Name it Before God - Luke 18: 9-14

We’ve all met this type of person – right? The person who refuses to acknowledge their own sin or blame. The type of person who tells God everything they do right – just in case God didn’t notice the first time. I graduated from a Christian college where it seemed like most students were really good at living on the extremes – either dwelling in their past mistakes and sin, forgetting God’s redeeming love, or bragging about how wonderful they were to everyone else. Both extremes were missing the beauty and joy in living in the center of God’s will for us.

Take a moment to think of someone in your mind who is caught up in differentiating themselves from the other in order to prove their own worth. Do you have an image in mind? Keep it there as we turn to today’s Biblical text.

In the first line we are told who Jesus is addressing this parable to – those who have high regard for themselves, but view others with contempt. In other words they aren’t looking with the eyes of God. God looks at each of the same way – as the Beloved. It does not matter what we do or if we are worse for the wear and tear of life, we are viewed with love. So what are we doing when we view someone else with contempt – we are looking with eyes that mare God’s creation that was named to be good and blessed.

Who are the characters in today’s story – a Pharisee and a tax collector? Let’s not let not let those descriptions just fly by us, unnoticed. The Pharisees have gotten a bad rap in the New Testament that sometimes causes us to forget who they were – these were the elite of the religious elite. They have studied their Torah; have been chosen by their teachers to teach others. We don’t even really have anyone to compare them to in today’s society. They are the cream of the crop when it comes to religious education. They were chosen to do God’s work and to study God’s word. And then we have a tax collector – hated by just about everyone. People with this occupation were given the legal ability to steal from their neighbors. They were foot soldiers of a political system that oppressed through economics. And then took even more on top of that.

We’ve got our character context – the highest of the high and the lowest of the low come to the temple to pray. The Pharisee may have been off by himself, but he was saying his prayer loud enough for others to hear it – he didn’t want anyone, including God, to miss what he had been doing lately. And how does he start off his prayer – by bashing his neighbor, the tax collector who had also entered the temple to pray. Now before we go off and start scoffing at the Pharisee, we need to ask ourselves, are we really any better today? Based on some of the things I’ve received in the mail this week, I would venture that we, collectively, as the church are not. Buried amongst my pile of mail was a large post card that read, “Alert! Alert! Alert! At stake – your congregations future: religious freedom, tax-exempt status, and tax-deductible support.” You flip the card over and there is paragraph after paragraph bashing the possibility of the legalization of same sex partnerships. And what is the organization sending this card saying: we need to be free to preach scriptural truths. Well, brothers and sisters, I’m not really sure what Bible they are reading because in the good book I read, Jesus says come one and come all. Including the tax collectors. Let’s be honest, we know what’s at the root of mailings like this – it’s the need to make the “other” into an enemy in order to make ourselves look good. We need someone else to sin a little more so we can label him or her the sinner and claim ourselves to be pure. And that is not how the good book tells us to behave.

The Pharisee doesn’t stop there – he goes on to tell what he does every week – he fasts twice a week and gives a tithe. Listen brothers and sisters carefully, spiritual disciplines are good. But they are a means of getting to know God and ourselves in a deeper more authentic way, not a way to manipulate God into doing what we want. They are not trump cards that can be pulled out of our pocket at any given time we want God to act a certain way or to take a little bit more notice of us. We engage in spiritual disciplines as an act of trust that we will recognize a little bit more each day that we are the Beloved of God.

You will find as we enter this holy season of Advent together in a month that I love spiritual disciplines. This past week I took 35 classroom hours of just learning more about them. There are some disciplines that we come together to do – like worship. But those aren’t the only things we are called to do – it must be a balance between public and private devotion. Whenever I feel myself getting caught up in the game of one-upping each other, which academic places seem to bring out in us, I know I need to turn to the discipline of secrecy. I need to do something for someone who will never know that I did it for them. Because my heart needs to get back in check that we are a people not called to be the best at showing off, but for spreading the love of Christ. And as I read this passage I can’t help but think that this particular Pharisee needed a bit more secrecy in his devotional life.

Let’s turn out attention away from the Pharisee though to the tax collector. Up until now he has just been listening to the Pharisee for a far off distance. And what does he do, he looked up to the Heavens to the throne of God and started to beat his chest in hopes to express the agony he was feeling on the inside. Beating away he cried, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” When is a last time you heard a prayer so clear and so sincere? Sounds a lot like the Jesus prayer that we’ve lost the art and power of saying, doesn’t it, “Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner!” This tax collector bore his soul before God, no excuses, just naming that which caused him pain and what he knew caused God pain. And what does he ask for, mercy – that which isn’t deserved. What a twist! Here is a religious leader who should know better then to tell God that he deserved anything, because we know we can only approach God because of grace and ask for mercy. But then there is this tax collector who gets one of the big messages of the Kingdom of God and can sum it up in one word – mercy. Have mercy on me. Maybe that’s what we need to be asking God for in our prayers a little more often – mercy. And maybe we need to clearly say, Lord this is how I’ve screwed up, I’m a sinner, a little more too. Not to degrade ourselves, but to be honest. We’re flawed. But we still contain the image of Christ in every fiber of our being, so let’s name the pain and move on, trying again.

It pains me to think of what one of the people we claim to be our founders, John Wesley, would think of the American church today. We’ve lost the sense that we are accountable to one another both for what we do and what we don’t do. We’ve lost the nerve to look each other in the eye every week and say, “How have you knowingly sinned since the last time we’ve met?” and “How are you growing in the faith?” and “What ways have you engaged in the disciplines this week?” And we are not better for it. We are living in the flux of remembering that we are sinners and crying out for mercy and trying to remind God how good we are. We need to be able to look at each other, when questioned, and say how we have fallen short and how we are growing, not for God’s benefit, but for our own. God knows what sins we have committed. And God knows what we are doing to grow and what heart we approach those disciplines with. No, we name and claim both our faults and growth areas, because we need to hear that from each other. We need a little bit more honesty in the church today, brothers and sisters.

Why was this man justified? Because he humbled himself both before God AND others. He spoke the truth of what he was feeling in that moment. And praise God for that! May we be a church that can lay it all down and truthfully say where we are in this given moment? The world has enough people pointing the finger at others in order to justify themselves, but the world is starting, Heaven is starving, and brothers and sisters we are starving for some authenticity in our walk with the Risen Lord. It is not going to be easy, and some times we are going to be tempted to go back to the easy game of fighting to prove who is best. But if we remember how God sees each of us – that we are the Beloved – it makes the game seem meaningless, and accountability a real option, because we can open up to each other, in love, knowing that what we say isn’t going to be held against us. Has anyone told you today that you are the Beloved of God? If not, let me. You are the Beloved. Now may we let our living claim it.