Scriptures:  Psalm 36: 5-10, Matthew 5: 1-12

Some of you know that in my former life before I became a minister, I was a cognitive psychologist.  Cognitive psychology is that branch of psychology that studies not abnormal behavior, but normal behavior – stuff like how people read and learn.  So today, we’re going to start with a little cognitive psychological experiment. 

            I want you to turn to the inside back page of your bulletin, where you’ll find a rather strange-looking paragraph.  (For those of you reading this at home, here’s the paragraph:

Aoccdrnig to research at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mtaetr in what oerdr the ltteres in a word are, the only iproamtnt tigng is that the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae.  The rset can be a taotl mses and you can still raed it whotuit a pboerlm.  This is bcuseae the human mind deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.)

            I want you to give it a go, and see if you can read it … And I’m betting that every single one of you are able to read that without much problem at all, once you get past the initial strangeness.  Is that interesting, or what?! 

            You don’t have to have the letters in the correct order in order to be able to read English fairly fluently – in fact, they can be in almost any order, as long as the first and last letters of the word are in their correct places.  It’s one of the many amazing things our minds can do – reordering information that’s out of order, filling in information that isn’t there, matching partial letter patterns to what we have stored in our memories.  And it’s phenomena like that that led me down the rosy path of cognitive psychology when I was a Ph.D. student.  I was utterly intrigued by the amazing things our minds can do, seemingly quite unconsciously, and nearly without effort!

            You, on the other hand, may be wondering (if you didn’t find this all that interesting) why on earth anyone would care.   So you can read a scrambled paragraph.  Big deal.   Who cares about how the mind works? 

On the other hand, you may have no problem understanding why someone might care how the universe originated … or how DNA is structured … or what causes diseases like Alzheimer’s Disease or different forms of cancer – especially if you, or someone you know, is suffering from one of those diseases.  As human beings, we seem to have a built-in, deep-seated, passionate need to know, need to understand how and why things happen, and work, the way they do.

And if the outcome of that understanding serves us, or other people we care about well, we are especially interested in knowing and understanding those things.  We yearn deeply for researchers to find answers to those questions that are important to us, and we may put our votes behind politicians who support the research we think is important; we may donate to research projects -- funded by organizations like the American Cancer Society, or Relay for Life, or the Alzheimer’s Memory Walk, or others; we may even volunteer with those organizations, spending our time and energy and intelligence and passion trying to help accomplish goals that we think are very, very important.

            Now, Jesus was not a cognitive psychologist.  Or a physicist.  Or a biochemical engineer.  But he did understand profound human needs. 

            In his day, the most basic of those human needs were (and still are, at a purely biological level) the needs for food and water.  The need to assuage one’s hunger and one’s thirst are primary needs, that come before all others.  If we are starving – or are desperately thirsty – and most of us here have been fortunate enough to have never experienced either such state of deprivation – or at least not for very long – we’ll do anything to get those needs met.

Knowing the desperation and the drive we have to get those primal needs met, Jesus uses that as a metaphor when he says:  “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”  Or, in other words, you – as faithful people – should yearn for righteousness – seek after righteousness – try to create righteousness – with all the passion and energy and drive you would show if you were trying to assuage your most basic needs for food and water.

Well, wait a second, you may be thinking.  I get the whole “hunger and thirst” metaphor,

but what exactly does Jesus mean by “righteousness?”  Isn’t that one of those “really big” theological concepts or aspirations that’s pretty much beyond us ordinary folks? 

            Isn’t it one of those concepts we look up in resources like Abingdon’s Dictionary of Bible and Religion, and it says something like:  “There is thus both an ontological-historical dimension and an ethical connotation to this term.  Recent discussion, especially seen in John Reumann, Righteousness in the New Testament, reports the result of a fruitful dialogue between Lutheran and Catholic scholars who have reached a concensus (blah, blah, blah)…[1]”

            Or if we look to the Bible itself, and look for examples of what the Biblical writers label as “righteousness,” don’t we run into really holy, really special people, say, folks like Moses and Aaron and Miriam?  When they made the decision to defy Pharoah, to challenge Pharoah’s power,

and to try to lead their people to freedom out of centuries of captivity in Egypt, they were obviously exhibiting righteousness.  We run into people like Queen Esther, who confronted the most powerful king of her time, and who put her own life on the line (literally) in order to save her people … that’s obviously righteousness too.  And in the New Testament we run into a whole lot of those early Christian men and women like Priscilla and Aquila and Lydia and Stephen, who were continually putting themselves at risk – some even giving up their lives – in order to spread the Gospel message … they all clearly showed real righteousness.  Or in modern times, we may think about the people dubbed “righteous Gentiles” – people like Oskar Schindler and so many others who put their very lives at risk to help save the lives of Jews in Europe during World War II.  

            Righteousness – in those really big action, really big risk, really big accomplishment terms – sure doesn’t feel like something that I – or any of us ordinary people could possibly accomplish.

            So I was really pleased to discover theologian Arthur Lee McClanahan’s treatment of this text, which talks about yearning for “God’s right-ness.  (And) God’s right-ness is that we have what God would want for us and for others[2].”

            Yearning after God’s right-ness is about looking at God as a model, and seeing what God is like, and about looking at what (as best we can understand it) God would want for our lives, and for the lives of others – and then doing what we can to help make that happen.  And looking at God, what we see is one who loves – not just some, but everyone; what we see is one who is reliable, who can be counted on; what we see is one who is faithful to God’s people; what we see is one who is trustworthy; what we see is one who seeks and creates justice; what we see is one who yearns for wholeness for every living thing. 

            And so, if what Jesus is calling us to is to yearn for – and to help create that kind of right-ness in the world, our task is a lot like what I talked about last week:  one part is that we have to do some work inside ourselves, and the other part is that we have to do some work outside ourselves. 

            At the inside-ourselves level, if we want more right-ness in the form of more love in the world, we have to be more loving.  If we want more right-ness in the form of justice in the world,

we have to act more justly, to everyone from the guy who cut us off in traffic, to the person who checks out our books at the library, to the employee whose salary we don’t want to increase because we can get away with paying him or her less than is fair.  As Gandhi once said, “we must be the change we wish to see in the world.”

            But even if we have our own personal ducks in a row, that’s not enough, according to Jesus.  Although we do live in a culture that is continually focused             on “me” and “mine” and “my needs,” Jesus would have been appalled to think that any of us would reach the point where we’d sit back, look at the world around us (at least not the way it is now), and say, “yeah, it’s all good; I’m satisfied; I’m happy; I’m good to go.”  Because if we’re paying any attention at all, it’s pretty clear that even if our own personal worlds are great – and the reality is, most people’s personal worlds are much more difficult than anyone else ever knows – the wider world is not. 

            Just in the past week, some 100,000 people have almost certainly died in Myanmar as a result of the cyclones.  The death-toll in China, as a result of the earthquakes this week, is over 40,000, and still climbing.  In Oklahoma and Missouri, as a result of tornadoes, while the number of dead is much smaller, thousands of people are without homes, clothing, food, or clean water – as are tens of thousands more in both China and in Myanmar. 

            We may wonder, in the face of such catastrophes, how do we even begin to know how to create God’s right-ness?  How do we even begin to relieve the suffering … to heal the pain … much less to bring justice or security or wholeness … in the face of such devastation? 

            You may know that our denomination has already made significant gifts to all three geographical areas, out of the gifts we have given this year to One Great Hour of Sharing, and is also encouraging us to make additional individual gifts.  You probably know that the Salvation Army, the Red Cross, and other aid organizations are also asking for donations of money, since that is what is most needed to help with the massive losses.

            Yet at the same time, we hear news coverage indicating that elected officials in Myanmar are preventing aid that is being sent to their country from reaching those who are suffering.  In fact, they’re almost certainly confiscating and selling those goods, and keeping the money for themselves.  And so we wonder, is it right – will it increase God’s right-ness – to send our money to a country where it may just be appropriated by immoral government officials who appear to care little for their people? 

And we may wonder, is it right – will it increase God’s right-ness – to send our money across the world to help suffering people there when there are plenty of suffering people right here at home?  Surely we should help “our people” before we reach out to help “those other people.” 

            And then maybe we look at some of the suffering people who are right here at home, the people with the “homeless – anything will help” signs on the street-corners, or the people hanging out down in the city parks on Sunday afternoons at the lunch-line, and we wonder if it is right – it if will increase God’s right-ness – to give them money when we think they should be doing more to help themselves – assuming, of course, that they can.   And we read the newspaper and watch the local news on television, and we wonder:  Should we really be spending money to expand the Homeless Shelter in Grand Junction?  Should we really be giving food to the Postal Service Spring Food Drive? Should we really be donating to the Child and Migrant Center?  I mean, who made us our brother’s and sister’s keepers?

            Oh yes.  That would be Jesus. 

            That would be Jesus, talking to that crowd of folks sitting out there around the base of a hill, a crowd of folks not all that different from you and me, a crowd of folks not all that interested in being their sisters’ or brothers’ keepers either.  And what does Jesus tell them?  And what does Jesus tell us?  How blest are those who hunger and thirst – who yearn with all their might – who seek this as earnestly and sincerely and desperately as seeking water or food to stay alive, as seeking a cure for cancer or Alzheimer’s Disease to save a loved one – those who do everything in their power to create God’s right-ness in the world … and yes, that may well make them – may make you – your brother’s or sister’s keeper. 

            That might mean sending money to one or more of the organizations that hope to get it to people in need.  Or it might mean spending three hours on an evening at Respite Night helping a child who has trouble feeding herself get a piece of pizza and a coke, and having Communion together with pizza and soda.  Or it might mean scooping the snow off our own sidewalk, or our neighbor’s, so it will be safer for passersby to walk.  Or it might mean planting a few flower-seeds or a few bean-seeds in a container on our patio, as a way of nurturing life and beauty. 

            Peace activitist Fran Peavey said, “There are opportunities (for righteousness-making) all the time.  One time, when I was (making my living) driving a cab, I picked up a woman (wandering down the street) in her nightgown.  She had been walking in her sleep and she was lost.  I helped her find her way home… Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, you can serve others there.  It doesn’t have to be a big deal.  It can be right where you are[3].”

            So today – this very day – you can begin to do righteousness, right here in River City.  It’s not too big.  It’s not too hard.  It’s a matter of saying “yes.”  Saying “yes” to the one who shows us what right-ness looks like, the one calls us to be it – and to create it – too.  And saying “yes” not just with our heads, but with our hearts as well.

            I was reading Frederic Buechner’s definition of “righteousness” the other day, and it reminded me of an incident in my own childhood. 

Long before I wanted to be a cognitive psychologist, I wanted to learn to play the piano.  And I was lucky enough to get to start taking piano lessons when I was nine years old.  Like all good music teachers (I suppose), my teacher assigned me basic scales to practice, and little basic pieces of music like “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and others of that ilk.  But every once in awhile, even in the beginners’ book, there would be a very simple version of some piece of classical music – like the well-known phrase from Haydn’s “Surprise Symphony.”

            Well, week after week, I’d go in for my lesson, and week after week, my teacher would sigh in despair as I’d play (badly) the scales and what I thought were the boring pieces of music.  She’d say “You don’t get it!  You just don’t get it!”  But then I’d play the little Haydn piece – the piece I loved passionately, even at the age of nine – and she’d sit back, and her eyes would get big, and she’d relax in her chair, and kind of sigh.  Because I did, truly, “get it.”  And when I played with all my little nine-year-old heart and soul, it was clear that I “got it.” 

            It’s kind of like when our Bob Boberg plays a piece of music for us, here in worship.  As he plays, you can hear his heart and his soul – as well as his discipline – and so the music resonates in our hearts and souls too. 

            And righteousness-making is like that.  To really “get it,” it’s something we must do with everything that is in us.  Not just for the right reasons – but because we are God’s right-ness-wanting, right-ness yearning people. 

            This week, may we all do just one small thing to try to “get it” more deeply.  May we all do just one small thing to say “yes” to our God.  May we all do just one small thing to create a little piece of God’s right-ness in our world.  May it be so.  Amen.