Do not be too righteous, and do not act too wise; why should you destroy yourself?
Being righteous and wise are, overall, good things. But like all good things, when they are done to excess, they cease being good. I’ve seen this in workplace settings, where someone is a know-it-all, and any wisdom they have is overshadowed by their vanity about that very wisdom.
I’ve also frequently seen this in church settings with righteousness. Some people are so enamored with their righteousness, or the righteousness of their denomination, or their religious cause that any genuine righteousness is overshadowed by their fanaticalness. In my tradition, we believe that the bread and wine are both earthly bread and wine, as well as the body and blood of Christ. This makes our celebration of Eucharist make more sense. It’s a way to genuinely partake of Christ. But that belief can turn fanatical.
During my early training days, when we broke for lunch we also had a Eucharist service. Using real bread, a crumb fell on the floor, and one overzealous student was super upset that Jesus’ body had fallen on the floor, and interrupted the service as he was crawling around, trying to find it.
Yes, we want to be reverent. We want to respect the service, our tradition, our beliefs, our personal practices of spirituality. And when all of that turns into the ends, rather than the means, we are in trouble. A friend described this phenomena very well. She said that we we get in trouble when we worship Jesus, instead of following Jesus. Or said another way, we need to stop worshipping Jesus, and start following Jesus.
When we act from a place of following Jesus, that tempers our righteousness because it’s clear Jesus wasn’t too righteous. I’ve seen this too. In Portland there is a church that used to have a Eucharist combined with a meal in the evening, an experimental dinner church. The ‘service’ had all of the requisite components in our tradition, including a reading from the Gospel, the Lord’s Prayer, a time for reflection about the scripture, prayers for the community and world, and a time for the priest to consecrate the bread and wine before it was passed. The service was very low key, and eventually turned into more of a meal for the unhoused and mentally ill.
Any excessive righteousness stuck out like a sore thumb. Everyone was brought back to the basics of following Jesus. And by following Jesus in a genuine way, we worshipped while following. The part of the service where the priest utters the words immediately before we share communion is sometimes dry and prescriptive. One priest at this service did a magnificent job of talking about the night before Jesus died and how he shared the bread and wine. The motley gathered crew was spellbound. When we shared communion together, it was probably the most genuine sharing of Christ’s body and blood I’ve ever experienced.
Instead of getting wrapped up in the ‘right’ way to do things, we were asked to follow Jesus, and it was undeniably Right.
When we in the church are not careful, we become overly righteous, and it’s off-putting to others in the congregation, and even more so to newcomers. This morning, I’m thinking about how we need to follow Jesus, both individually and collectively, rather than worshipping Jesus.
have been rolling that around in my head ever since you said it. Had a good conversation with Deacon Students about how he never asked us to worship him...only follow. What does our discipleship look like? Do we look like him? hmmm
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