Sermon for 10/24

Sermon 22nd Sunday After Pentecost

Text: Luke 18:9-14

I love Calvin and Hobbes, it was my childhood comic and I still enjoy looking back at it years later. Calvin is a rather egotistic young boy, he very often has a high opinion of himself. In one strip he is waiting for the school bus with his neighbor Susie. Now we have no real context for how their conversation came up, but you get the idea that Calvin just started talking. He states:

Calvin: I sure am great! I'm one of the greatest people who ever lived! How lucky people are to know someone as great as me! I'm great in so many great ways! In fact, I'm so great that my greatness is...

Susie: You're not great! You're the most conceited blowhard I've ever met!

Calvin: When you're great, people often mistake candor for bragging.

The Pharisee in our parable certainly exudes the same candor, he is very open and honest about how great and righteous he thinks he is. Jesus tells us of this pompous Pharisee, he stands by himself, but you also have the picture that he is standing there with his arms open, face pointed to the sky so that everyone knows that he is praying. And most likely praying loudly. “O God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I am so much better than these people, and do you know why God? It’s because I fast twice a week, I give my tithe, a tenth of my income. I am a good person and I obey the laws, and am certainly more worthy of your praise because of what I have done.

Then we see this Tax Collector. We talked a little about Tax Collector’s in our Tuesday evening bible study this last week. Tax Collectors were amongst the most hated in the region and in most of the Roman Empire. Because it was the Tax Collector that went around and well, collected the taxes the Roman Empire charged you. And if you didn’t it was them that turned the guard against you. And they were often dishonest, they made their money by charging you more than the empire asked for. The empire asked for 10 and they would charge you 12 and pocket the extra 2.

And here he stands, far off from the Pharisee, not looking up to heaven, he feels unworthy to even think of looking to the sky. And what does he cry? Does he give thanks to God for his riches? No, he beats his breast in angst and torment, and declares that he is unworthy, he begs God for mercy. “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” Nothing I do gives me worth. I am unworthy of love, and unworthy of your strength, and yet I beg of you, grant me your mercy.”

Jesus tells us that in this parable it was the tax collector who went home justified. Jesus says, “For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

What does this mean? Who are we? I don’t think we can place ourselves as either character in this parable. In our “Here we Stand” confirmation class, the 7th and 8th grade class, we have been talking some about good people and bad people. And how we are as Luther said, Saint and Sinner at the same time. We are not all good, and we are not all bad. Everyone has good and bad in them, no matter how hard they try. And when we divide people into good guys and bad guys it does nothing but discourage dialogue and conversation. And so it is here. It is easy to divide the two, the Pharisee has done so. He divides between those he views as righteous, himself, and those unrighteous, the tax collector, thieves, rogues, and adulterers and I’m sure many others. And we do the same thing when we hear this parable, we divide between those who are humble and those who are self-righteous.

The Pharisee we label as bad, because he is self-righteous, but in our normal understanding he is a good person. No matter what stereotypes we hear in the gospels, the Pharisees followed the law, went to temple, gave their tithe, fasted when they were supposed to, they were in their own thought righteous. They were what we think of as good people.

The tax collector we label as good, because he humbles himself, but in our normal understanding he is a bad person. He takes money from the people, charges them more, and turns them over to the hated Roman occupiers. He is a cheat, a scoundrel, someone who goes against the law, and against what the Pharisee, the expert on the Law says is correct.

Humble is not about being a good person, obeying the laws and doing what we think we are supposed to do. When we put ourselves as the humble people, because we think that we are better than other people and act like we think we should act we are doing the same thing as the Pharisee, we are dividing amongst God’s Children.

To understand this parable we need to remember that this parable, and all parables, is about God. The tax collector is humble not because he is good, he is not, but because he has turned completely to God. He has found no further place to turn other than crying to God, begging God for mercy. He is justified because he has understood that it is God who matters, not him. The Pharisee is self-righteous because he thinks that it is all up to him.

To be humble is not to be good, but to know that you are unworthy by yourself. The greek word humble means to make low, to hit rock bottom if you will. The same word is used elsewhere saying that the mountains will be made low. Humble is not something we can do, but something that have to realize about ourselves. The tax collector has understood that he can only turn to God, and through that he is justified, which itself means to be proclaimed righteous. God has proclaimed this man righteous. The Pharisee proclaims himself righteous. Righteous has the meaning of being who God made you to be. The Pharisee thinks that he is who God made him to be because he does all the things that he thinks are necessary. But what makes us righteous is God, and by realizing that it is only through God.

In RE:form, our high-school class, this week we talked about Baptism and being born again in our baptism each day. Luther says in the Small Catechism:

“[Baptism] signifies that the old person in us with all sins and evil desires is to be drowned and die through daily sorrow for sin and through repentance, and on the other hand that daily a new person is to come forth and rise up to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.”

Our baptism was not a one time event that has no impact on our life now. Just as Christ’s death on the cross gives us live to this day, our baptism daily drowns us in all of our sin, and daily rises us up to new life in Christ. That is how we are made righteous, not through our work, but through God. And we are humble when we realize that. We are humble when we remember everyday that it is only God that renews, enlivens, empowers, and sends us out into this world. We are humble when realize that we are sinner and saint at the same time and it is only through God that we have worth.

And daily we have to fight, for we constantly proclaim ourselves as righteous, and forget the power of God in our lives.

There is another Calvin and Hobbes that fits this all so well. Calvin finds himself in a field at night, the stars bright above his head. He looks up and shouts to the stars.

“I’M SIGNIFICANT!!”

(pause)

“Screamed the dust speck.”

That is us, we scream to the world that we are significant, we cry that we are worthy, we proclaim our greatness, and then we realize that we are not. We do so because we are that dust speck, we are nothing, we are lost.

I wish there was one more panel to that comic.

“I’M SIGNIFICANT!!”

(pause)

“Screamed the dust speck.”

A still small voice echoing in the field,

“Dust speck,

I, the Lord of sea and sky,

I have heard your cry.

you who dwell in deepest sin my hand will save.

I, who made the stars of night,

I will make your darkness bright.”

I love you dust speck, because of me, you are significant.