RevivaLent 2018 - #10

Revive your choice for Right Righteousness

Friday, 1st week in Lent: 23rd February, 2018

Ezek 18: 21-28; Mt 5: 20-26

The "Scribes and the Pharisees"...we find this phrase very often in Jesus' words. What did he have against them? Was he then a sectarian too... dividing and categorising people by the group they belong to? No! Never! Jesus himself was a Pharisee, hold some historians and he of course had disciples among pharisees, tax collectors and zealots. Then where is the justification for the frequent usage of this phrase, 'the scribes and the pharisees'? 

The phrase actually refers to, that category of people, need not be necessarily only the scribes and the pharisees, who consider the external signs and legalistic fulfillments more important or significant than the interior disposition. What we do is important, but why we do what we do, matters much more! 

The internal disposition with which something is carried out, truly determines the value of the act or the attitude. Righteousness often can remain a matter of image building or opinion creation. Jesus, explains today his version of righteousness - the right righteousness. It consists of meekness and humility, openness (lack of judgments) and acceptance, endurance and perseverance, and endless hopefulness. Against these measures on the scale, where does my righteousness stand?

Let us revive our choice for Right Righteousness!