A sermon preached at Kowloon Union Church on Sunday 23 October
2016, the twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost, by Rune Nielsen. The
scripture readings that day were Joel 2:23-32; 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18; Luke 18:9-14.
I used to
work for a small congregation in the United States, and as we had a small
budget, we had no church janitor to clean the space we rented and no deacon.
So, we relied on volunteers a lot. Every Sunday in the bulletin we would list a
thank you to the volunteers who helped at the church that week. We had
different categories in the list, such as “cleaning the sanctuary” and next to
each task would be the name of the volunteer. Well, there was one woman in the
congregation who volunteered quite often, and her name would be listed five
times in the thank yous under different categories for five different things
she’d volunteered for. But when my church started printing shorter bulletins to
save paper, we didn’t have the space to list every category of volunteering. So,
instead we just listed a simple “Thank you to the following people who
volunteered this week:” And each volunteer’s name was shown once in the list.
For the woman who had volunteered five times a week that meant her name was
shown once, the same as the other volunteers. Well, after this happened, she
stopped volunteering altogether.
But what
does this example have to do with today’s gospel lesson? When we look at
today’s gospel reading, we hear about the self-righteous Pharisee who praised
himself when praying to God. It’s a simple message, isn’t it? We can feel good
knowing that we do not pray the self-centered way the Pharisee does; end of
story, we’ve got the lesson covered, right?
…Wrong! When we compare ourselves to
the Pharisee and judge our actions as better than his, we are in fact becoming
the Pharisee. The Pharisee prayed “God, I thank you that I am not like other
people.” Like the woman at my old church who was so pleased with her
competitive volunteering, the Pharisee thinks his good deeds make him better
than other people. We don’t want to be like the Pharisee, but in looking down
on him for his faults we elevate ourselves to the same stuck-up position. Yes,
it is true that the Pharisee is wrong in saying the self-absorbed things he
does, but to judge another is not our job, but God’s. Let’s view our critique
of the Pharisee as self-criticism, knowing that we are sinners too and that we
are prone to the same wicked tendencies.
So, how
many of you are more likely to do something if you know you will be thanked for
it? … Okay, how many of you are more likely to do something if you know you
will be complimented for it? And, how many of you are aware that those are not
good reasons for doing something good?
In the
parable, the Pharisee is standing in the ‘center stage’ of the Temple;
scripture says he was “standing by himself,” perhaps an indicator that he
viewed himself as someone deserving a place of honor. We can imagine him as the
worshipper who pushes ahead of the rest of the congregation to reach the spot
closest to the altar. He wants attention, like the woman at my old congregation
who volunteered five times a week for the sake of seeing her name printed five
times in the bulletin. He wanted thank yous and compliments.
How many of
you think that doing more work deserves more appreciation? Yes, me too. And the
Pharisee in Jesus’ parable seemed to agree with us. And it is wonderful if you
are able to do a lot of volunteering. But when we help others because we want
more appreciation, when we make doing good deeds a competition between people,
we are not really serving God. Already you can see that we are like the
Pharisee in Jesus’ parable. This story was written for people like us.
I once
heard a wise phrase: “ethics is what you do when no one else is looking.” If
the Pharisee didn’t have an audience for his prayers, would he still have done
the good deeds he did?
How many of
you have ever been eating at a fast food place, and you see dirty tables, and
you think—well, those employees need to do a better job of cleaning the tables?
I have. How many of you have ever been in a long line at the bank and thought
to yourself—the bankers need to do better to get the line moving faster? I
have. But again this is yet another way that we are like the Pharisee in Jesus’
parable. He thinks about what other
people have failed to do.
But now
let’s turn our attention to the tax collector for a moment. In Jesus’ context,
tax collectors were absolutely despised by the rest of society. Many of them
would demand that people hand over more money than the amount they were
supposed to collect, and from that extra money they made themselves wealthy.
But the specific tax collector in Jesus’ story begins to regret doing those bad
things. Unlike the Pharisee, the tax collector thinks about the wrong he’s
done. I can imagine him seeing a dirty table at a restaurant and he’s thinking
“I’ve done just as bad, and probably much worse, at my own job.” We can imagine that in his shame the tax
collector stood in the back of the temple, far from the altar--but he was not
far from God.
God listens
to all people equally. Doing more good deeds does not give you a spiritual
megaphone, a louder voice heard by God’s ears. But both the tax collector and
the Pharisee were sinners. From an earthly standpoint, the tax collector was
more of a sinner than the Pharisee, for his sins had very visible consequences.
He had been extorting money. Because he made himself wealthy, other people were
poor. Yet what makes this story’s tax collector more sympathetic than the
Pharisee? He feels distressed about his sins. On the other hand, the Pharisee
thinks he has done nothing wrong. In his mind, he has followed the law
perfectly.
But
actually the Pharisee did break a law. The First Commandment says “You shall
have no other gods before me.” God is perfect, not us; the Pharisee, thinking
he is perfect, puts himself in the place of God; idolatry doesn’t only come in
forms of object worship and the worship of other people. The Pharisee thinks of
himself as the judge, as the one who determines who is saved and who is not. He
does not see into the heart of the tax collector as God does, and he judges the
tax collector as unworthy of God’s attention.
For some
Christians there is a misconception that someone else must be going to hell in
order for them to go to heaven. It’s a false idea of the hierarchy of
believers. It is easy to fall into the trap of believing that my spiritual
identity is based on being categorized as one of the good people, one of the
faithful—because that means that there must be a group of losers by comparison.
If you are
nice to someone, do you think they should like you more than another person who
is mean to them? Do you expect them to be nicer to you than they are to the
mean person? Yes, that is also my assumption and the opinion of the Pharisee.
Though we see this pattern with people, we cannot say this is true of God. God
loves us all, no matter how much we have sinned. We face a misconception that
God can love some people more than others, as thought by the Pharisee. But
really the reward for doing work for God is strengthening your relationship
with God, not getting more of God’s love than other people.
God’s love
cannot be earned—it is unconditional.
The tax collector
does not rely on himself, but on God, falling on God’s grace. Yet the Pharisee
focuses on what he has given to God, expecting repayment in the form of praise
from God or perhaps a ticket to heaven. Conversely, the tax collector admits
his lack of giving, admits his failures, and receives God’s mercy.
The
Pharisee follows an attitude we see in our society today- we live in a social
system of ‘work harder, go faster, be better, be more elite’—but if that is how
we think spiritually, we miss the point of spirituality. Instead with God’s
grace, we can say to God, “Here I am, a sinner, do what you can with me. When I
fail, I will lean on you and allow you to guide me back to your path for me.”
After
receiving God’s mercy, what will the tax collector do? He will likely turn his
life around and be an agent of mercy to others. His humility and gratefulness
for God’s mercy will inspire him to do good things. I have talked about the Pharisee being the ‘bad example’ of this
story, but as I said in the beginning, as soon as we look down on him and
categorize him as lower than us, we show the traits in him that we do not like.
Both the Pharisee and the tax collector are loved by God, made in God’s image.
They both have lessons to learn.
So, when
the Pharisee makes his way back from the Temple, will he pass by the tax
collector and be humbled? Will he see himself in the one he considered lowly
and undeserving? Will we do the same? And what about us after we do good deeds?
Will we remember the self-centered prayer of the Pharisee and resist the
temptation to measure our worth by our good deeds?
# posted by Kowloon Union Church : Sunday, October 23, 2016
