Weekly Sermon

The Humble One: October 28, 2001

The Reverend Anne Benefield

Luke 18:9-14

Jesus also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, 'God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income,' but the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, 'God, be merciful to me, a sinner!' I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted." Prayer: Heavenly Father, Give us the humility to hear and respond to your word in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. When I was growing up we called this story "The Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican." I didn't really know what a "publican" was, but I knew that my parents were republicans, so the ending seemed satisfactory to me. Of course, now the translations read "The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector." I think that is an improvement. I'd like to go into more detail on this story because the power of this parable has been muted by our being overly familiar with it. This is a parable of 'reversal.' For Jesus' listeners, the ending was a reversal of all their expectations. You see, we think of the Pharisees as the bad guys, but in Jesus time they were the opposite of bad guys. They were good Jews who were concerned not just with knowing the scriptures, but with living them. The Pharisees were known for their piety and commitment to carry out God's will in the world. The Pharisees worked hard to live as they believed their faith dictated, but they did get the reward of honor among their people and confidence in their faith. At the same time that we condemn the Pharisees, we are predisposed to think kindly of the tax collector, because we remember that Jesus welcomed the tax collectors. But let me tell you a little bit about who the tax collectors were. The tax collectors worked for the Romans. The Roman system invited corruption since the government authorities gave the right to collect taxes to the highest bidder, and the tax collector's profit depended on what he could collect beyond the amount he had to pay the Romans. Although most tax collectors were Jews, they were considered by their own people as no better than thieves. They worked for a Gentile nation and so they were considered blasphemers of God. The tax collector in this story is in a truly hopeless situation. If he really repented he would have to abandon his profession and make restitution plus one fifth more to all whom he had defrauded. He couldn't do that without ruining not only himself but his family as well. In short, the tax collector has no bargaining power and that is the crux of the difference. The Pharisee feels he ahs bargaining power with God based on his good deeds. He goes beyond the prescribed requirements. He doesn't just pray and live faithfully, he fasts twice a week, rather than the once a year requirement, and he tithes 10% on all his income, not just on his net incomes as required by law. To tell this parable in modern terms, we might say that two people went to the church to pray. One was a minister or an elder or a deacon or maybe just a regular Christian like you and me. The other was a drug dealer. His situation was hopeless. Not only did he sell drugs to children and youth, he was himself addicted to drugs. If we were the Christian, we might find ourselves praying in thanksgiving that we were saved. It would be hard for us to ignore the presence of the drug dealer with his flashy clothes and shaky gait. We might find ourselves saying, "Thank God I am not like that person one whose hands are the lives of innocent children who have become addicted because of him. If our prayer is marked by thanksgiving, the dealer's prayer is marked by need. He knows he is lost. The stop in the church may be his final step before he gives in completely to his addiction and overdoses. What does Jesus say about these two? He says that the drug dealer leaves the church in a good relationship with God and the Christian is not in a good relationship with God. How could this be? I think the problem is that the Pharisee thinks he has bargaining power with God. And think we believe we have bargaining power with God, too. Haven't we made a point of doing the right things? Don't we come to church? Don't we pitch in wherever we're needed? Doesn't that mean that somehow our prayers are more important to God? That certainly is a question that comes up a lot for me. I may not be as obvious as the Pharisee in the story, but I surely fall into the trap of thinking highly of myself and feeling like I have earned some bargaining power with God, or should I say bargaining power over God? Jesus tells us of a different system of goodness. The Pharisee has made the mistake of trusting more in himself than in God. When you read the story carefully, you will notice that there is no confession in his prayer, nor is there any supplication. As far as he know, he really has no need of the Lord. The tax collector is different. He is the humble one. He has no bargaining power, he can only rely on the grace of God. There is nothing else on which to rely. His situation is truly hopeless. That is why he is open to God. He trust God. The other day I read a wonderful true story called "Willingly." It is the story of a rich widow named Winona Woodward. She did strange things. Because she was wealthy they called her eccentric not crazy. One day she went grocery shopping with her loyal butler and everything else servant, Mr. Henson. When she bought the groceries, she also bought the shopping cart for $100, which was a tidy little profit for the store manager. A few days later, Mrs. Woodward sent Mr. Henson to the bank with a check for $100,000 in cash. When Mr. Henson returned with the money, he found Mrs. Woodward in the garden standing on one of her pretty dresses. She was grinding it into the dirt with her heels as she read the daily paper. He asked her what she was doing and she answered, "I'm just getting something ready to wear to church." On Sunday morning, she came down the stairs with no make up wearing the tattered dress. As she sat down to drink her coffee, she asked Mr. Henson to open a can of tune and bring it to her. When he brought the can to her, she poured the juice on her filthy dress and said, "Nothing like a little perfume to start the day." So off they went with one hundred thousand dollars in cash placed in a large, brown paper sack in a shopping cart. Mrs. Woodward now looked just like a bag lady riding in a limousine, but she had a plan. It was a pretty straightforward plan. They would drive to Birmingham, Alabama, where Mr. Henson would drop her off several blocks from a church. She would push her cart with $100,000 in a bag to the front of a church and see if she would be invited in to the worship service. "It's very simple," she explained. "The first church to invite me in will get the hundred thousand dollars to use as they see fit with no strings attached. Any church that would invite me to come inside deserves the money!" The sad thing is that it wasn't simple at all for Mrs. Woodward to get invited into a church. For months, she went out to pretty churches all around the city. People said things like, "Go to the Salvation Army if you want to worship, " and "You don't belong here," and "You should be ashamed of yourself." As the summer came to an end, it looked like the plan might not work at all. Finally, over Mr. Henson's objections, Mrs. Woodward, an elderly white woman, pushed her shopping cart up to the Lawson Avenue First Emmanuel Church, a black church. It was 1956, but she was not worried. On that Sunday morning the Reverend Obadiah Jackson saw her and personally welcomed her up the cracked cement steps of the church. He said, "Come on it, sister, God's been waiting for you." The church no longer has cracked steps. Today it has air conditioning and large classrooms. The kitchen is large than the old sanctuary because they serve breakfast, lunch, and supper to all who hunger…[John Fades, Miracle on Boswell Road: True Stories of Unexpected Acts of Love, (Uhrichsville, Ohio: Promise Press, 2000), 19-25] Appearances can be deceiving for us, but they don't deceive the Lord. As the Pharisee looked over at the tax collector, his arrogance grew. His goodness actually separated him from God. Our good ness can do the same thing. As long as we trust in our own goodness, we are not trusting in God. Grace is a gift not based on achievement, except the achievement of knowing how greatly we need grace-how short of goodness we really fall. We can feel pretty puffed up if we think too highly of ourselves. I remember a story about a freshman at Princeton University who was working in the library. One night, the student came upon an old man, who seemed to be wondering around the physics section. Trying to be helpful, the student asked if he could find something for the man. The man seemed startled to be interrupted and quickly said he had found what he needed. The student was a little amused, and with a touch of conceit, he said, "I know this section of the library pretty well if you change your mind and want some help. I'm a first year physics student at the University." The man smiled a crooked sort of smile and said, "I'm a student of physics, too." Later, as they were locking up the library, the young man's supervisor said, "Did you see who our visitor was tonight?" The young man said that he hadn't seen any one special. The supervisor was surprised because he thought the young man would have noticed Albert Einstein in the physics section. When we hear the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector, we tend to be hard on the Pharisee and relate to the tax collector, but neither of them are fair comparisons for us. We're probably not as pompous or self-righteous as the Pharisee. And we're probably not as hopeless as the tax collector. Comparing ourselves with either one lets us off the hook too easily. But the difference between the Pharisee and the tax collector is important. Jesus died over that difference. There is only one person with whom we should look for comparison. It is the one who is truly humble. It is our Lord Jesus Christ. When we see ourselves next to him, we see ourselves as we are, faults and all, sinners in constant need of God's mercy and grace. William Barclay, a world-renowned scholar from Scotland, told a story once about traveling through England on a train. As they passed the Yorkshire moors he saw a little whitewashed cottage. It seemed to him to shine with almost radiant whiteness. Some days later he made the journey back. Snow had fallen and was lying deep all around. They came again to the little white cottage, but this time its whiteness seemed drab and soiled and almost gray in comparison with the virgin whiteness of the driven snow. [William Barclay, The Daily Study Bible Series: The Gospel of Luke (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1975), p.225]. Our Lord and Savior will wash us clean, but we must ask for his mercy, just like the tax collector.