“Those who passed taunted him, shaking their heads as they said laughing, ‘It’s the one who was going to destroy the Temple and then rebuild it in three days. Come on down from the cross, rescue yourself'” (Mark 15.29-30).
There’s very few things on par with being right. Well, not being right so much as the acknowledgement from someone else that you are, in fact, indeed correct. Especially when they were so convinced not one minute, one hour, one year ago that you were wrong, wrong, wrongety-wrong. And, of course, if you’re humble—like me—you never gloat about it. Not in front of them anyway.
Jesus, of course, points the way here. When he stood there before the Sanhedrin and they took one look at his scarred hands and feet and said, “We are so sorry. We were wrong, please forgive us” did Jesus gloat? Did he skip around the room saying “I told you so. I told you so”? No, because he was God Incarnate and he was magnanimous. He simply nodded and put his hands on their heads as they bowed before him. And then, of course, we read about the disciples who ran through Jerusalem telling all their friends and in-laws that “Ha, ha, see we were right about him.”
What a story that was. Too bad it didn’t make it into the Gospels; because, you know, it didn’t happen.
Strange, isn’t it, that neither in the Gospels or in the Acts of the Apostles does anyone ever come running up to the disciples and tell them that they get it now. They were mistaken and they should have believed them from the start. After all, this word that they declared was the truth. And no one could be confronted with the truth and keep believing and thinking something different, could they?
We know in our present day that people who hold opposing or even contradictory beliefs to our own are always convinced by the truth. When we show them the evidence or, at least, relate it to them just as the disciples did, people may need a moment to think it over, but their minds are always changed. They always admit how wrong they have been.
Jesus probably should have just marched right into Jerusalem and up to Caiaphas and Pilate. That’d been all it would have taken. It would have made everything so much easier. Before long everyone would be convinced that Jesus had been right all along and the world would be paradise for us.
The fact that he didn’t almost makes we wonder if he understood how important being right really was. How else are you supposed to get people on your side, acting like they’re supposed to act? Why did he tell all those stories if not to convince people how right he was and how right we who talk about him are? It’s as if he didn’t care about any of that or else didn’t think it was important. You’d almost think he wasn’t concerned with changing anyone’s mind about how right he was.
It’s as though the only thing he worried about was how you lived.
Jesus, help me get out of my head and into my heart more.