This Week’s Sermon

A Tale of Two Men

Trinity 11; Luke 18.8-14

It’s easy to take a parable and find a bad guy in it and a good guy; someone we can really hate, and someone we can really admire. Luke gives us a great guy to despise in the person of the Pharisee, and an equally great guy to be sentimental over in the person of the Publican; a novelist could have hardly done a better job.

What Luke doesn’t point out though is that the Pharisee probably walked into the temple singing “What a Friend We have in Jesus”; when he prayed, tears probably formed in his eyes; he’s really in to all this religious stuff and he’s truly thankful that God has blessed him with the life he now lives. Ask him on the way out what he thinks of the Publican, the dreaded and accursed “tax man,” and he might shudder and tell you, “But for the grace of God go I.”

Luke also fails to point out that when the Publican leaves the temple, after he has dried his teary eyes and blown his nose, he’ll go right back to tax collecting. It’s a sordid bit of business, but he’s stuck in the job and there really is no way out—it’s tough to find jobs for a reformed tax collector in Jerusalem. So once again on Monday, he’ll go door to door, collecting and extorting money for the Romans and skimming the odd drachma for his IRA.

Now of course it’s easy and, let’s be honest, kind of fun to see the Pharisee as evil incarnate, and poor, lowly, Publican as the hero of the story, but to do so would place the pray of the Pharisee on our lips: “God we thank thee that we are not like this Pharisee!” And let’s be honest, it’s the modern day Pharisee that pays the bills at that church, that reads the lessons week in and week out, that helps raise money, and that has the strength of his, or her, convictions…not the Publican.

And honestly what’s so bad about his prayer? What’s wrong with praising God for not making him a heathen tax collector? What would be wrong with you or I praising God for not making us addicts, or alcoholics, or prostitutes? Nothing…but that’s not what he says; he thanks God for not making him like other men, and specifically, as he peeks around behind him and gives the Publican a sidelong glance, like this tax collector. What he’s done is something we do all the time: he’s measured himself against another, and is delighted with the results.

How many times does that happen to us? How much work you may do around the church and how little work someone else might do; how much money you give, and how little money someone else may give; and then the arm reaches around as we pat ourselves on the back, smile and say “Thank God I am not like ____________________.” Now if the Publican had done the same thing to the Pharisee, his prayer too would have been just as much a lie.

Whatever else may be said of our Publican friend, extortionist, cheat, toady to the Romans, informant, he doesn’t even lift his eyes to heaven, in fact he doesn’t even notice the Pharisee. His fist is clenched and is beating his breast, for he is a man conflicted: he is incredibly sorry for his sins, but realizes that tomorrow he will go right back at it. Both men pray, but one scans the room seeking others to compare himself with, while the other won’t lift his head.

But is the Pharisee so different from us? If cartoon bubbles appeared above our heads while we were praying what would they say? If the same bubbles appeared over the heads of the delegates to the recent convention what would they have said…”Thank you I’m not like these liberals!” “Thank you I’m not like these conservatives!” Thank you I’m not like so and so up there in the front row who just did…!”It’s all the rage, to define ourselves by who we are not like, and is there any clearer indication that we really have no idea of who we are?

Now the bum, the traitor, the hated tax man, takes a look at his own corrupted and conflicted heart, and what can he say? He doesn’t have any fine and upstanding works by which he can define himself; he can’t pray the litany of accomplishments that the Pharisee can—he can’t even lift his eyes to heave—he won’t even come to the front of the temple. All he can do is work with what he is, a sinner; and all he can do, is ask God to merciful to him.

In fact all he can really do is to hold out his hands, crooked hands, that have no doubt stolen and cheated; he holds them out to the Lord and asks for mercy; somewhere in heaven, an angel clapped her wings, because the man asked for what we all need, whether we realize it or not…..

mercy, undeserved and unmerited; he asked, and he received.

+AMEN+