Check Before You Wreck Yourself

Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and you remember that your sister or brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your sister or brother, and then come and offer your gift.  – Matthew 5:23-24 (as translated by Wilda C. Gafney in A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church: Year B) 

A mentor once gave me advice I very much didn’t want to hear:  

Often, it’s not about being right. It’s about being effective. 

Annoying counsel. I kinda hate that it’s true. 

My mentor was echoing Jesus’s wisdom … except Jesus raises the stakes, as he often does.

This passage is from the Sermon on the Mount, and Jesus is talking about the conditions that can lead to murder.  

Often, people imagine violence starting at the far edge of human behavior. It’s someone else’s problem, the kind of person most of us are sure we’re not. But Jesus traces a continuum. Anger, contempt, name-calling, avoidance, unresolved rupture. Violence always comes from somewhere.  

That’s what gets me. I’d prefer to focus on how right I am, while ignoring what my anger is doing, what my grievance is becoming. What rehearsing the story over and over is shaping in me. 

Then Jesus says something even more inconvenient: If you’re getting ready to offer the holiest act of your devotion and your conscience interrupts you, listen up. Leave your gift. Go deal with it. Try to repair what you can.  

That pause matters. That interruption is a blessing. 

Of course, you cannot control how somebody else responds. But you can do your part. You can check yourself. You can stop carrying what God is telling you to put down. You can listen to the voice that says: Face it. It’s too dangerous to let it grow. There’s still time for repair. 

For Jesus, I think the blessing is trusting in the voice calling you to repair what you can. Leave everything else at the altar.  

Prayer
Holy One, interrupt me when anger hardens in me. Give me courage to face what I have avoided, wisdom to repair what I can, and grace to leave behind what I no longer need to carry. Amen.

About the Author
Kaji Douša is the Senior Pastor of The Park Avenue Christian Church, a congregation of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the United Church of Christ, in New York City.