"Seeking Exceeding Righteousness" - Sermon for 5th after Epiphany & Absalom Jones, 2-8-26

Absalom Jones’s righteousness exceeded that of the scribes and Pharisees. In Jesus’s time, the scribes and Pharisees were the men who upheld the norms and traditions of Jewish life, law, and worship. In Absalom Jones’s time, the scribes and Pharisees were, if you will, the men who upheld the norms and traditions of white, property-owners’ life, law, and worship.

Born in 1746 and raised enslaved, Absalom Jones knew that chattel-slavery – regarding certain human beings as less than, and holding them as property – was wrong. He lived into adulthood as human property, so he knew this evil firsthand. And he was educated by abolitionists, so he knew that some white people knew this, too.

Absalom Jones worked hard, and borrowed money from abolitionists, to purchase his wife Mary’s freedom, and he worked even harder to buy his own freedom in 1784. Imagine needing to buy that which is God-given: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, to quote the slave-owner Jefferson’s lofty language.

Absalom Jones knew that the Body of Christ cannot be segregated, so he and other Black congregants walked out of St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church when white church leaders attempted to segregate them by making Jones and the others sit apart in the new upstairs gallery.

Absalom Jones knew, long before Plessy v. Ferguson, that “separate-but-equal” was a lie; and he anticipated what Jim Crow would one day do, by demanding instead that the new congregation he and others founded, the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, be treated as a full and equal member of the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania in 1794, with Jones himself to be raised up as their priest.

And, undoubtedly, Father Absalom Jones knew that words on paper do not always match the actions of the ignorant and the bigoted. While the congregation of St. Thomas grew – and it thrives to this day – surely he and his parishioners faced the every-day slights and insults inflicted by white church and society, even in the celebrated City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia, where he lived and worked.

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Jesus said to the crowd who gathered on the side of a hill to listen to him teach, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

It was a stylistic decision that Saint Matthew made in writing his gospel to use kingdom of heaven rather than kingdom of God, which shows up in the other synoptics. Matthew’s presumed Jewish audience would have bristled at the word God being used in this way, so Matthew got around it by using heaven. A downside of this decision is, for subsequent readers like us, to think that it is only the hereafter that Jesus was talking about, rather than also recalling that Jesus elsewhere said that the kingdom of God is among us and within us. Already here, but still far from fulfillment.

Absalom Jones’s exceedingly righteous life meant that he entered, as much as one can enter, the kingdom of heaven as it is begun on earth. He served God and the people entrusted to his care faithfully and well. His is a saintly example for each of us to follow. And, because we remember Absalom Jones today, we celebrate that it is the consensus of the Church that, upon his death on February 13, 1818, Absalom Jones entered the kingdom of heaven in its fullest eternal expression – praise be to God!

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Who are today’s scribes and Pharisees whose righteousness Jesus calls us to exceed? I expect that many of us already have our lists.

But what if you or I are the scribes and Pharisees to other people? Now that is a thought that pinches!

In the twenty-third chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus will denounce the scribes and Pharisees. It makes for a good examination of conscience – before we even get to Lent!

When have I not practiced what I have taught? When have I burdened people, but not offered to help? When have I done good deeds to elicit praise? When have I insisted on being treated as Father? When have I been full of greed, self-indulgence, and hypocrisy? When have I dismissed a prophetic voice?

Or, as we heard the Prophet Isaiah put it, when have I pointed my finger, spoken of evil, quarreled, and fought? When have I failed to feed the hungry, to shelter and clothe the naked poor? When have I failed to satisfy the needs of the afflicted?

Or, back to today’s gospel, when have I lost my salt? Or hidden my light? Or broken the least of the commandments?

Or, to reference Absalom Jones’s story, when have I enslaved someone by my prejudice? When have I failed to liberate someone by bearing a grudge? When have I excluded someone by looking the other way?

More often than I care to admit.

“Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Jesus wants each of us to enter the kingdom of heaven – its fullness in the afterlife and its glimpses in the here and now. That is why God made us: to love and serve him in this life and to be with him eternally in heaven. God wants us to be salt and light. To be repairers of the breach. To be restorers of streets to live in. To have the mind of Christ.

To do this – to increase our righteousness beyond our scribal and pharisaical selves – we ask the divine assistance of the Holy Trinity. We are unable do this on our own. God desires to help us. We ask of the Holy Spirit the grace of a well-examined conscience. We ask of the Father forgiveness, which is ours the moment we turn to him. We ask of the Son the same steadfast courage that he gave to Blessed Absalom Jones, who patterned his life after the only true master, Jesus Christ, our Lord.

Father Daniel S.J. Scheid, SCP

5^th after Epiphany A; Absalom Jones – Feb. 8, 2026

All Saints’ Episcopal Church, San Francisco

“Seeking Exceeding Righteousness”