The 24th Sunday after Pentecost – October 27, 2013
Gospel: Luke 18:9-14 – The Rev. Canon Hap Lewis
Every one of us needs to be reminded constantly of our smallness and our greatness.
Some days everything goes right. Some days everything goes wrong. Some days it's "Good
morning, God." Other days it's "Good God, its morning."
Every now and again, you wake up to sunshine and blue sky, your favorite shirt is
clean, traffic flows along like a river, the boss loves all your ideas at work, you finish early,
you discover a $20 bill folded up in the corner of your pocket, dinner is a culinary
masterpiece, your spouse is feeling cuddly and your kids actually ask for your opinion. You
go to bed after such a day convinced that you are a truly blessed, fine, upstanding human
being, worthy of praise.
On the other hand ... on the other hand, there are other days, days that dawn in
gloom and end in disaster. You spill coffee on your favorite shirt, and the car refuses even to
start. When you finally arrive for work, all your coworkers glower at you and reject everything
you do and say all day. The bank calls complaining that you are overdrawn again. You're so
late getting home that dinner comes out of a pizza box - and it's cold. At home, everyone is
fighting with everyone else, and the cat is missing. You go to bed after these days convinced
that you are a truly cursed, wretched, worthless human being.
Of course, nearly all the days of our lives fall somewhere in between these two
extremes - thankfully. A steady diet of either one or the other would succeed in making us
either insufferably arrogant or incapacitatingly depressed.
There is a dual quality to human existence that is reflected in our experiences of
"good" days and "bad" days. The Jewish theologian/mystic Martin Buber observed that our
spiritual natures have two "pockets." When we reach into one pocket, we pull out smallness "We are nothing but dust and ashes." If we reach into our other spiritual "pocket," however,
we extract greatness - "For our sake the universe was created."
If it is true that we are all saints, it is also true that we are all sinners who have fallen
far short of the goals of God. Human sinfulness has been so persistent, so pervasive, that
God has had to send two testaments full of prophets to reprimand us and show us the way to
righteousness - and even they are not enough. The human capacity for sin, our continual
wafting toward wickedness, ultimately resulted in God's most radical act of grace: "For God
so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not
perish but may have eternal life" (John 3:16).
The truth is, we are both Pharisee and tax collector, or as Martin Luther put it, both
saint and sinner together. We owe God our best efforts and our undivided loyalty, as well as
our dependence upon him for grace and forgiveness all those times we fall short. The
environmentalist movement has come up with a saying that works as well to define our
spiritual nature as it does our responsibility to the health of this planet. Surely you've all
read the slogan "Think globally, act locally."
- As sinners we may not be able to change the world, but as saints we may be able to
change our communities.
- As sinners we may not be able to change our communities, but as saints we may be
able to change our neighborhoods.
- As sinners we may not be able to change our neighborhoods; but as saints we may
be able to change our homes.
- As sinners we may not be able to change our homes, but as saints we may be able to
change ourselves.
- As sinners we may not be able to change ourselves, but as saints we may offer
ourselves up to the grace of God and experience nothing less than a changed world.
1
Our spiritual longings for a better world should never be sidelined simply because we
know we may always fall short of our goals. We must continue to "think globally and act
locally."
In examining this parable we discover, first of all, that when we boast of our own
accomplishments we forget about God. That's true. In one of Lloyd John Olgivie's books, he
speaks of the "gift of inadequacy." Think about those words for a few moments. The gift of
inadequacy. It's easy to forget about God when everything's going our way. It's easy to fall
into self-congratulations and pride.
Consider our lesson from the Gospel. Two men are in the Temple. One of the men is a
righteous man. And he is proud of his righteousness--as well he might be. After all, as he
reminds God, he doesn't cheat, he doesn't commit adultery, he fasts twice a week, and he
gives to God a tenth of everything he earned. Wow! We would like to have him as a member of
our church. How many of us can say we never cheat? How many of us can say we tithe? The
average person gives about 2% of his income to God, so maybe this man had a right to brag.
He was a righteous man. Surely Jesus loves people who are righteous. And yet . . . None of
us like being around someone who is self-righteous--someone who is proud of their moral
superiority.
There is a story about a cantor in a Jewish synagogue who was uncommonly proud of
his voice. He was heard bragging that Lloyd's of London has insured his voice for $500,000.
An older lady in the synagogue brought him to earth by asking, "So, cantor, what did you do
with the money?"
There is something about people who are pompous and self-righteous that turns us
off. Such pomposity has been known EVEN to infect men and women of the cloth.
A well-known pastor filled with his own self-importance decided to visit a local nursing
home. He strolled into the nursing home and announced himself, but nobody seemed to
recognize him. He went to one elderly woman in a wheelchair and asked, "Sister, do you
know who I am?" "No, sonny," she replied, "But if you check with the lady at the front desk
she can tell you who you are!"
The righteous man in Jesus' parable was not only reminding God of his virtue, he was
also trumpeting his goodness to the other worshipers in the Temple. He was a blowhard, a
braggart, in short, a jerk. Still, he had kept the Law, as he understood it. He was a moral,
upright citizen. He may have even been known in his local synagogue as a man of God.
Surely Jesus was appreciative of that.
But there was another man there in the Temple that day. A tax collector. A man who
was a traitor to his own people. A man who was corrupt and made his livelihood cheating
others. A man we wouldn't even want sitting next to us in church. There he is. Look at him.
He can't even lift his eyes to heaven. He's beating his chest in sorrow. And he is mumbling.
What's that he's saying? Get a little closer. Oh, yes. We can hear him now. He's mumbling,
"God, be merciful to me, a sinner."
I love the story of the man who came to the gates of heaven to be greeted by St. Peter.
Peter asks the man if he can give a brief history of his life with an emphasis on the good
deeds he had done in order to gain entrance into the kingdom of heaven. "You will need 1000
points to be admitted," Peter tells the man.
"This will be a cinch," the man thinks to himself, "I've been involved in church from
the days of my youth." Then he begins to list his activities for Peter. He was an officer in his
youth group, served in every possible position he could as a youngster. Was on the Vestry
and every committee the church had to offer. His list was extensive.
2
"Very impressive," Peter smiles at the man. An angel standing with them also smiled
and nodded as he tallied the points and then whispered in Peter's ear. Peter tells the man,
"This is quite striking; we seldom see men of your very good works. You will be pleased
to know that you have 327 points! Is there anything else you can think of?"
The poor soul breaks into a cold sweat and begins to reach deep for every single act of
kindness he could think of. He listed them as the angel scratched furiously on his angelic
clip board and nodded his head in admiration. Peter looks at the clip board and says, "This is
quite exceptional! You now have a total of 402 points. Can you think of anything else?"
The distressed guy strives to recall good deeds like the time he helped a little old lady
across the street. He finally arrives at a grand total of 431 points and cries out... "I am sunk!
There is no hope for me! What more could I have done? O Lord, all I can do is beg for your
mercy!" "THAT," exclaims Peter "Is a thousand points!"
As Father David said last week, pray for forgiveness, not justice. So also, WE like the
tax collector in Jesus' parable find hope in the grace and mercy of God.
Amen
3