Church of Our Saviour, Charlottesville

Luke 18:9-14

23 Pentecost/Proper 25

23 October 2016

The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

The story from the gospel of Luke today reads almost like a joke: A Pharisee and a tax collector go up to the temple to pray.  Which reminds me of another joke: There was a Catholic Bishop and two Protestant teenage boys stuck in an elevator together.  These mischievous boys decided to strike up a conversation. 

“Hey Father, have you heard that the Pope has started smoking?” asked one boy, “Such a dirty habit.”

“Well no,” the bishop responded, undisturbed, “I can’t say that I have.”

“Not just smoking, Father,” the boy continued, “but drinking too.  The Pope is hitting the bottle and he and Jack Daniels are mighty close.”

“Goodness,” the bishop said, “this is the first I’ve heard of it.”

“And Father, along with all that smoking and drinking there are reports of women stashed away in the Vatican for the Pope.”

“Well,” the bishops responded, “that’s hard to believe, but thank you for keeping me informed.”

These boys were not getting the reaction that they wanted, so the second boy finally jumps into the conversation with a last-ditch effort, “Father, have you heard that the Pope is becoming Episcopalian?”

“Yes,” replied the bishop, “that’s what your friend has been telling me.”

It all depends on where you’re coming from that will inform who you see as the good guy and the bad guy in this joke, and that also applies to our story today: There was a Pharisee and a tax collector who went up to the temple to pray.  We are told that the Pharisee’s prayer was all about himself - how great he was.  But the tax collector’s prayer was quite different.  He couldn’t even raise his eyes to heaven as he beat his breast and said, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”  The punchline to this story, at least it was a punchline to the folks in Jesus’s day, was that it was the bad guy, the tax collector, and not the good guy that ended up going home justified - put in a right relationship with God - that day. 

But it’s not so much of a punchline to us, is it?  Actually, the story seems very predictable.  We’ve been around the block enough times to know that Pharisees are almost always cast in the gospels as hypocrites and self-righteous.  And knowing that, it’s an easy jump to the assumption that the simple moral of this story is: be humble.

However, with that simplistic understanding, Jesus could easily add us to the story, making us a third character with a prayer that might go something like this:  Lord, we thank you that we are not like other people.  We’re not hypocrites.  We’re not over-religious.  We’re not self-righteous.  And thank goodness that we are not like that Pharisee!  We come to church most weeks, sometimes now with WAC even on Wednesdays.  We sit and listen attentively to Scripture and we have learned that we should always, always be humble.

Obviously this kind of self-congratulatory response to the story is not what J had in mind.  So let’s take another look.  It may helpful to note that, in fact, everything the Pharisee says is true.  He is faithful in following the law.  He does do it better than most everyone around him.  And by the standards of the world and of his faith, he is righteous.  So let’s not be too quick to judge.

On the other hand, we have the tax collector and this is not a tax collector with a heart of gold.  He lives a rich life on the backs of the hard work of his neighbors whom he taxes.  The sins of the tax collector are real and serious.

And when we see it that way, then Jesus’s declaration packs a lot of punch - the bad guy, the rotten one is justified?  Put in a right relationship with God?  You mean to tell me that all you have to do is beat your breast and say one prayer and all is well with God?  There’s the rub.

So remembering that tension, let’s go back to the beginning.  What prompts this story, we are told, is that there were some in Jesus’s audience who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.  Now notice that the problem here is not the Pharisee’s religious observances.  Good works are essential to a life of faith and devotion.  Being a disciple is a balancing act in a complex world.  Good works have their place, but that place is not at the center of one’s relationship with God. 

Sadly, sometimes it’s those very good works that can lead us to a false sense of righteousness in ourselves which results in separating us from others and ultimately from God.  Because the very nature of feeling righteous or self-satisfied or at least better than others is based on comparison and competition.  Sometimes we hear or say ourselves, I may not be perfect, but, but at least I’m not like those bad people, or those lazy people, or those ignorant people who are clearly voting the wrong way in the presidential election.  I may not be perfect, but at least I am better than them.  That way of thinking causes us to draw lines and divide people into groups - the good and the bad, the righteous and the sinners.  Anytime we draw a line between those who are in and those who are out, our story this morning tells us that God will always be on the other side which not only separates ourselves from others, but from God.

The real punchline to this story is not that someone who seems undeserving, in this case a tax collector, is justified, put in a right relationship with God.  The real punchline, the joyfully, funny Good News is that righteousness and justification have nothing, nothing to do with who we are and what we do.  Rather it has everything to do with who God is and what God does.  God is compassionate and forgiving and merciful and full of grace.  And what does God do?  God showers that overflowing goodness, that right relationship, on us - all of us.

Heaven forbid that we let some misguided trust in ourselves or our good works get in the way.  We are invited to let go of all that puffs us up, all that makes us feel better than others, all that divides us into one group or the other.  We get to shed all of that nonsense and simply come before God just as we are, to some degree a mixture of good and bad, tax collector and Pharisee, trusting not in who we are or what we do, but who God is and what God does.  And you know what the really funny thing is?  Is that when we come before God with that kind of trust it is then that we become justified: our relationship with God is put right.  And we received the joyful outpouring of God’s great gifts: mercy, grace, love.