“Our Merciful God”

27 October 13                     “Our Merciful God”                   Luke 18:9-14

 It may have begun during my time in the Boy Scouts. There was training we were scheduled for that seemed to teach me what I did not want to learn. We were taken out into the deeper woods at Camp Strake near Conroe and left with our compass, a snack, and water and told to find our way back to camp. I am sure it was part of the requirement for a wilderness survival merit badge, or something like that. While I do not remember the details the outcome was apparently a success because here I stand.

 Next was during a weeklong hike in the San Juan Mountains in southern Colorado. Part of the experience was to be left alone away from base camp overnight. We had no compass this time and the usual food and water. We had our sleeping bag and back pack and a clear plastic tarp for rain protection. I do remember that night. It was not that I felt lost, I was just alone and it was dark and eerily quiet.

 We have all had those times of feeling lost. Even in our life in Austin, we can sense loss. Jesus must have had his moments. That end of life time in the garden, on the road to Jerusalem, and his trial, conviction, torture, crucifixion. “My God,” Jesus cried.

 From God’s word in Luke it is evident Jesus has great passion for the lost. Thank goodness, you may be thinking! Thank goodness that Jesus has passion for the lost, for I am certainly one. In the context of our sin, or in the reality of our faith life, we are there. We are lost.

 In the harsh reality of our day to day, well, loss seems to be everywhere. So we do what a good scout would do. We become prepared. We find what life has to offer that will save us from being lost, feeling lost, or losing ourselves and everything. We create securities and build our defenses against the bad times that are sure to come.

  In Jane Austin’s much beloved novel, Pride and Prejudice, the various folks in the story create securities of wealth and status and they surround themselves with an abundance to secure their security. They, of course, live with such an arrogance and sure judgment about their station in life they unknowingly limit their possibilities for really living a blessed life. They limit their possibilities to know deep love without pretense, to know marriage without manipulation, and to know happiness without false pride.

 Luke would offer that living this way as a Christian, with pride and prejudice, would limit our faith. Living without humility as a disciple of the crucified and risen Christ also limits God’ ability to bring real grace into our lives. Our pride, our prejudice limits our ability to become the people God desires us to be; doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with our God.

 We learn from Luke there is no humility in those folk who center themselves and their perceived righteous ways in “this world” sensibilities. There is no humility in their contempt for those deemed less worthy. Their pride of prejudice pretty much condemns them in God’s eyes.

 The Reverend Jay Losher rightly points out how familiar the parable is to us. Two individuals went to pray at the temple, one a Pharisee, the other, a tax collector. The Pharisee prays filled with proud self-assurance. Eyes toward heaven, he says, “God I thank you that I am not like other people; thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even this tax collector.” Knowing how God must agree with his self-assessment he then goes on telling God about how good he is.

 The tax collector is the mirror opposite in action and word. Ever looking downward, beating himself up in real emotional turmoil, he prays simply; “God, be merciful to me, a sinner. For I am lost, lost from you.”

 Jesus makes sure that we learn which of these two men goes home justified, made right with God, and who does not. It is the tax collector Jesus lifts up. It is the Pharisee Jesus ignores.

 The Pharisee looks to the past and all the good deeds he wants God to notice. The tax collector anticipates the future, a different future, where judgment brings the wrath of God for unrepentant sinners. His heart is humbled. 

The Pharisee lives with pride, disobedience, and faces lasting death. The tax collector lives with humility, obedience, and realizes the possibilities for life eternal. The Pharisee’s way to pray is actually quite dangerous. C. S. Lewis notes, “A person is never so proud as when striking an attitude of humility.”

 Martin Luther understood this point in his “Lectures on Romans.” As he explains it, there is a difference between sinners. “There are some sinners who confess that they have sinned but, they give up hope and go on sinning so that when they die they despair, and while they live, they are enslaved to the world.

 There are other sinners who confess that they sin and have sinned but they are sorry for this. They hate themselves for it. They long to be justified, make right with God and groaning, constantly pray to God for righteousness. These are the true people of God.”

 For Martin Luther, the more we think of ourselves as a saint, the more sinful in fact we are. The more we think of ourselves as a sinner, the more saintly in fact we become. There is hope for us lost sinners yet!

 The Pharisee was actually more than proud, he was prejudiced. In his book “The God Coast” Nelson Mille said about one of his characters, she “excludes any realities that upset her prejudice.” Our prejudices do indeed get us in trouble. Though we may be seldom right about our perceptions of others, we are seldom in doubt about them.

 Changing ourselves from ourselves is usually beyond ourselves. That is why we need God and God’s grace in our lives to overcome our resistance to changing ourselves. And change we must.

  As the Reverend William Malambri reminds us, God’s grace can be a tricky thing. Especially for us folks who experienced faith long ago and may have since forgotten what it is.

 Being a Christian is not new to most of us. We certainly have not perfected it, but we have learned some of the steps. We know when to come to church, how to follow along in the bulletin, sing the familiar hymns, say the familiar prayers, and receive the familiar body and blood of Christ.

 We usually do not fret too much when we stumble and sin. We know we will confess them each Sunday and be forgiven. Perhaps we secretly co-authored James Moore’s book, “Forgive me Lord for I have sinned, but I have several really good excuses!”  Or, we reason to the conclusion, I have sinned far worse than this in the past. I know God has plenty of grace to forgive me.

 From this line of thinking our pride has cheapened God’s grace and lead us to our disobedience and ultimately to our eternal death, lost and alone.

 We cheapen God’s grace when we accept it without considering it cost Jesus everything. We undermine grace when we act, in our pride and our prejudices, as if what we have done and who we have been has earned us the grace we have.

 We lose touch with the reality of God’ grace in our pride and prejudices when we are convinced that we are good Christians! Pharisees are what we are! We are not good, we are evil and sinful and for Jesus to remind us of this he has to offer grace to people we probably never would. People we would ignore or worse, hurt with our pride and our judgment and our contempt.

 Jesus shows us the true way to God’s grace by accepting the unacceptable, by showing mercy to the merciless, by welcoming the unwelcome, by loving the unlovable.

 When Jesus does that he startles us. Wait Lord, we cry, what about me? See all the good I have done. See all the good I have been. I have great potential. Saintly perhaps!

 Oh, delusional dear ones. Jesus reaches out and justifies and sanctifies us only when we humble ourselves before him. Jesus forgives us only when we tell the truth about our lives and who we are. Only in our humility and only in our obedience will we have eternal love and life.

 For his part, Jesus loves us despite ourselves and will always forgive us, always. By his surprising grace, if we will let him, he will change us, and save us, and fill us with his faith, and continue to love us for all eternity.

 In the words of the first century Rabbi Hillel, “Keep not aloof from the congregation, and trust not in thyself until the day of thy death, and judge not thy fellow person until thou art come to their place.”

 These are the simple acts of one who is humble and forgiven and not lost. Come and be with us in congregational fellowship. These are the loving acts of one being obedient and filled with God’s grace. Not trusting ourselves alone. These are the faithful acts of one receiving mercy and finding there eternal love and life. Judging no one until we have been in their shoes.

 These are the faithful acts that will bring us to eternal love and life with our savior, Jesus Christ where we are lost and alone and afraid no more.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever, Amen.  

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