our sin, we can so easily slip into self-righteousness. This never has a good consequence.
Take police inspector Javert from the Oscar contender and classic story Les Miserables as a prime and cautionary example. Criminal behavior was his dark reality. In his rubric of righteousness, there was one and only one way to deal with it -- by ruthlessly holding people accountable to the law. The law is the law and a criminal is a criminal. His was a zealous zero tolerance approach. “Men like you,” he tells Jean Valjean, “can never change.” He was as sure of this as he was sure of the stars all having a fixed place in the sky. There wasn’t any room for mitigating circumstances in his quest to secure justice. Not even an iota of mercy for thieves forced to steel in order to get a mouthful of bread for starving children. Javert’s cleanly mathematic[ii] way of living was in line with his belief in the retributive character of God. God punishes sinners. Period.
But this rigid self-righteousness blinded him to the possibilities and plans of divine mercy. After Jean Valjean showed him what God’s righteousness in Jesus Christ can look like in this world, he could only sing “I am the law and the law is not mocked, I’ll spit his pity right back in face, there is nothing on earth that we share, it’s either Valjean or Javert.” And that was his final word before he plunged to a tragic death.
Yes, when it comes to the topic of righteousness, be very, very careful. Do not slip or plunge into a steady stream of believing your way is the only way and do not assume it always accurately reflects God’s character. To protect yourself from this plight, keep studying the righteousness of God as it is revealed in the Scriptures.
God’s righteousness is what our ancient lesson from the fifteenth chapter of Genesis has to teach us on this second Sunday in the repentant season of Lent. There is a hint of self-righteousness in this text. It comes from the lips of Abram, who had yet to be named Abraham. Did you hear it?
Abram held fast to the belief that to rightly honor God, he absolutely had to have an heir. It was a dark reality for he and his wife Sarai that this wasn’t so. Understand, it wasn’t just that barrenness was considered a curse in their culture. This understanding of righteous living was more significantly rooted in the promise God made to him at the time when he departed his country and kindred and headed for a new land. We find this promise in Genesis 12:1 where we read of God saying, “I will make of you a great nation.” It’s also repeated in Genesis 13:15-16, “For all the land you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever. I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted.”
By the time we pick up the story in chapter 15, this still hadn’t happened. So we are told Abram had begun figuring out a way to live rightly without waiting on, without relying on God’s promise any longer. That’s the hint of self-righteousness I’m talking about. He confessed his cleanly mathematical solution to God by declaring that he’ll just make an enslaved child of his household his heir.
Then God spoke again. Not to rebuke Abram for having doubts and for suggesting his own plan. Instead, God renewed the promise. Then God led Abram outside to take a deep breath and take in the view. Whereas this promise of progeny was previously punctuated with the imagery of dust, this time it was symbolized by gazing at the greater stability and security of stars. If you can count them, God said, so you shall know the number of your descendants.
What we must take to heart from the story of Abram is that God alone is always righteous. We humans can never completely stay true to making morally upright decisions and actions. We will have our moments of impatiently waiting on God’s promises, of suspecting they are not true or reliable, and of trying to supersede them with our own ideas of righteousness.
After such moments, we need to do as Abram did after being led by God to stare at the stars. He listened to God’s word, gained a broader view of God’s righteous plan (a plan he was told would not avoid dark realities for his descendants and that he would not live long enough to fully see), turned away from his sin, and then turned back to God with a believing heart. One Bible commentary I read this week states that Abram trusted “in the one who his faith clings,” that he fixed “his heart on God” and rested “back in the arms of the promise-giver.”[iii] When we do the same, we do justice to the primary relationship in which we stand; we are faithful to our obligation to trust in God even through what we perceive to be delayed responses to God’s promised blessings. This deep trust is what God reckons as righteousness.
We all have our own very unique, deeply personal ways of coming to deeply trust in God. My most Abram-like experiences initially happened nearly twenty-five years ago at Camp Johnsonburg -- especially early morning at the dock of Glover Pond, where there was, and still is, a great and powerful holy intimacy in listening to and observing God’s promise of life. Do you have particular places where God’s righteousness is pointed out to you again and again? Places where God re-focuses you and helps you shake off even the slightest hints of self-righteous thinking?
Almighty God, of course, did fulfill the holy promise to Abram. A great nation was born and blessed; a people whom God mercifully showed the morally upright way again and again despite their frequently stubborn, self-righteous ways. And it was through the life, death and resurrection of Abram’s ancestor Jesus that God fully revealed the divine promise and path of salvation.
None of this holy plan was ever dependent on human participation, nor is it as it continues unfolding today. Yet how absolutely wonderful it is that our God always wants to be in loving, covenant relationship with us. How inspiring to be called as partners, living righteously in full trust of our Lord’s promises! God is our shield, none of us need ever be afraid to turn away from sin and receive this invitation again and again. Let’s do so today, being sure to turn from stories of great loss and heartache to stories of grace and hope! Amen.
[i] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-garrett/dark-night-of-the-oscar-and-the-envelope-goes-to-stories-of-loss-and-hope_b_2720864.html?utm_hp_ref=tw
[ii] indebted to Morgan Guyton for an excellent explanation of this at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/morgan-guyton/two-christianities-of-les-miserables_b_2382291.html?utm_hp_ref=tw
[iii] New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary on Genesis 15:1-21
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