Reflection on Our "Goodness"

On Sunday we talked about the challenge of our goodness. One of the key ideas that Jesus addresses in his conversation with the rich young ruler is our casual usage of the term ‘goodness’. Especially when we are healthy, employed and relatively wealthy, it is easy to imagine ourselves ‘pretty good’.

The danger of our casual imagination is that we start to bring God’s goodness down to our level, and expect God to treat us as relative equals. We don’t see how far we fall short of God’s holiness and so our entire approach to God becomes, to say the least, inappropriate.

We need to become attentive to our self-righteousness, because it always rises up and is deadly damaging to our spiritual growth. Especially for those of us who seem ‘ok’ on the surface (what an illusion!) we need to notice when we are patting ourselves on the back.

I had a personal experience of this just before I delivered the sermon. I was walking down to the Walgreens to get grape juice for communion (yes, our grape juice comes from communion. Our wine comes from Safeway and our bread comes from Mariposa bakery.)

I was walking into Walgreens and held the door for an older woman who was moving rather slowly. And the simple act of holding this door, filled me with a sense of ‘being good’. I patted myself on the back. I basked in the warm glow of doing good. Part of that is the simple pleasure of acting on behalf of others – but it went deeper than that.

At the same time – at the same time, I saw from the corner of my eye a man that knew. We have had several conversations over the last few years, all of which involved him asking for money for his family. I had helped him in the past and knew that his story would be the same. We had shared a significant amount of time together and I would have considered us friendly. However, this day I didn’t have time for his issues. He hadn’t seen me, so I steadily ignored him until he had walked by. I was barely conscious of this, let alone allowed the implications of my hardheartedness to sink in.

Now, which one did Jesus specifically command… hold open the doors for old ladies? Or do not ignore your neighbor in need? Somehow I feel like the parable of the good Samaritan was more about the latter…

It wasn’t until I was walking home that I realized just what had happened. I am so practiced at observing good in myself and so poor at allowing my sin to truly confront me. Just wanted to share that with you, so that you guys can know that I am just as much a rich young ruler as anyone. - Josh