Sermon preached at St. Alban's, Spirit Lake, on October 28, 2007
(Proper 25, Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost, Year C, BCP Lectionary)
by the Rev. Carl D. MannTexts: Jeremiah 14:(1-6)7-10,19-22
Psalm 84 or 84:1-6
2 Timothy 4:6-8,16-18
Luke 18:9-14My daughter called and was upset with my mother. My Mom has recently remarried and moved to West Virginia, and in the process has gotten rid of most of the accumulated stuff of a lifetime for a host of reasons. Some of the stuff she wrapped up as Christmas gifts for family members.
My daughter received her gift and for some reason decided to open it before Christmas. In the package were two framed paintings that my daughter had created and given to her grandparents several years back. The paintings were abstract watercolors that by design needed to be hung side by side in order to get the full effect because they were two halves of a whole painting.
My daughter was offended because she couldn’t understand how her grandmother could take a gift, which she purported to love, and then just give them back because she had decided to remarry and move away after grandpa died. Why didn’t she take the pictures with her as a reminder of her granddaughter? By giving them back to her, it gave the impression that she didn’t want them or like them. She was discarding them or re-gifting them like they were just one of so many blenders from a wedding instead of one-of-a-kind pieces of art, which were created and given with love from a grandchild to her grandparents. How could she just forget grandpa like that?
Then proceeded a long conversation with many tears on both sides of the phone. I suggested to my daughter that she was taking it too personal because she was the creator of the paintings. She had to put herself in her grandmother’s shoes and look at it from her point of view. The paintings had been given to grandma and grandpa, two halves of a whole, just like the paintings themselves. They had hung with pride, side-by-side, in the dining room of their home, a home in which she had lived for forty years, and now had to leave because life had changed. Grandpa had died over two years ago; she had met another man and married him with the intent of making a new life and new home with him.
She gave the paintings back to her because she loved them very much. She gave them back because they reminded her so much of her home of forty years and marriage of fifty-two, that to keep them might prevent her from putting her all into her new relationship. She gave them back so that her newly married granddaughter might hang them on the wall of her new home as a reminder of her grandparents and of what a Christian marriage should be. It would have been much more offensive if she had given them to someone else or worse yet, divided them up. Life is full of changes and things aren’t always what they appear to be. Cut grandma some slack because she was dealing with massive changes in her life in the best way that she knew. Her new husband was going through the same changes and the best way forward was for both of them to clear their lives of a large part of the past in order to have chance for the future. She wasn’t forgetting grandpa; she was keeping him in the heart of her granddaughter.
This story serves to illustrate a change in perspective, which is part of the gist of today’s Gospel. Jesus addressed this parable to those who “trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.” He uses two prominent figures in 1st century Jewish life to make his point: a Pharisee and a tax collector.
This Pharisee was the epitome of the law-abiding citizen. He not only followed the law, he exceeded the law. He was undoubtedly wealthy because having wealth afforded one the time to study the law thoroughly in order to follow it closely, and as everybody new, if one were wealthy, it was because God had blessed him because of his righteousness. Yes, if any one group of people were to be upheld as an example of righteousness in the eyes of God, it would be the Pharisees or so it seemed.
The tax collector on the other hand was hated because he was a traitor to the Jewish people. In order for Rome to receive taxes from her occupied lands, she used the indigenous people to collect them. Certain wealthy people who weren’t quite so faithful to the law were co-opted into service because instead of collecting the taxes and handing them over, the tax collector had to prepay the taxes from his own fortune and then go out and retrieve them from the masses. And instead of just collecting that which was due, they extorted as much as they could in order to make a living and stay wealthy. They were not wealthy because they had been blessed by God but were wealthy because of their greed. Consequently, they were hated because they didn’t follow the law and they were collaborators with the occupying forces. If there was any one class of people who exemplified unrighteousness, it was the tax collector or so it seemed.
But when the Pharisee and the tax collector came to the temple to pray and their prayers were heard, something was different. Things were not as they appeared to be. The Pharisee wasn’t so much addressing God as he was addressing the crowd and himself. “Look at me! I am giving thanks to God for His blessings but in reality I know that I have achieved these things because of what I do. I have them because I deserve them! The only thing that I am really thankful for is that I am not like these other people. Especially that tax collector standing over there.”
The tax collector, on the other hand, is standing as far away as he can from the presence of God. He can’t even lift his head in order to look upon the habitation of the Most High. He is thumping his chest not in pride but in contrition because he knows that he has sinned grievously against God and his neighbor. His prayer is simple: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” In the Greek, it actually says “the sinner.” He’s not just any sinner but the sinner. If sin were personified, he was it. He was the mother of all sinners and he knew that his only defense before God was to throw himself upon the mercy of the court.
And Jesus said that it was the tax collector who went home justified. It was the tax collector who was vindicated not the Pharisee. It was the tax collector who was righteous in the eyes of God not the man who apparently had blessings dumped upon him.
Once again, Jesus has turned the tables on his listeners. He is taking the norm and making it absurd to let us know that the kingdom of God does not operate on human terms but on Divine terms. Now he’s not telling his disciples not to follow the law. In that the Pharisee is still the prime example. And on the flip side, he is not telling his disciples to become disregarding of the law like the tax collector. He’s telling them the same thing he told them last week when he told the story of the story of the unjust judge. Have faith! Do not have faith in oneself like this particular Pharisee because in the final scheme of things that will lead to nothing! Rather have faith in the mercy of God like this particular tax collector.
Last week Jesus taught us to have persistent faith; never give up no matter how bad it looks because our vindication will surely come through our faith. But this week he is instructing us to be humble in our faith because there is nothing we can do to earn God’s vindication nor do we deserve God’s vindication. Our vindication is the result of God’s loving grace of which He freely offers to those who willingly choose Jesus Christ as their Mediator and Advocate and humbly throws themselves upon the mercy of the court. Another way of putting it is this paradox: in order for us to be exonerated we have to be convicted. We have to acknowledge and be convicted of our sins and then have the conviction that Jesus Christ died for those sins in order to make us free. We are no longer captive to that which separates us from God but are unfettered and unencumbered to become what God intended us to be.
Persistence and humility: two halves of the whole which is faith, and with that complete faith comes the freedom and the strength to fight the good fight and to finish the race so that we may obtain the crown of righteousness that has been reserved for us by the Lord, our righteous and merciful judge.
Gloria Patri