Twenty-third
Sunday after Pentecost - Proper 25 – Year C
October
27, 2013
Luke
18:9-14
He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax-collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, 'God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax-collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.' But the tax-collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, 'God, be merciful to me, a sinner!' I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted."
He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax-collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, 'God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax-collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.' But the tax-collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, 'God, be merciful to me, a sinner!' I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted."
When
it comes to jokes, I really have a thing for jokes that are punny. I love word play, jokes that involve double
meaning are a favorite of mine. Even though
most people don’t find it all that funny, my favorite joke of all time is: two
guys were walking down the street, one of them walked into a bar, the other one
ducked. There is something simple about
that joke that attracts me, the double meaning, the whole visual part of it. Of course part of it is that it sounds a lot
like lots of other jokes. I think we can
all think of joke that begin in a similar way.
Two or more people walk into an establishment, something happens, and
then the punch line. Normally, the people
are far from being similar to one another.
A nun, a prostitute, a penguin and a cowboy walk into a bar. The
bartender says, "Is this some kinda joke?"
So,
when I read this morning’s gospel lesson, I am waiting for the punch line; or
at least a better punch line. Because,
let’s be honest, “for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble
themselves will be exalted,” really isn’t that funny. It might be challenging, it might be
uncomfortable, but it’s not really all that funny.
However,
I’m sure that when Jesus told it the people listening were also waiting for a
one heck of a zinger at the end. They
all knew the Pharisees. They were the
perfect people, or at least the people that liked to present themselves as
being perfect. The Pharisees were the
folks that knew the Jewish law best, they were the ones who made the rules,
followed the rules they made, and criticized everyone else about how well or poorly
they followed the rules. And tax
collectors, well they were just above green slime. They were representatives of Rome, most people
viewed them as being little more than thieves with a license from Rome to
steal. To say they were despised is a
huge understatement. So when, you put
the two of them together at the beginning of the story it would be setting
people up for one heck of an ending. As
biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan rephrases it, "A pope and a pimp
went into St. Peter's to pray." You just know whatever is coming next is
going to be awesome.
And it was, and is. Just not the way those listening to Jesus
were probably expecting it to be, nor perhaps in the way we expect either. It’s not the Pharisee who was the good one,
the perfect one, the one who did what God wanted that is praised and
justified. It’s that other guy. The one who cheated and stole from people for
a living, the one who was probably spat on when he walked down the street, the
one who people avoided at all costs – he was the one who was lifted up, the one
who was justified at the end of the day.
Maybe this is a joke after all, it sure sounds like it. The good guy loses and the bad guy wins; I’m
sure some of those in the audience when Jesus told this parable looked at each
other and muttered, “Is this a joke?”
Nearly 500 years ago, there was a
monk in Germany that felt that some of what the Catholic Church was doing was
wrong, so he wrote out his complaints and put them up on the doors of the
church in Wittenburg. These were Martin
Luther’s 95 theses, and I’m sure the Vatican responded to them in a similar way
that the hearers of Jesus’ parable did: “Is this a joke?” Yet, it was far from a joke, and the movement
that Luther gave words to has continued to have ripple effects through this
time. So too, with the ripple effects of
this passage.
At the heart of the Protestant
Reformation was the idea of grace, of God’s grace. The thing that really set Luther off was the
idea that the Catholic Church, especially the pope, had some extra special
power that could be bought for a price.
The church at the time was needing to build St. Peter’s in Rome, and it
was costing a ton of money. So, someone
had the great idea of selling these coupons called indulgences. Basically, they were get out of purgatory
early cards. There was the understanding
that after you died, most people were in a status where they weren’t really
clean enough to enter heaven, and not bad enough to go to hell, so you hung out
in purgatory for as long as it took to get you clean enough that you could enter
heaven. The indulgence was a coupon that you could buy
for yourself, or another person, so you could get out of purgatory and into
heaven a little quicker. No, seriously,
this isn’t a joke.
Luther didn’t think it was
either. He basically said, if the pope
had that kind of power he should forgive everyone’s time in purgatory and let
everyone into heaven ASAP. What happened
to grace if you can buy some level of forgiveness? Was it even grace then? If entry, or speed of entry, into heaven
could be controlled by money or some aspect of our behavior, what then? How could the church continue if God’s grace
was being bought and sold?
It may not seem like it at first,
but the question of grace is sitting right alongside that of humility in our
parable. In fact, grace and humility go
hand in hand with one another. Grace is
that free gift from God that is done without our having done anything. It’s God’s act of reaching out to and for us
for no reason other than love – nothing we have done or do, made or will make
God reach out in love. That’s
grace. Humility is the recognition that
we are not the best, that there are others out there who are far better, far
more important than ourselves. It’s the
recognition in religious terms that we are fully dependent on God for all
things. It’s not about us.
In our text the Pharisee may be
praising God, but he is doing so because he is not like those other
people. Other people that the Pharisee
assumes are not as good as he is, because he is so good. He might be good, but he is far from humble
in his goodness. Then we have the tax
collector, who simply recognizes his sinfulness and cries out for mercy.
When looking at the way these two
individuals approach God, something jumps out.
The Pharisee was all about ‘I’. “I am so thankful
I am not like other people…I fast twice a week… I faithfully tithe…I, I, I.” Whereas, the tax collector is not about ‘I’
at all, he’s about God. “God have mercy
on me, a sinner.” There is no claim of
action, there is no individuality. He is
simply a sinner, like all of us; not the sinner, not the greatest of sinners,
the worst of sinners, the least worthy of sinners; just a sinner. His prayer, his plea, is all about God. The one who walked away justified was the one
who forgot about himself, and threw himself upon God’s mercy and grace. The Pharisee, though, still had his eyes
turned upon his own actions, his own sense of value and validity. Of course God would hear his prayers, he was
worthy because he did what was right and pleasing to God.
The
punch line, the point, is that if it’s about grace, if it’s about God’s grace
given to us, it’s never about ‘I’. Yet, even as we accept the reality
that it’s never about ‘I’ when it comes to God’s grace, we have to be
careful. This parable has a hidden
danger, hidden traps waiting for us to stumble into: the first being that the
moment you make the move to be humble, and throw yourself on God’s mercy, it’s
hard not to be grateful that you are not like the Pharisee – “at least I know
that I have to let God do it all for me.”
And second, becoming aware (like the tax collector) of our sinfulness,
and in so doing make it about you in some way; in other words that our being
aware of how bad we are is something to be proud about – “at least I know how
much of a sinner I am.” Either way, the
trap is easily sprung – it’s not about you, it’s about God. Anything you do, any way in which you
suddenly become a player in it – it becomes about you, and not God. Notice the ‘I’s. I’m just glad we have this parable to teach
us, to warn us of the dangers.
This past week I ran across an online video
clip of Pat Robertson on the 700 Club responding to a question from a
mother of a deaf child, who was praying that her child be cured of
deafness. Pat Robertson, responded that
she must be doing something wrong, after all he had prayed for people that were
deaf and they had been healed. Why is it
that we keep on having to deal with stuff like that? Why is
it that the image of Christianity that is so often seen and heard by the people
is about pointing fingers at the sinners and lifting up the saints, all about
us’s and thems? Like “those crazy Christians that seem to be always
showing up on television advocating their twisted version of the gospel with
words like Jesus hates, condemns! Why is it that they are always the one’s who
the press go to when asked about the Christian perspective? Or, how about all those
Jesus malls, excuse me mega-churches, popping up all over the country selling
Jesus like a consumer commodity and entertaining all those who attend! Or, how about those prosperity preachers
offering a message of hope and healing for a price —preying on the poor, oppressed
and hopeless, all yours for just $9.95 plus shipping and handling.
Thank God I’m not like those people."[1]
......Amen??
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