Scripture text: Luke 18:9-14
“Oh, Lord, I am so thankful that I am not like this Pharisee. That I am not so stuck up on my own righteousness. That I understand how much better it is to be humble before you. That I am not so close-minded and bigoted about the people around me. That I know that I am not better than everyone else just because I love you....”
Or do I?
The great challenge of our Gospel text today is to avoid the reverse of the sin of the Pharisee, to turn our prayers into thanksgiving because we’re not like him, so full of his own self-righteousness. It’s a tall challenge in these polemic times. Oh, how I am so glad I am not like those...well, fill in the blank: Rich folk, bigots, fundamentalist Christians, Donald Trump supporters, bullies, rednecks, fans of UVA, people who turn without signaling, and children who kick the back of my seat in movie theaters.
You’ll note that’s not my usual list of suspects. That’s deliberate. When I talk about “those people,” I’m usually listing off the groups that society has, for a variety of reasons, rejected, people we divide from based on race, language, economics, or sexual orientation. But if I talk about my own set of “those people,” well, that’s who they are. And we all have them. Even the most open minded of us finds ourselves confronted by the reality of the human condition. There’s always an enemy, always somebody we just can’t stand.
Oh, Lord, how I am glad I am not them.
And yet, we are still called to love even them. And yet, we are called to not place ourselves above them, no matter how tempting it is. A tall order indeed.
It’s a tall order because it’s such an easy trap to fall into. Why are we here each Sunday? Why do we come to this place and sit in this space and listen to me prattle on about whatever I’m preaching on that Sunday? Well, there’s a variety of reasons. We come to hear God’s encouragement, to gain his strength through word and ritual, strength that will help us through the trials of the week to come. We come to embrace friends and to receive their encouragement and support.
But among all those reasons, but sublime and gross, we come to learn. We come to learn in particular how to be better moral agents in the world in which we live. To put it more simply, we come to learn how to be good. We come to learn how to be better people.
And one of the easiest ways for me to teach that is to point to some figure known to you, a celebrity, a pundit, a politician, or a generic stereotype and say “Don’t do that.” “Don’t be that way.” “Don’t behave like that.” “Don’t think that way.” It’s not right. It’s not moral. It’s not Christian.
But sadly, in doing that, I make it an easy jump from us seeing their bad behavior to thinking they’re bad people.
Truth is, none of us wake up each morning planning to be or do evil in the world. Even the most evil monsters in history had their own, albeit twisted, moral code that they held to that defined good to them. We’re not them. Most, I presume, of the figures I speak of as examples are not them. They are, instead, people who are just trying to live life, try to be good, and then screw up from time to time.
We try. We try to do good. We try to do better. But every now and then, we cave in. We give into our vices: our greed, our lust, our ambition, our anger, our whatever, and we do evil. We sin. Sometimes it’s just impulse. Other times it’s deliberate. But either way, we mess up. We make mistakes. We hurt people. We hurt ourselves. We break faith with God and our neighbor.
It’s what we do. It’s part of being human.
And that’s Jesus’ point in the parable. None of us, regardless of how hard we try or how successful we are at being good, pulls it off perfectly. We all sin from time to time. We all embrace, again deliberately or accidentally, the brokenness of our human condition.
What makes the tax collector’s prayer so profound is his honesty about that. He’s screwed up. He knows it. So he calls upon God to fix things. “Have mercy upon me. I need your help. I can’t do this on my own. I need you, Lord. I need you.” He embraces his humanity and the brokenness thereof. He also embraces his need for God and his love, forgiveness, and mercy.
He doesn’t blame anyone else for his failures. He doesn’t even make a claim that he’ll do better. He throws himself before God and says “I’m yours. Do with me as you will.” That’s trust. That’s faith. God could hit the smite button on his computer keyboard (like the classic Far Side cartoon), and end this guy right now.
He doesn’t.
God is a god of infinite second chances. He’s a god of infinite forgiveness. That’s the whole point behind Jesus’ coming. The world is screwed up. It’s broken. And God could just throw the whole thing (and us) away, but he doesn’t. He loves his creation. He loves his people. He loves you and me and wants us around forever. So he sends Jesus to show us what the forgiveness looks like. It’s in his teachings. It’s in his miracles. It’s in everything he does, most profoundly (of course) in the cross and empty tomb. I will go to any length to see this world put right. This is how far I’ll go for you...and you...and you.
The tax collector knows that, so he prays with humility and confidence. Two things that don’t usually go together, but here they can. He prays out of his brokenness to a God who seeks to repair that brokenness. A god who will forgive his sins. A god who will embrace him regardless of all his failures. That’s our God and for you and you and all of us, he will do the same. Trust in that. Amen.
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