Luke 18:9-14
A couple of years ago, a writer and leadership coach named Kathy Caprino sent out a survey to people she had known and worked with, and around 700 people replied to it. The survey consisted of a single sentence, and it was this: “If you could say in one word what you want more of in life, what would that be?” Let me pause for a moment so that you can think of how you might answer that question: “If you could say in one word what you want more of in life, what would that be?” . . . So here are the top five responses she received. Number 5: Joy. People naturally desire to experience emotional delight and gladness. Number 4: Peace. Clearly many long for a sense of wholeness and calm in the midst of life’s many stresses. Number 3: Freedom. Freedom from worry; freedom to do what you want to do; not feeling constrained or limited. Number 2: Money. I guess there’s no escaping it, no matter how wealthy you are. Someone once asked John D. Rockefeller how much money was enough. His classic American reply: “Always just a little bit more than what you have.” And finally, Number 1: Happiness. That state of contentment which seems to elude so many people.
This came to mind not because I was thinking about how I would answer the question, but how Jesus would answer the question. And not for himself: I wouldn’t presume to even speculate on that. But what does Jesus think we need? We have more insight into that, because Jesus teaches people how to live, and shows them the path that leads to fullness of life. So here’s my modified question: “If Jesus could say in one word what we want more of in life, what would that be?” Well, it certainly would not be money; joy, peace, freedom, and happiness are all New Testament words and could all be contenders, but I don’t imagine they would come first. You might think I’m going to say love, but I’m not. Based on my reading of the Gospels and the experience of Christ over the years of my own life, I believe the word that Jesus would choose is mercy.
The Gospels are all about mercy. Jesus is a fount of mercy: it flows out of him continually. He performs many acts of physical mercy, of course, like healing the sick and feeding the hungry. But more amazing is the spiritual mercy he shows. He welcomes sinners into his life and into the community of his followers; he eats with notorious wrongdoers who are hated and shunned by others. He tells parables about merciful fathers, merciful employers, merciful enemies. He teaches us, Blessed are the merciful. Forgiving and being forgiven are the very heart of the prayer he gives us, a prayer we say every time we are about to receive Holy Communion. And he himself constantly forgives people, usually when they don’t even ask for it: the paralytic, the woman who anoints his feet, the woman caught in adultery. They don’t have to recite the correct formula of faith, they don’t have to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, they don’t even have to repent. And he does it right to the end: he offers paradise to the criminal dying next to him and he forgives the people who are executing him. Those soldiers don’t give a damn about being forgiven, but he forgives them anyway. And after his resurrection, the mercy just keeps on flowing. What are the first words he says to the close friend who denied him and to the men who abandoned him? Peace be with you. Mercy is the beginning and the end of the Good News of Jesus Christ. Nothing else reveals so powerfully how radical and how unconditional God’s love for us truly is.
All of this leads me to the Gospel today. I love this passage, and the older I get, the more I love it. The tax collector is a Roman tool and a traitor to his own people. He is despised and socially ostracized. I don’t know if we have any equivalent to that in our own society. But we can all recognize the Pharisee. He is, by many measures, a model citizen. He fasts twice a week! He tithes! He’s not a traitor or a crook or a rule breaker. He obeys all the commandments — except for one, the first and most important one: I am the LORD your God . . . you shall have no other gods before me. As the Bible reminds us over and over again, to have faith is to trust in God. But the Pharisee does not trust in God: the Gospel tells us he trusted in himself and in his own righteousness. The Pharisee has become his own god. The tax collector, on the other hand, is a flagrant sinner who can make no claim to righteousness. All he can do is to put his faith in God and trust in God’s mercy. And Jesus, incredibly, points out that the tax collector, not the Pharisee, goes home justified, in right relationship with God. It doesn’t say he stops being a tax collector. It doesn’t say he has a dramatic change of life. What it says is that he trusts in God’s mercy and he receives God’s mercy. Period.
I love this story because I used to be that Pharisee. And maybe some of you can relate to that as well. I used to put all my trust in my own achievements, be they academic, vocational, or spiritual. What was going to make me right with God and right with the world was my own success, my own ability to get it right. And I believe many people in our society are prone to that terrible temptation. It’s terrible when we fail, because then we feel guilty and inadequate. But it’s even more terrible when we succeed, because then we might actually think that our own achievement, our own goodness, is what makes us secure in God’s love. And that is not true. Perhaps the biggest turning point in my life was realizing in the depths of my soul that I could never in a million years earn self-worth or earn God’s love. And I don’t need to. I depend entirely on God’s mercy, every second of every day. And, frankly, so do you.
This is not just about feeling good: it’s about seeing the truth and acting on the truth. The Pharisee is not only obnoxious, he’s blind. And worse, he’s merciless, pouring contempt on others. He cannot share what he has never experienced. The world is filled with Pharisees and merciless people. And Jesus offers one shocking solution to this: show mercy to everyone, all the time. It is receiving mercy that sets people free to show mercy to others. Sometimes, as in the story of Zacchaeus, another tax collector, the change is immediate and dramatic. Many times, it’s not. But mercy is always the approach Jesus takes. Always. It’s how he goes about changing the world and ushering in the Kingdom of God. We may think his strategy is impractical, inefficient, or just plain unfair, but without putting too fine a point on it, Jesus is Lord and we are not. And our Lord Jesus shows us that mercy is what the Kingdom looks like. And thank God, because we all need mercy. We all need to receive it and we all need to give it. Every blessed one of us.
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