The first half of a reminder to the Church about why it’s here. Sadly, no-one who needs to hear it will see it on here. Also, I have no idea when part 2 will be. :-/
Luke 18:9-14; 2 Timothy 4:6-8,16-18; Psalm 84:1-7; Jeremiah 14:7-10,19-22
This is one of those parables of Jesus that always seem to go the same way. The short version is, “We really need to pray like the tax collector and not like the Pharisee! He got it all wrong!!” Luckily for you, that’s not exactly the direction I’m going today. You see, in my observation this parable is as effective today as it was in Jesus’ day, only in the exact opposite direction.
Luke tells us that Jesus told this parable to people who were “confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else”. In other words, these were the people who were sure that they and God had the right kind of relationship — they always thought they were acting, praying, worshipping, etc in the proper and right way. They also thought that everyone else around them was, in a word, wrong. So Jesus talks about these two guys who show up one day at the temple for prayer. One was a Pharisee, the super-religious type like the ones who Jesus was directing this parable, the other one of the everybody else who, in the eyes of the Pharisee, was wrong. The Pharisee, in his prayer, says, “God, thanks for making me better than everybody else, you know all those sinner types like robbers and adulterers — and I’m especially happy I’m not like that tax collector over there. I skip meals twice a week, and I give a tenth of everything I get to the Temple.”
The tax collector, on the other hand, prays something completely different. He simply stands in shame before God and says, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.” That’s it. No fanciness, just a plea to God for mercy. And Jesus says that he is the one who went home justified before God, not the Pharisee. Because everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and the humble will be exalted.
This is a great parable, but something has happened in the course of the way people understand it. It seems our reaction is often something like, “Lord, I thank you that I’m not like Pharisee, who is only focused on himself. Look at all the things I do for you that make me not like the Pharisee.” There’s even a little song about it. “I don’t want to be a Pharisee, I don’t want to be a Pharisee, Cause they’re not fair, you see. I just want to be a sheep.” There’s more to the song that just that of course. I won’t make you listen to the whole thing, I promise.
Unfortunately, thanking God that we’re not like the Pharisee is just as bad as thanking God that we’re not like the tax collector. Because prayer isn’t about us. Actually let me rephrase that: being a Christian is not about us. Being Christian is all about God. The Pharisee’s mistake is making his prayer about himself. He made his relationship with God about what HE was doing for God, as if anything he did could ever be good enough to make God happy. The tax collector on the other hand, knew that he could never do anything to make God happy, so he focused on what God could do for him and pled for mercy. He knew that it wasn’t about him, but about God. And God justified him. Note how I said that. The tax collector didn’t justify himself before God, like the Pharisee tried to do, God justified him.
So we’re all here in church this morning. And I have to wonder: Why are we here? It’s an important question to ask. Are we here because it’s the right thing to do? Is it because it’s habit to come to church on Sunday? Is it because we think by coming to church we’ll please God? Or even because we just feel good about ourselves and our relationship with God when we halfway pay attention to him once a week? Well, I’m just gonna say it bluntly: church isn’t about us. Coming to church is all about putting ourselves before God and saying, “Lord have mercy on us sinners.” It’s not about looking good, or giving the right amount of money like the Pharisee thought. It’s about giving thanks to God for having mercy on us, sinners that we are. The confession, the Scripture readings, the sermon, the songs, communion — all those things exist to focus us on God and not on ourselves. That’s my prayer every day, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.” The rest of my life is trying to live in that reality, that God has had mercy on me, pitiful sinner that I am.