[This is an unedited manuscript for a message I gave last month a Westside. Sorry for the lack of proper sentence structure, I don’t talk in proper English]

I’d like to try to tell two stories with nothing in common to make a single point. So here goes;

Story number one:

About 20 some odd yrs ago

I found myself in grade 3, I think
Playing out in the freshly fallen, no so silent, shroud of snow, that covered the playground at school

And everyone was making snowballs and throwing them and generally having a great time ignoring the no snowball edict handed down from the powers that be
Primarily Ms Griffin –
If she sounds intimidating already it’s because she was… and the Msss part
I don’t know if you can still here the waver in my voice when I think about her somewhat large and imposing frame

Anyway, in the course of said snowball fight I hit a young girl in grade two- in the face – with an errant snowball

She ran screaming to the teacher on recess duty which was- Ms Griffin
And told me like the little baby she was
Within in about 15 seconds I was escorted off the playground and into the office by some kind of secret service that appeared out of nowhere

And found myself in the most intense interrogation I’d ever imagined at 8 yrs old

I didn’t know what to do
So I did what anyone would do- I lied
I made up a story and my story went like this
I was standing in the playground, minding my own business, when another student came by and handed my a snowball and ran away

Not knowing what to do with such a thing I was about to put it down when another snowball thrown by someone other than me

Hit the back of my hand –
causing it to lurch forward with such force that I lost control of the snowball that was in my hand

Out of my grasp it flew thorough the air at which point it then hit the poor little girl in the face

So it’s not really my fault is it?

No one bought the story
But I was sticking to it – for better or for worse
the more incredulous everyone become
the more convinced I became that this was going to work

I just had to stick to the story

So by the time they called my Dad to come to the school and pick me up
I was fully entrenched in the story

My Dad arrives
Asks what happened
And I tell him the story

Amazingly… he doesn’t buy it

My own dad didn’t believe me
I couldn’t believe what was happening
How could he question my integrity like that
Forget that fact that the physical laws of the universe were working against me

How dare he call me a liar
I mean, Yes I was, technically, a liar
but he didn’t know that

It was an outrage – I could not believe what was happening

End of Story number one

Beginning of Story number two

I had a good friend for a number of years
A friend who was truly one of a very few people in my life that I felt helped to shape my journey in a significant way

Someone who had invested a lot of themselves in me
And vice versa
And awhile ago we had a falling out that started with a conversation and became a disagreement that festered into an argument and then most insidiously
settled into a doldrum of passive apathy

Where we both just gave up

For my part
I felt like this whole situation was stupid
It had started because I shared something my friend found uncomfortable
But I felt like I was being honest and truthful so there wasn’t anything to go back on

So all of this situation rested on his ability to get over himself
And just apologize

And I figured, listen, I’m a really great guy
If he would just realize that and apologize for being such a lamewad things would be great

I would be so gracious and humble

In my head he would come to me and say, “I’m so sorry, I’ve been such a fool, on such a grand scale I have missed the fundamental reality that you were right all along”
And I would say – don’t worry about it
Don’t beat yourself up
We- ALL- make- mistakes
And by “we” I mean EVERYONE but me

And so I dug in my heels and I waited for him to make the first move

So look at these two stories
20 yrs ago in grade 3 I knew I was wrong

I knew I was lying
I knew that I was the one that I had created a mess for myself

And yet still I was outraged that someone would call me a liar
That someone would impune my wholly theoretical and entirely imagined integrity

Over the course of living with that lie for an hr
I had become convinced that it bore more resemblance to the truth than any challenge, Ms Griffen, the principle or my Dad cold pose to my fantasies

And now I found myself 20 yrs later back visiting my parents
Back in the same area as my friend

And I knew I was right
I knew this wasn’t my fault

Now perhaps it was the geographic proximity that sparked my conscience
But somehow- it became apparent to me that there was a larger question looming than simply who was right

Because sometimes we just don’t have the capacity to know the difference between the truth
and a lie we’ve told ourselves one too many times
Sometimes we just don’t know the difference anymore – between when we are right
and when we’ve told ourselves we are- one too many times

I knew I was lying about that snowball and I was still offended that someone would imply anything of the sort

A story told enough times starts to ring true and we can start to believe anything we tell ourselves simply be virtue of the fact that ours is the voice we hear with the most intensity and frequency
But if we go through life and only take responsibility for the times we know we’re wrong
When we are completely cognizant of our mistakes

Then we will miss out on some of the greatest opportunities for growth that life presents us with
The opportunities to push ourselves past our illusions
to wrestle with the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves

And so I sat down with my friend over a coffee
and we caught up and talked about what had been going on in our lives
And at some point in the conversation it became apparent that when I looked back on our relationship – the way I remember it, probably wasn’t completely congruent with what really happened
And even though I didn’t always see my own faults
Or regardless of the fact that I never intended to act maliciously
Or intend to damage him or our relationship
I had some responsibility to bear

And so I had to tell him that I was really sorry for what had happened
And that I hadn’t always acted the way I hoped I would
I had to take responsibility for the situation that I had convinced myself wasn’t my fault

The reality is if you go through life and the only time you take responsibility for your relationships is when you know you are in the wrong
Then you have still in effect said that the only perspective on the matter that’s important is yours

The way you see it, is paramount
The way you see it, is final and immutable

And sure you’re willing to be shown something and maybe to modify your position
But the only lens that counts is the one that you see the situation through

The problem with that
for those of us that want to model our lives around the teaching of Jesus

Is that we can throw a snowball at a 6 yr old girl- hit her in the face
and believe that it wasn’t our fault
It’s not just me
You would have been scared of Ms Griffin too

But more than that – when we look at the teachings of Jesus he says, explicitly, that just taking responsibility of the times when you know you’re wrong is not good enough

He says that there is a collective wisdom that we need to do life effectively
And we encounter that when we, at the very least, attempt, to integrate more than our own perspective on the world into life

Jesus says that to do life in the model God has set for us you need to do more than just be right all the time

In Matthew 5 Jesus is teaching and he says this-
I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.
“Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.

So let’s pull this apart a bit

Against you is the word “kat-ah” in the Greek

And the word can have a lot of uses depending on what it is tied to

But in this context it actually isn’t tied to anything

So in this passage it simply means “intensity or opposition”
They are angry with you – against you

So in this usage, it could mean, someone who has a legitimate case against you
They have something on you

You have done something wrong to them and they have an intense reaction against what you’ve done
Or it could simply, just as easily, mean
Someone who is just mad at you
Regardless of anything you’ve done

The word in this context has no connection to the basis of that posture

“If anyone has something against you” is saying regardless of whether that feeling has roots in anything legitimate or real
Whether it is deserved or not
The responsibility to deal with the situation lies not with the person who is right or the person who is wrong

But with whoever is aware of the problem
So why does Jesus put the responsibility there
when most of would happily live our lives shifting the responsibility to whoever caused the problem

Well I think there’s a clue in the passage

He makes this weird little statement before he talks about where the responsibility lies
He says if you say Raca to your brother – you’re answerable to the Sanhedrain
The Jewish law courts

But call your brother fool
And you’re in danger of hell fires

And I mean that seems a little drastic doesn’t it
Call someone fool – go to hell?

So what’s he getting at here
Well “Raca” is in your Bible like it is – probably in quotes
because it’s an aramaic word that they couldn’t find a good English word for

It means worthless, or empty
It was a common insult that probably came from the Hebrew word “rhake” which meant empty or vain
You’re saying your so empty, so vain

It was a common insult
Maybe like calling someone a poser today

You’re so concerned about how you look
You’re so vain and conceited but you don’t have any substance
You’re a fake

Now you probably wouldn’t ever get dragged into court for insulting someone
Although they did have liable laws back then
You couldn’t just go around spreading rumors about people
That could get you in trouble

But I think regardless of whether you got hauled into court
Jesus is saying if you insist on insulting people eventually you’re going to have to answer for it
You will answer to your peers
Nobody likes a jerk
There are consequences for thinking that you’re better than everyone else

But then he says – call someone a fool and you could find yourself in really hot water

Now fool doesn’t seem so bad
But maybe they should have left this one in the original language too
The word in Greek is “mo-ros”
It means stupid, heedless, absurd
My Greek dictionary actually says blockhead

It means someone not worth listening to
And the root of the word comes from another word “muo”

Which means literally “to shut the mouth”
So fool, in this passage means pretty literally shut up, It means, I don’t care about what you have to say
Now there is even a little bit more at play here
Because the word fool had specific religious connotations to the Jews as well

When you used fool in a theological or a religious argument
It meant more than just – you don’t know what you’re talking about

It meant you know nothing of God
You know nothing of God
Who is the creator
The final authority
The ultimate arbitrator on what is right and wrong

And so you’re opinion isn’t worth anything
Because you know nothing of God

Fool was a big deal
So he says if you insult someone – “say Racca to your brother” then you’re going to have to answer to your peers

If you’re a jerk to people – it’s hard to make friends
No one will want to be around you
But

If you refuse to see anything from anyone else’s perspective
If you refuse to even listen to the people around you
If you go through life insisting that yours is the only perspective on reality or truth or God that has any value or meaning

You’re in danger of losing everything that makes you valuable as a human being

You’re in danger of losing the chance to be in relationship
Now the translation I read says fires of hell
The greek actually says fires of gehenna

Gehenna is often used as a metaphor for sorrow, punishment… or hell

But literally it was the valley on the south side of Jerusalem where the city dumped all it’s garbage and burned it
It burned constantly with all the things that were no longer valued – not wanted
So Jesus says that when you refuse to listen to the perspective of someone else
you risk becoming worthless
You risk being discarded

You risk becoming nothing more than your own flawed perspective on the world

Completely tied to every lie that you’ve told yourself one too many times
Every time we take responsibility for a situation that isn’t our fault

We give ourselves the opportunity to come out from behind some of the stories we’ve told a few too many times

We give ourselves the chance to see the world through more than our own hang ups and biases
We give ourselves a chance to see things from something more like God’s perspective

Now that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re just a really bad person
And you really are always wrong

Sometimes even in the most objective analysis you are right
But there is a value more important than being right
It’s called being in relationship

And it is filled
it is defined
By the constant greyness of two people struggling to journey together

Now sure there will always be some people that are simply toxic
At there are sometimes very difficult decisions that need to be made about who we allow a place of influence on our lives

But if your goal in life is to win every argument
To be proven right in every circumstance

Then you may well find yourself at the end of your days very pleased with your success rate – but almost certainly alone
So Jesus lays it out

He says – You act like a jerk – people won’t want to be around you

But if you refuse to even listen to what they have to say – you won’t even have the chance to be a jerk

Because they’re going to toss you out of their lives completely
And then he says, okay
Take this as an example

you’re at church one day worshipping God and you think about a friend who’s upset with you
And you’re not even really sure whether it’s your fault or not

But put that question aside and go and fix it
Go and listen to what they have to say
He says, it is more important for you to try to understand their perspective
Than it is even for you offer your gift of worship to God

So deal with that first and then come back

This is how incredibly important it is for you to do life with the people around you
Because without them you are lost to your own flaws and biases and stories you’ve told one too many times

There’s an old saying
There are three sides to every story
Yours, theirs and the truth

Well God’s is the only objective truth in the universe
He’s the only person that sees the world as it truly is

You and I
We both of us, look at ourselves, each other, even God with a distorted lens

Paul says that we all see everything through a glass darkly
It’s almost like we can barely make out reality at all
But everyone of us- we have some incling, some imagination, some experience of God to share with each other

And it’s only as we put those things together
As we share and wrestle and dialogue

That we become more in touch with a God who is so much bigger than any of our individual imaginations could fathom on their own
And this is part of the reason
that if we ever want to entertain the idea of God

We have to take seriously every person that happens to find their way across our path

We have to take seriously the person that happens to be sitting beside us
Right now, in church, in class, on the bus, at the movie theatre
Because every time we force ourselves to see from someone else’s perspective we loosen our biases grip on our reality

And we start to unravel the illusions of perfection we’ve wrapped around ourselves
Simply by virtue of the fact that ours is the voice we hear most often

And maybe we start to catch glimpses of the world more like the way God sees it
Listen, I can take a complete lie

And convince myself it’s 100%, undeniably, incontrovertibly true – just by saying it enough times
or
I can force myself to see things from someone else’s perspective
even when I’m convinced I’m right

And in the decision to do so
By attempting that choice
I can discover patterns and choices and blind spots that I would never see on my own
Things that are preventing me from becoming more than I am right now

From becoming the person God wants me to become
This is the ancient wisdom of being more than right

Because “right” is always filtered and tainted and colored by every bias we’ve bought into and every story we’ve told ourselves

But community and relationship can create for us a collective wisdom that helps to counter act all of the worst tendencies we lean to if left on our own
Have you ever found yourself in a place where it was just easier to avoid someone rather than deal with what was going on?

Have you ever had someone in your life that made you uncomfortable because they reminded you of a part of yourself you didn’t want to acknowledge
Have you ever just wished you could start over with new friends that didn’t know you so well

Or maybe this – there’s this person in your life who frustrates you so much because they just can’t see their own issues

Or maybe someone who is so upset with you but you can’t imagine why – so you just ignore them
Jesus says that retreating into our own biases doesn’t help us grow

That settling for the relationships that are easy and nice and uncomplicated isn’t enough

Because sometimes we need the people around us to help us discover the things we hide from ourselves

There is a value more important that being right
It’s being in relationship

Because lives lived in the exclusive company of like minded individuals
Will never challenge us to become more than we currently are
Sometimes the problem for us
Is we have too much choice

If we don’t get along with everyone at our church we can find a new one
If someone is upset with us – that’s their problem
We can always find new friends – I’ve got facebook too

But Jesus says taking responsibility for our relationships is sometimes more important than determining who’s fault it is
There is a higher calling for us as we strive to create the kingdom of God in our lives

There is a more important mandate as we struggle to find what it means to share life with the people around us
It is the ongoing process of learning what it means to love God and love people

It’s the ancient wisdom of being more than right