I.  INTRODUCTION: 

Recently, I have made an astounding discovery about myself:  I am not always right!

While spending a few days at the beach with my brother and his family a few weeks ago, my wife Katie came to me and said, “You will just love what your daughter just told me.”

“Oh, yeah?  What’d she say?”

“She said, “Mommy, do you know how I know that some things are true?  Because daddy told me…and DADDY IS ALWAYS RIGHT!”

At last!  The validation and proof that I have sought after my entire life was before me in the words of a five-year-old little girl!  Instantly, a wave of gratification and self-importance swept over me as I replied, “Finally, someone who agrees with me!”

I must admit, at first, it felt good to be told that I was always right.  But then I realized something: what will Kenzie think of me when she sees through my façade and discover that I am NOT always right.  What’s more, somehow I have lived my life and expressed myself in ways that exude a sense that I NEED to BE always right! What a terrifying thought!

On Friday, my son Baxter begged me to help him paint a picture of Peter Pan using paint by numbers. As I laid out the newspaper and opened the paints, he slammed his brush into the #5 blue and started painting willy-nilly all over the place.  Anxiety rushed up my spine as he put the brush into #4 green (without even cleaning it), and started on the clouds. Growing angry, I said something I will always regret, “Baxter, you are not doing it…right!”  (What is wrong with me?)

I have a disease.  I have a disease that I think many of us in this room may have: it’s called, “The need to be right.”  I LOVE being right!  I mean, who really ever sets out to be wrong?  Who wants to be wrong?  I will fight at all costs, often closing myself off to other possibilities, to maintain my rightness, because I fear so much being… ‘wrong.’

Maybe that is why I love math so much:  every math problem has one and exactly one answer:   1 + 1 always equals 2. It never equals 3, 4, or anything else—that would just be wrong!

However, the ‘need’ to be right is an addiction:  we become obsessed with doing things the ‘right’ way to maintain an illusion of control, and the right way is usually determined as ‘my’ way, blinded that all other ways are…wrong.  This way of worship is right, and that is wrong; this way of spending money is right, and that is wrong; this is a sin, and that is not. Ultimately, “the need to be right” disease is a cancer that divides people and destroys any hope of meeting healing the real problems of the world. It is a disease that I work very hard to manage; but it is also a disease that is running rampant in the church that I love. In a person, ‘the need to be right’ makes us bitter and unhappy.  In a church, ‘the need to be right’ makes us irrelevant. 

In my experience, I have discovered four common complaints about churches among people who choose not to attend church:

1)  Church is boring, especially the sermons.  The messages don’t relate to my life.

2)  Church members are unfriendly to visitors.  If I go to church, I want to feel welcomed without being embarrassed.

3)  The church is more interested in my money than in me.

4)  I am worried about the quality of the church’s child care.

What’s amazing is that nowhere in these complaints is a desperate need to know what is ‘right.’  On the contrary, what I hear is a desperate search for someone to take care of them exactly where they are, love them exactly as they are, but also love them enough not to leave them that way.  Clearly, what people are desperately seeking in a church, but often come away wanting, is ‘relevance.’ 

            However, the reality is that the world no longer sees how the church is relevant in a world with so much controversy and suffering.  “People are not streaming to the church for answers because somehow they do not perceive our message as relevant to the deep needs in their own lives, much less the world.  We end up answering questions they aren’t asking, providing solutions to problems they don’t face, scratching where they don’t itch.”  They turn to other organizations for hope instead of the church to fight homelessness, poverty, hunger, and corruption.  Why is it that American Idol can raise over $60 million dollars to provide relief to the poor in Africa, and the church of Jesus Christ is struggling to keep its lights on?

“But wait,” you say.  “We have the gospel message!  It is the solution to humankind’s deepest needs.  God and God’s Word is deeply relevant to our problem-plagued culture.”  And you’re right.  God’s truth is indeed relevant to every need in every relationship, every culture, and every period in history.  So it is not God’s fault.  But somewhere between God’s ultimate solution and the world’s crying need, the message of hope has become garbled because the church has caught a terrible disease…”the need to be right.”

The church has neutered the most powerful message ever proclaimed because the church has stopped relying on the transforming power of Christ by the way we love, in favor of a finger-pointing policy of right and wrong!  We have become more focused on who’s right than on who’s hurting. We have become more concerned whether or not homosexuality is right or wrong, whether or not President Bush is right or wrong in the war on Iraq, whether or not immigration is right or wrong, and on and on from abortion to divorce, the economy, evolution, and environmental problems.  Shame on us!  We have relied on a ‘love of rules’ instead of the ‘rule of love’ to address our problems.  We have reduced following Jesus to a list of do’s and don’ts.  We have tamed the man named Jesus, who walked on this earth who had the power to transform a 5000 year old religion called Judaism into a love-centered Christianity;  the man who died on a cross who has the power to transform all humanity into children of God; and the man who rose from the dead who has the power to transform death into life!  Now, don’t you think that if Jesus can transform a religion, transform humanity, and transform the power of death, he can certainly transform you, me, and anything we face on this earth!

SCRIPTURE:

            It’s time the church puts aside its “need to be right” and start ‘being faithful,’ stop ‘loving our beloved ways’ instead of ‘loving our desperate neighbor,’ and stop worrying so much about following ‘doctrine’ and start worrying about ‘following Jesus.’  Today’s scripture is a reminder that we are not to be caught up in the ways of the world, but we are to be about the business of transforming the world.  This summer series will give us an opportunity to renew our minds as we examine the key issues in this world as we seek God’s will for solutions. 

Almost 60 years ago, H. Richard Niebuhr wrote a little book called “Christ and Culture” that is still a standard textbook in nearly every seminary.  In it he describes how the church has misstepped in dealing with cultural issues.  In an effort to be relevant, churches have tried different approaches: embracing the culture (allowing the culture to influence the church); or turning completely against the culture (completely separating itself from the culture); or gleaning the best of what the culture has to offer (like Father’s Day); or just give up completely on the culture (believing that there is nothing the church can or should do about it).

In the end, Niebuhr found all of these approaches unacceptable for the church that Jesus founded. With Romans 12 as a foundation, Niebuhr reminds us that God established the church to be God’s continual agent of transformation. The church cannot ignore the problems and issues of the world, no matter how impossible they may seem.  The church also cannot afford to be irrelevant because the church proclaims the greatest message of hope in a world of despair:  love conquers all. Love transforms all.  Love is the answer.

As we go through this summer addressing the controversial issues of our day, I want to encourage each of us to consider two questions that will help guide us toward transformation and to help us once again to become relevant in the world.

            First, are we more concerned with ‘being right’ than ‘being loving?’ 

As the people of God, we may hold the ‘right’ views on sin, embrace the ‘right’ concepts of truth, and proclaim the ‘right’ steps into salvation.  But if we hold on too tightly to our ‘need to be right,’ we lose touch with WHY we do what we do—people are in need of God’s love and forgiveness.  “Being right” never transforms anything, but loving others unconditionally, willing to sacrifice everything, is the pathway that will transform the world.   

Jesus was certainly concerned about ‘right living,’ but right living is always understood as ‘right loving,’ and compassion is the most powerful expression of love.  In Jesus’ time, the Pharisees were the ones who clung doggedly to their positions on sin, Scripture, and salvation, upholding ethical absolutes.  They claimed a religious ‘rightness.’

But these champions of ‘proper’ doctrinal correctness were the least responsive to Jesus’ mission and message, and found themselves irrelevant among a people with deep needs and hurts.  When Jesus compassionately healed a man racked with disease, the Pharisees objected because it happened on the Sabbath.  Jesus offered forgiveness and a new start to the woman caught in adultery, but the Pharisees wanted to stone her.  Jesus displayed his love for the people who kept messing up in life, the sinners, the drunkards, the outcasts by dining with them, while the Pharisees fraternized only the ‘righteous.’ Jesus united the world with compassionate love, while the Pharisees divided with clinging to rightness.  Jesus did not compromise on sin in his expression of love and compassion.  He called people to obedience with love, not with rules.  Jesus was able to do what our churches are struggling to do:  not only believe correctly and behave correctly, but more significantly and unlike the Pharisees, love correctly. 

Jesus loved people so much that the right-thinking believers killed him.  Have we become like the Pharisees? Is the church so concerned with ‘being right’ that we are once again ‘killing’ the love of Christ for this world?  In the end, only compassion and love will lead to relevance and transformation.  Are we more concerned with being right than being loving?

The second question I want us to consider as we go through this summer series is the same question that a ‘right thinking’ Jewish lawyer asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?”  

No wonder the church has become irrelevant to the world’s issues when we continually ask the wrong question. Maybe the question is not so much as “who is right” but more of “who is my neighbor?”  Jesus knew who his neighbor was.  The Samaritan woman at the well, the adulteress who was about to be stoned, the children, the leper, the blind, the tax collector, the social outcast, the Muslim, the abortionist, the terrorist, the homosexual, the impure, the imperfect, all the people whom society has labeled as ‘wrong.’  These were Jesus’ neighbors.  And he died for them.  And he transformed them into children of God.  Jesus died for the people whom the world neglects, hates, and despises. And the church is to die for them as well.  Oh, it is  easy to love people who love us, easy to love our troops, easy to love the loveable… but the church is also called to love our enemies…can we love the terrorists?…can we love George Bush?, can we love the democrats? can we love the homosexual? can we intentionally reach out and love the people whom this world says is un-lovable?  Only then can real transformation occur.

Who is my neighbor? The answer will surprise us every time.

I admit I am a bit nervous about our summer series, some have already decided to boycott us because they believe that politics and religions should never mix.  Frankly, I thank God that we have a church that is bold enough to face the controversial issues of our day; bold enough to proclaim God’s politics over man’s politics; bold enough to set aside our need to be right, bold enough to love whom the world hates, and bold enough to be relevant.

Jesus was that bold.  And Jesus transformed the world.  The church is being called to do the same.

Are we more concerned with being right or being loving?

Who is our neighbor?