By Brian Jack – First Lutheran Church
Sometimes I just really want to be right, and there’s a lot to be right about these days — healthcare, politics, education, parenting, gender norms or the justice system to name a few. Even seemingly simple things like food, technology and how to spend your leisure time are constantly evaluated and critiqued as to whether they’re being done rightly. Try adjusting the date and menu for your next family holiday gathering, and you’ll quickly learn their sense of rightness.
Being right is a lonely business. Often it costs us relationships with our family, friends and neighbors. Sure you got all your facts right, you made your point – you’re not wrong – maybe the other person even agrees that you’re not wrong, but in the end your rightness can cost you your relationship. For a fleeting moment you felt good, but in a fiery blaze of needing to be right, you reduced your relationship to ashes.
The Pharisees, Sadducees, Jewish temple authorities, Roman authorities and all the crowd gathered at Jesus’ trial were confident they were right, that the only way to deal with Jesus was to torture him to death on the cross. In order to be right, there could no longer be any place for a relationship with Jesus in this world. They got to be right for a moment, but at what cost?
Imagine if we spent as much energy being compassionate towards one another as we did being right. As a pastor, there’s one place I consistently see people spend more energy being caring and compassionate than in being right. It’s in the company of the dying. I have yet to see someone arguing with someone on their deathbed about politics, or healthcare, or parenting, or education, or gender norms, or the justice system. Not that those aren’t important subjects, but they are never more important than the person with whom we’re discussing them.
In my tradition (and perhaps in yours) it was recently Ash Wednesday, a day in which ashes are placed on our forehead while the words, “remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return” are spoken to us. To put it another way, “remember you are dying. You will die.” That’s true. That’s right for all of us. Could you imagine extending compassion and caring today instead of waiting for someone to be on their deathbed?
The good news is that God knows what to do with people who have made ashes of themselves by insisting that they’ve got to be right, even at the expense of their relationship with others and with him. The crucified and resurrected Jesus doesn’t respond by tracking us down to tell us he was right all along and that he’s fed up and decided to cut us out of his life altogether. He doesn’t fireball anyone to ashes as his disciples once encouraged him to do (Luke 9:54-55). Instead he speaks words of compassion and forgiveness (John 20:19-29), words that those who are most interested in being right can scarcely utter to those who disagree with them. Words that those who know they are dying need to hear, not only in their final days and moments of this life, but right now today – “you are forgiven.”
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