After Pentecost Devotional - Day 52

“The chief priests picked up the money and said, 'This money was paid to have a man killed. We can’t put it in the temple treasury.'” Matthew 27:6

We are really good at justifying our actions or trying to, anyway. We look for ways to ignore our failings or missteps as irrelevant, unimportant, or excusable. Then we act as though the actions of others are anything but irrelevant, unimportant, or excusable. It has been that way for a long time. Perhaps the biggest problem is that this way of doing and living affects us all.

It is easy to look at the next guy and call him a hypocrite. It is easy to pass that buck down the line to condemn others. It is a much harder issue to look at ourselves and recognize just how similar our own actions are to the hypocrisy we find in those who are somehow different from ourselves.

We categorize people as worthy and unworthy. We class them according to how easily we might point out their failures as worse than our own. We define those we can blast in some way in order to make ourselves feel superior. In the end, however, those categories simply do not measure up to any realistic scrutiny.

The chief priests should have been more concerned with their own actions to put Jesus to death. They were more focused, however, on the propriety of how the money they had paid to accomplish murder could now be used upon its return. Introspection would have argued that they were the culpable ones, not the tainted money. Looking upon their own actions would have demonstrated that they were the ones needing repentance, forgiveness, and grace. Instead, they externalized their actions. They lay the blame on Judas, instead.

That is par for the course. It is how we operate. Instead of looking at how our own actions and attitudes play into the issues we highlight, we stop the analysis before it ever makes its way home. We keep it at arm's length. That makes us think of safety, security, comfort, and not having to deal with things that make us uncomfortable. We can avoid the hard issues. We also distance ourselves from reality and growth.

Spiritual growth and serving God demand so much more than accusing others of impropriety. It requires that we be honest with ourselves and about ourselves. It forces us to do the hard work of introspection and learning to base our value upon so much more than denigrating others. We must be honest with and about ourselves if we are to learn, grow, and become the disciples Jesus called us to be.

For the chief priests in our passage, it was all too easy to ignore their complicity in Judas' betrayal of Jesus. They had all the excuses in line. They were assured that Jesus needed to be turned over for death at the hands of Rome. They were positive that Jesus did not represent God. They were not ready to give up on their traditions about God at the behest of this teacher who did not fall into their expectations.

Much more difficult would have been for them to question the results of their actions. Too often, we do the same until we find ourselves affected by those same actions.

Take some time to consider how your actions affect others.

"Lord, grant me the wisdom to offer grace ahead of condemnation, love over accusation."

—©Copyright 2016, Christopher B. Harbin

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