Do you have friends in your life who are one of a kind? You could say that we’re all one of a kind, and we are. No two people are alike. But when we say, “That Jim’s one of a kind,” we mean more than just saying that he’s unique. Someone who’s one of a kind is someone we might aspire to be like, someone we admire. To put it in biblical terms, someone who’s one of a kind is a righteous person. Do you know anyone who is righteous?

I do. His name is Chuck Kinzler, and I’ve known him for only about 7 years. He’s a happy guy; in fact I’ve never seen him get even the slightest bit angry. When he smiles his tongue sticks out just a little bit and touches his bottom lip. And, like me when I smile, his eyes tend to disappear in his squint. Chuck loves the simple life. He lives with his wife out on some land they have in Oatmeal, Texas, in a house they built together, Chuck and his wife Nancy. Both of them are retired.

Chuck’s got a riding lawnmower, a tractor and a shed big enough to fit four cars, and when the sun goes down, he and Nancy can watch it change from yellow to orange to pink through a wall-sized window (kind of like the one in our sanctuary) while they sit in their living room recliners.

Chuck tells corny jokes, laughs a lot and he likes cold watermelon on a hot day. The last time we talked about music Chuck introduced me to the sounds of Gretchen Wilson. He said, “You gotta hear this girl. She’s got this song, ‘I’m Here for the Party.’ It’s great.” I’m sure Chuck sings along with Gretchen Wilson when he drives his white truck all around Texas. And when he drives he grabs onto a small knob that pokes up from the steering wheel and turns full circle with every move Chuck makes. He has to use that little knob, because Chuck only has one arm.

That wasn’t always the situation for Chuck. He lived a pretty full life as they say before he lost his left arm. He and Nancy were married. They had two children, both of whom they raised and watched graduate from high school. And it was at this point in Chuck’s life when one might be looking forward to a quiet house, vacations and eventual retirement that he lost his arm. Sparing you the details, it was in a boating accident. Chuck had to be flown by helicopter to the ER, and while he was in the air, the paramedic looked at Nancy and said, “He’s losing so much blood. If we don’t get him to the hospital soon not only will we not be able to reattach his arm, he’s going to die.” Chuck Kinzler is a walking, talking miracle. He’s one of a kind, and he is righteous.

But just like the situation with Chuck only having one arm, I’d venture to say that it wasn’t always that way either. Maybe Chuck wasn’t always a righteous man. He admits that while he was recuperating from the accident that his hopes for the future had been kind of doused. What was going to bring him comfort now?

In his Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew (5:6), Jesus says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”

We can spend our whole life thinking that we’re filled with righteousness, and that we thereby have access to heaven; that we’re blessed. But that can all change when we lose a loved one, when we lose our financial security, or when we lose trust in someone who betrays us, or when we lose our ability to do something we used to be able to do so well, or even when we lose an arm. Then, in the blink of an eye, we’re left asking aloud to a painfully silent sky, “What is righteousness? Jesus, you said that we’re filled when we hunger or thirst for the stuff. Well, I might be able to build up an appetite for it if you’d tell me what it is!”

Yesterday morning we were walking up to the church at the same time as Nancy, Andrew and Jonathan, and I noticed that Jonathan had his lightsaber fastened to his shorts. Good man. Reminded me of Star Wars, of course (The first one, Episode IV, one of the good ones). Anyway, there’s a pivotal moment in that film for Luke Skywalker. He’s a young farm boy who wants to go off to school—the academy—and learn to be a pilot. But he can’t leave his aunt and uncle on their farm, because his help is too needed. Then the empire comes along, kills his Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, destroys their farm and pretty much Luke’s entire livelihood along with it. And just like that, in about two minutes of movie time, Luke Skywalker tells Obiwan Kenobi, the old desert hermit, “Well, there’s nothing left for me here. I want to go with you and learn about the force, become a Jedi like my dad was.”

What I’m saying is that this character, Luke Skywalker, lost everything he knew, and suddenly he had all the answers for fresh hope. “My loved ones are dead, I have no home and my farm is gone? That’s OK, because I’ve got this thing called ‘the force’ waiting for me.” And what’s more, he has an old wise man telling him exactly what the force is: “Well, you see, Luke, the force is something that lives in all things throughout the universe. It binds us together, and it can be used to accomplish great things if we learn how to control it.” Great! I want that.

It’s not so easy for us. Life can change for us as fast as two minutes of movie footage, and then we’re left looking for some fresh hope. And Jesus comes along and tells us that if we hunger or thirst for righteousness that we’ll be filled, but we don’t have an old wise man named Obiwan Kenobi telling us exactly what righteousness is. Life is just not that easy…but we want it to be.

We want life to be as easy as microwaveable macaroni & cheese, as clear as the instructions for ordering movies off Netflix, and as simple as online banking. And the notion of “righteousness” gets clumped into that way of thinking for us. We want easy, clear, simple explanations of righteousness and what it means. And the consequence of that thinking is that we listen to Jesus in that same way. We want easy, clear, simple answers from Jesus.

Well, if we want it that way, then righteousness is a pretty cut and dried issue. Listen to what Jesus says in Matthew 13:47-51: “Once again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish. When it was full, the fishermen pulled it up on the shore. Then they sat down and collected the good fish in baskets but threw the bad away. This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Have you understood all these things?” Jesus asked. “Yes,” they replied.

Yikes. Sounds pretty clear to me. But it sounds clear to me because I understand wickedness and a fiery furnace and weeping and gnashing of teeth. Jesus asked the disciples, “Do you get my meaning?” and of course they’re going to say, “Yes,” because the disciples are no different from you and me. They understand the bad stuff. But do you hear Jesus describe righteousness at all? Do you hear him explain where the righteous go when they’re separated from the wicked?

Jesus spoke in parables so that we would gain understanding. He spoke to us in human terms because that’s how we interpret things. Jesus couldn’t speak to us in easy, clear, simple terms when he was describing righteousness because it’s bigger than our language. It’s easy for us to see something like hell: a fiery furnace where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. But can the human mind see or can the human heart fathom the kingdom of God and all of its righteousness?

No, but we try. If we look at Jesus’ words in easy, clear, simple terms, then we can deduce that if we don’t do wicked things, we’ll be OK. That’s easy enough, right? Don’t be wicked and you’ll stay out of the fiery furnace. But where do we go? Or to put in terms that Chuck might have been asking when he woke up in the hospital after the boating accident, “Where do I go from here?”

It’s not as easy, clear and simple as we think. It never is, and that’s why we have Christ. That’s why Jesus talks to people at Capernaum and says, “I’m all you need.” In the Gospel message we hear from John today, the disciples and Jesus have slipped away to Capernaum to get away from the people. But when the people realize that Jesus is gone—the answer to all their questions is gone—they don’t take any time to ponder his teachings, they just freak out and go looking for him.

And the masses catch up to Jesus, panting, and they say, “Jesus, how long have you been here? We’ve been looking all over for you?” Seems kind of manipulative that Jesus would choose this time to say to the frantic people, “Relax, I’m all you need. I’m the bread of life.” That certainly wouldn’t reassure me. If anything, that would make me tie Jesus to a tree and never let him go: “You want the bread of life? I’ve got him over here!”

And that brings us to where we are now, and where countless churches are at this very moment, listening for the Word of God and how they are supposed to live their lives. Everyone wants to be filled with righteousness, and they’re trying to figure out what that is, because Jesus isn’t around in the flesh anymore to answer all our questions. And we sit in our chairs and our pews and wearing our WWJD bracelets, and we ask those questions: “What would Jesus do?” Because we think that if we do what Jesus would do in our lives that we would be righteous people.

But, people, let’s wake up, because it’s not that simple! Let’s listen to what Jesus was saying that we can’t fully understand by our decisions and our actions: We aren’t supposed to seek what Jesus would do. We’re supposed to seek who Jesus is, because Jesus is righteousness. Seek first the kingdom of God and all of its righteousness. Jesus is righteousness. Jesus is the bread of life. And if we hunger or thirst for righteousness, then we will be filled.

We want so badly to live by the letter of the law and claim that as righteousness. We want to claim righteousness as something we can control and understand, but the fact of the matter is that righteousness is not an act, it’s a truth; and it’s not in what Jesus does, but who Jesus is.

The Prophet Habakkuk and Paul, who later quotes Habakkuk in the New Testament, says, “The righteous will live by faith.” Faith isn’t about a set of principles; it’s about a way of being. It’s about believing what the mind can’t see and what the heart can’t fathom. When we live by faith, we are filled with Christ.

And what is Christ? Tolerance. Inclusion. Justice. Mercy. Forgiveness. Dialogue. Reconciliation. Healing. Empathy. Life. Love. Hunger and thirst for those things and you will be filled. There’s no set of guidelines for how you tolerate, how you include, how you show mercy, how you forgive, how you reach out to your neighbor, or how you love. That’s for you to spend your life figuring out. That’s for you to spend your life seeking.

When you think of it in those unforeseeable terms, then Jesus’ way of looking at righteousness isn’t so scary. It isn’t so cut and dried after all. Psalm 9:7-10 reads: “The Lord reigns forever; he has established his throne for judgment. He will judge the world in righteousness; he will govern the peoples with justice. The Lord is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble. Those who know your name will trust in you, for you, Lord, have never forsaken those who seek you.” What a blessed assurance it is to know that God judges by the criteria of righteousness and not by the letter of the law.

This is how I know Chuck Kinzler. When I put together mission trips for the youth group in the summers of 2003 through 2005, he and Nancy came along as adult chaperones, but they were much more than just chaperones. I could go on and on about both of them, but for this message I want to focus on Chuck and his hunger and thirst for righteousness.

During our trip at a little church in San Isidro, Texas, Chuck went upstairs and found a room that was only good for storing junk. But with a toolbox, a few trips to Home Depot and the help of a group of fired up teenagers, Chuck transformed that room into a Sunday School classroom that is now used by the growing youth group of First Baptist Church, San Isidro. Within days, Chuck laid down carpet, put up drywall, sanded, caulked, hammered and painted, and the youth loved watching him go.

That kind of vigor is contagious, and the rest of the group fed off of Chuck’s drive. When he’d be about to saw a piece of plywood, someone would ask, “Do you need a hand with that?” and Chuck would say, “Sure! Three hands are better than one.” And then he’d smile, and his tongue would poke out and his eyes would disappear. Were it not for Chuck’s righteousness, our group might not have ever discovered what we’re really supposed to hunger for and thirst after in life. We were filled because of his example.

Last summer, when the seniors graduated out of the youth group, Chuck came to me and said, “I want to give them something.” His gifts were all the same: wooden crosses that stood on a base in the shape of a heart. When I asked him the significance, he said, “Well, Christianity itself is different for everyone, but its based on love.” And I thought, “Wow! It’s as easy and clear and simple as that.” Then I asked Chuck where he got the gifts, and he said, “Oh, I made them.”

By his hand, with his carpentry, with his gifts he made them. I hope I can do half as much and live half as much with my two hands as my friend Chuck. Chuck is righteous, and Chuck is one of a kind. I hope and pray that we might all be one of a kind, too. Amen.