Righteousness

Thumbnail image: “William Barber at Moral Mondays rally” by twbuckner, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

Juli Belian

St. Luke’s Episcopal Church

December 7, 2025 — Advent 2A

I have struggled for decades to understand the word “righteousness.” I’ve studied enough Hebrew to be dangerous — and enough to know that “righteousness,” as used in the Hebrew Bible, does not mean what we might think it means. And the passage from Isaiah is a good place to dig in, because it sets righteousness alongside other virtues we expect in the Messiah.

The Bible is, of course, full of surprises, and this is one. I always stop short when I read, “He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth.”

That’s a screwy way to judge things, if you ask me — or any other contemporary lawyer, I suspect. What kind of justice ignores what our senses tell us? And how can you judge with righteousness if you ignore the facts?

To solve this puzzle, we will have to look at the words themselves. The Hebrew word for righteousness is tsedeq, but there is an entirely different word for “justice”: mishpat. Crudely put, mishpat means applying the right rule to reach the right result — the work of courts. But that still leaves us asking, what is righteousness if it is not justice? What is righteousness if it is not following God’s law? As a lawyer I am tempted to think it could be something like “fairness,” but that word appears in the next phrase – mishor, translated here as “equity.” So it’s not that, either.

And while we’re at it, we should note that none of these words refer – at all! – to obeying God’s law or to responding to God’s faithful love. Hebrew has other words for those. God’s faithful love is hesed; God’s commandments are mitzvot; and one who obeys the commandments is a shomer mitzvot. That means we now have five very different terms describing different aspects of God and our relationship – none of which are synonyms of tsedeq.

I want to pause so the point doesn’t get lost in all this technical mishmash:

·       Righteousness is NOT obedience to God’s commandments.

·       Righteousness is NOT love for God.

·       Righteousness is NOT justice, or even equity.

·       Righteousness is… something else.

Fact is, English doesn’t really have an easy, one- or two-word translation for tsedeq. I think the only way we can come to understand tsedeq is to look at how biblical writers have used that word.

First, as Clare has told us many times, the Hebrew ideal of righteousness – tsedeq – requires a preferential concern for the poor. This is not optional; it is essential, that is, the essence of tsedeq. Whether a ruler has tsedeq – is righteous – is proven by whether the ruler raises up the poor and protects the oppressed. A ruler cannot be righteous otherwise. If a ruler’s or a society’s actions elevate the rich and crush the poor, that ruler or society is unrighteous — even if they are following every law on the books. Tsedeq requires more.

Part of our difficulty comes from centuries of scholars attempting to translate tsedeq into whatever the dominant language of the Church was at that time. When the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek in the second and third centuries BCE, translators used the word dikaiosynē dee-kai-oh-see-neh, and dikaiosyne does mean moral or legal correctness. When Jerome translated it into Latin in the second century CE, he translated tsedeq as ius, the root form of our word, “justice.” Both translations were noble attempts, as good as they could do in their own languages, but neither captures the Hebrew idea. Rule-following and moral uprightness are good things, but they do not make a person tsedeq.

Read in context, tsedeq describes the ruler by which a ruler is measured. It is the external measure of whether a life or a society is aligned with God’s purposes for the world.

But what does it mean to say the Messiah, or that God, is righteous? Surely God is not measured against some outside ideal. God is God, and beyond that, how can there be any outside ideal?

Here’s a functional way to think about it. Let’s say I wanted to say someone was “Michael-ish.” If I tried to explain what I meant, I would probably fail utterly, because, as we all know, Michael is not really describable, is he? What could I do to convey what I meant? I might just point to Michael and say, “There he is.” But if he’s not around, I could show them one of the incredible table settings only Michael can lay and say, “There. That is what Michaelness looks like.” Am I really saying anything? Well, sure, because then I could say, for example, that the character Hercule Poirot is Michael-ish, and you would understand what I meant. If I told you I wanted Merifield Hall decorated in a Michael-ish way, you would be able to do that.

If you prefer a more religious illustration, what happens when someone is baptized? We all know the answer to that, because immediately afterward, we as a congregation welcome them into the family of God. How did they become members of that family? By being baptized. Baptism does not merely symbolize them joining our family; it is the means by which they join our family. Like all sacraments, baptism does not merely signify divine reality; it makes divine reality present.

Tsedeq is the shape – the dimensions, the length and breadth and depth – of God’s action in the world. To understand tsedeq, we must look for where it that action is happening. When the poor are lifted up and the mighty brought low, tsedeq is happening. When we act not simply to relieve the poor but to change the structures that keep them poor, that is tsedeq. We align ourselves with God by acting in these ways, and by acting in these ways we align ourselves with God. Tsedeq is relational, dynamic, and operational. It is God’s nature materializing in the visible world.

So — how does this relate to our gospel?

Well, that question brings us to the second point we need to note about tsedeq: Tsedeq is always used to critique the existing social order, never to ratify it.

In today’s gospel, John the Baptist is calling the Judeans to realign themselves with God’s tsedeq. Repentance — turning — is not about feeling shame for doing bad things; it is about reorientation. John’s baptism is also not a ritual washing which must be repeated over and over. John’s baptism was a singular act of turning toward God, and by that I mean John’s baptism made that turning happen. I always imagine John as a big, hairy, half-crazy sort of guy, and I imagine when he baptized someone, he held them under long enough to scare them half to death – it was a once-for-all, full-throttled near-drowning of your old self.

In that moment, Matthew tells us, the Pharisees and Sadducees — the power-holders of their world — arrive and ask for baptism. They come as a group, in full public identity, in clothing that marks their status. Their request for baptism is like the executive team walking into your office to watch you work and saying, “Don’t mind us.” But, of course, they mean the opposite. Their very presence reasserts their authority. They are performing humility without relinquishing power. Only those with power have the option to say, “Don’t mind us.”

Everyone else who comes, comes with vulnerability. They come alone. They come without their status. They come without power. The Pharisees and Sadducees come as Pharisees and Sadducees. In first-century Jewish discourse, saying “We are children of Abraham” is shorthand for, “We already know God’s will; we already keep Torah; we are already righteous.” They have not surrendered their inherited power. And John will have none of it. He calls it out. John is not reading their minds or hearts and finding no repentance — he is reading their political posturing and finding no tsedeq.

And this now brings us, you’ll be relieved to know, to the third and final point we need to explore about tsedeq. Tsedeq is always used to point beyond that which is before us. When Isaiah says,“With tsedeq he shall judge the poor,” he is not describing a king already on the throne. He is describing the ideal, the promised, the hoped-for ruler – the ruler we do not yet have. This is how tsedeq is always used.

And this is the classic New Testament tension: The Messiah already reigns — yet the world is not yet set right. Resurrection has already begun — yet death is not yet defeated. The Spirit is already poured out — yet creation still groans. This is why we say, “Thy kingdom come” and “Christ will come again.” We are still waiting and still expecting. If tsedeq were fully realized, Christian worship would be nonsensical.

And so here we are, two weeks into Advent, again; making our way to the Savior, again. Because the only way to reach the end of our story is to turn and turn again until we have fully aligned ourselves with God’s tsedeq by laying down our power and lifting up the lowly. Only then will the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.

May it be so.