Righteousness is certainly a Biblical word! As we wondered a few days ago, what does it mean? In contemporary times, it has a negative connotation. It comes across as someone who is high-and-mighty, better-than-others, judgmental with lots of critiques of others and no self-awareness.
Try this phrase: being in a healthy, ethical, justice-oriented, sustainable relationship. That’s easier to define, isn’t it? At least with some perspective and — again — some self-awareness.
We’ve all been in unhealthy relationships. Sometimes they’re with people. Sometimes, as addicts or families of addicts know, the relationships are with destructive habits versus with people. Any blessing that includes hungers and thirsts is almost certainly addressing our human desires and appetites, and the ways they’re out of balance, or the ways they can become healthy disciplines.
Thankfully, the Beatitude isn’t offered to those who already exemplify righteousness: a right relationship with self, others, and Godself. Who meets that criteria? Living saints? Long ago prophets?
Instead, Christ’s blessing is given to those who desire such a sustainable relationship with Godself. It’s aimed at those who want it, and know they are falling short of it. Can you see yourself in this description?
Christ’s blessing is shared with those who are longing and reaching, and find themselves — as all of us are — to be imperfect in this hungering and thirsting. Yet ultimately, our passions are moving in the direction of sacredness and holiness. We’re being called toward wholeness, healing. and relationship.
Along the way, we’re both acknowledging the call and hearing a promise that our appetites will be fulfilled. And if we’re not completely connected yet to a righteous way, we’re walking that Way. We’re choosing ethical options. We’re seeking right relationships within ourselves and with other people as well as God.
Again, these holistic and sustainable connections are responses which will satisfy our appetites for righteousness. Although human connections are imperfect, embedded and misshapen by systemic and social inequities and oppressions, our inner nature pushes us to see the hurts and wrongs. Our desire for righteousness supports the hard work of challenging and changing what is broken in our communities.
We haven’t got it all figured out. That’s why we need Christ’s blessing. Yet we care enough to try. We hunger enough to reach. We thirst enough to strive. We are motivated, and God meets us in our yearning. We aren’t asked to do this alone. — Rev Gail
There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous. — Blaise Pascal
When you’re righteous, you don’t have to tell people that you’re righteous. — Shaquille O’Neal
Most of us have to be self-righteous before we can be righteous. — Vera Brittain
Challenge or Question: With whom do you need to heal or balance a relationship? Perhaps write that person a letter — one that you do not mail — like a page in a journal. Simply use this assignment to process the issues inside the relationship and learn what might come next in terms of reconciliation or resolution.