The Righteous To Repentance

Today's gospel is Jesus feasting with tax collectors.  He says in explanation, "I come not to call the righteous to repentance but the sinners."

I can think of two ways in which this can be a very hard thing to hear, even though it sounds like it should be so simple and obvious it's hard not to imagine even Jesus the Christ speaking with some annoyed sarcasm.  Sarcasm isn't quite the right word.

The first is that Jesus called them to repent, and they are the last who would want to hear that they are not the righteous

The second comes from the reaction I had to an article about an abusive teacher.  Boy did I try hard to justify her.  A knee-jerk response to the video that there must be some context, some history, or just some terrible terrible day that led to a momentarily losing of her calm.

But then why was the assistant teacher already filming?  Like she knew it was coming?

And the more I read, the more I could see that the philosophy of the school is deeply upsetting.  Actively terrible.

Even then, I want to blame standardized testing for creating it (which isn't entirely unfair given the culture of the school from appearances).

There's a knee-jerk reaction to protect those like us.  A knee-jerk reaction to defend and protect people in our profession, or who live off tax overflow/temple tithes.  Even when we demonize them as our opposites, well, you have to have a lot in common to be the "opposite" of someone or something.  The opposite of black is white, not aardvark.

I'm not saying there was an explicit kinship, but that knee-jerk reaction to defend ourselves and others -- it gets in the way of seeing grace.  Or it can, in any case.  How often in politics or the workplace do we want the people who are pointing out the horrors of the world to just shut up?

The Old Testament story is about doing good works and being active in practicing your faith to please God.  It's a string in that theory, but this is a list much like the eventual beatitudes and more specific policy instructions than the "Feed My Sheep" story for St. Peter.

I told my mother at our Galentine's Day dinner tonight that I hung a poster in my classroom this semester:

The world is made up of two kinds of people.  People who want to think of themselves as good people and people who are willing to work at it.  Never judge someone in the second category for having further to go than you do.

The sinners need repentance.  But the sinners also know they need to repent.  Those who believe themselves righteous -- no matter how close they are to being right -- are hard to talk to.  Because it's so hard for them to hear that they still have a ways to go.

You can't "finish" becoming a good person or filling your life with the work of fixing the world.  Until the Second Coming you can't finish cleaning up humanities cruelties.  You can't finish feminism or end racism or other forms of prejudice.  Can't declare them solved, despite everyone trying (in the last several years especially).

The righteous aren't called to repentance.  But we all are.  Because we're not there yet, and our world certainly isn't.  It's hard to hear that, because we all want to be good people.  We all want to be there.  We all want to be good people already.

It's more important for us to get there eventually.  It's more important for us to work at it.