Below is the sermon from Sunday, 10/24. The text is Luke's parable of the Pharisee and the tax-collector from Luke 18:9-14.
This parable is deceptively simple from the surface. The Pharisee comes into the temple and he is the model citizen. The model church member. His resume is impeccable! He serves on every committee, gives 10% or more of his income faithfully, follows the rules, and of course, comes to worship every sabbath. His prayer, it's grammatically significant – all the subjects are first person – I, I, I . . . His prayer is about what he has done, not what God has done. He thanks God, but it is still self-centered. His prayer reminds me a little bit of all the campaign ads we see on t.v. and hear on the radio these days – in those you learn more about what's supposedly wrong with the opponent in contrast and less about what the election might actually be about.
The tax collector isn't trying to win any campaign,though. There's no comparing in his prayer, no resume of good deeds. The tax collector, token traitor, slimy, immoral character of the day, comes into the temple. He prays for mercy. He comes in with no merit of his own, especially to Jesus' contemporary listeners. And he, this pusher, who bribes the public, he receives God's mercy and goes out justified.
So the point of the parable seems clear – be humble! Be humble. So that's it, that's the sermon, be humble. So go out there – try it – even pray about it. But then maybe you see where I'm going. Where does this lead, some moralistic instruction to be humble. Can you ever be good at being humble? It's a catch-22. I have tried it, I'll admit. I've tried to make humility a self-discipline. Letting myself take no compliments – because I need to be humble – all glory to God. But this only leads down one of two roads – a) depression and loss of self-esteem, or b) being really good at being humble. Yes! Then you have done it – you are humble! You are the best at being humble... wait. . . that's not a very humble statement . . . oh no . . .
This parable cannot be just about being humble. It cannot be that humility or anything else is the way to earn justification, God's mercy that levels us out, makes us right again. The Pharisee is there to not be painted as the bad guy but to make it clear that even the very best of us cannot earn God's love. Jesus teaches us through both characters in the parable, in opposite ways, that there is nothing we can do to earn God's love and mercy. The Pharisee is at the positive extreme of the scale, he has followed everything to the letter. The tax-collector is at the other extreme – he has done nothing good and he makes no promise to be good in the future. The tax-collector's humility isn't some virtue that earned him God's love. Trying to be humble isn't something we can do on our own. Being humble for the sake of God's favor is like as Donald Miller writes, “I found myself trying to love the right things without God's help, and it was impossible.”1
I have come to love this parable because it shakes free from our hands all of the tools we try to use to earn God's love. Jesus moves us in this parable to realize that we stand before God with no good cards in our hand, with no witty campaign slogan to win our way to God's heart. Both the tax-collector and Pharisee need God's love. And it is God's mercy that “all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”
Being humble can often be seen as this downward-looking, mopy state, without much joy. But the word humble can mean something richer for us as Christians. The word “humble” comes from the Latin word “humus,” which means dirt, or dust, or ground. So to be humble is to be grounded, to be dusty, dirty, to realize that God shaped us from the dust as it says in Genesis, breathed life into us. It also means that God will ultimately humble us on the other end too – dust to dust – that we will one day return to the dust. Being humble – it's just remembering that you are dusty – that you are God's creation. And God is the subject of this and all the important sentences of our lives. It's not an abstract virtue we can do or love on our own. Jesus teaches us that we cannot love the right things without God's help – we end up loving ourselves.
I'd like to offer another contrast to the Pharisee. A baby. As Daniel Erlander says “An infant has served on no committees, has done no great work, and is helpless, needy, dependent and unemployed. In fact, an infant brought to the water for baptism is a sign of how we all come to God- with nothing, absolutely nothing.” Jesus shakes us free from reciting our resumes to God. Jesus shows us that we are not in control, but God is who is present with us in each moment, gives us mercy as a free gift of grace. God humbled God's very self in Jesus to come to the world, a dusty human just like us, only to be exalted in the most humble way – through death on the cross. Through this God gives us a place at the table, fills us with Jesus' very presence, and gives us faith as a gift to know God's love in our lives. God is the subject. God made you a humble being – made from the dust. We have no tools with which to build up our resumes for God's love and mercy. God's mercy and love come only as gift. On your resume God sees only – created child, baptized. You can never lose those qualifications. So embrace that God made you humble, dusty. Amen.
1Blue Like Jazz, pg. 77
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