“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.”

Matt. 5:23-24

“Now just think of what the quality of life and character must be in a person who would routinely interrupt sacred rituals to pursue reconciliation with a fellow human being.  What kind of thought life, what feelings and moods, what habits of body and mind, what kinds of deliberations and choices would you find in such a person?  When you answer these questions, you will have a vision of the true ‘rightness beyond’ that is at home in God’s kingdom of power and love.

Of course the legalistic tendency in the human self will immediately go to work.  It will ask, What if my brother refuses to be reconciled?  Am I never to go to church again?  Do I always have to do this, no matter what else is at issue in the situation?  The answer is, Obviously not!  Jesus is not here giving a law that you must never carry through with your religious practice if an associate has something against you.  The aim of his illustration – and it is an illustration – is to bring us to terms with what is in our hearts and, simultaneously, to show us the rightness of the kingdom heart.

We do not control outcomes and are not responsible for them, but only for our contribution to them.  Does our heart long for reconciliation?  Have we done what we can?  Honestly?  Do we refuse to substitute ritual behaviors for genuine acts of love?  Do we mourn for the harm that our brother’s anger is doing to his own soul, to us, and to others around us?  If so, we are beyond ‘the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees’ and immersed in God’s ways.”

LORD, Your peace right now in L.A.