Right...Right?

 Philippians 3:4b-14

Right, it's nice to be right. There is right and wrong. It seems so simple. This is not what Paul is describing for us today. Right would have been standing by what he was: circumcised, and Israelite, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Pharisee, and blameless under the law. He's right, right?

All these things should have made him the right kind of Jew. The one any woman would be happy to marry. The one who knew what was right and wrong under the law. Yet Paul counts this all as rubbish. It is nothing, period. Why? Because of one encounter with Jesus the Christ. All his rightness has changed. It doesn't mean a thing. Why?

Because being right is not what Jesus was about. Being right isn't even near what Jesus calls us to. Jesus calls us to live into the in between. The places Paul is always exploring. There is neither Jew, nor Greek, nor male or female everything is equal in Christ. We are not our rightness, but what Paul points to just before this. 

Philippians 2:5-11 tells us Jesus did not take equality with God as something we Lord over everyone else. No instead we serve others. We give to others. We become so servant minded we are even willing to die for someone else. WOW! just WOW! 

We aren't to rejoice in how right I am and how wrong you are. Is this happening right now? We aren't to put ourselves first, but to think of one another. Are we doing this right now? We aren't to say we have it all figured out we are living in between what the goal is and what is past. Right?

I don't know. I don't think I see this much nowadays. We concentrate more on who is right and who is wrong. Whether or not its our right to wear a mask or not and who cares who is hurt or comes down sick. We are more consumed with being right than we are consumed with becoming the servant of others. 

One of the things Paul always tells us is to encourage one another. In order to do this we have to have courage right now. The courage to be kind. The courage to care when others aren't. The courage to sacrifice, which is hard to find right now. 

This is not about being right or wrong or who comes out on top. This is about the race which lies before us. To try everyday to care. To try everyday to serve. To try everyday to remember none of us is any better than any one else. To remember the laying down of the law at Sinai was about how to love God and love our neighbor. More than any political party. More than any doctrine. More than any being a stranger or out of place. 

See God's love helps us run the race and not see whether we are winning or losing, but are we on the path. Are we running the race we should be, not to see others fail, but to see us all cross the finish line. See Paul's race is not about who wins or loses because he already won by virtue of his birth. No, instead it is about whether I have done what I should be doing and not lost my sight of Jesus. 

A few years ago What Would Jesus Do was a popular phrase, but it missed the point. It was usually said to make people feel as though there was a right and a wrong. What would Jesus do should point us to what Jesus really did. Fed the hungry, healed the sick, raised the dead, and reached out to the people who were most often ignored and cast aside. What race are you running?