“The Great Mercy of God”
Luke 18:9-14
Have you ever driven past another person holding a sign “will work for food” and felt a bit of disgust or even contempt in your heart toward them…kind of like a feeling of “I’m better than you”?
Have you ever felt superior to a prostitute, a drug addict, an unhoused person, or someone who is different from you in some way?
How about someone whose sin is different than your sin?
Have you ever felt as if you were better than them?
I have.
“Jesus told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt…”
I don’t know about you, but this parable speaks to me.
I need Jesus to talk to me through this parable this morning.
I need to hear it.
I need to be convicted by it.
I need to be changed by it.
I need to be humbled by it.
The moral of this story is so clear it’s hard to miss: “Don’t think too highly of yourself like this hypocritical Pharisee; rather, be like the humbled tax collector.
But here’s the thing: whenever one of Jesus’ parables seems this clear, this simple, and this straightforward, we better be careful.
So, let’s take a closer look at these two characters.
First, the Pharisee.
In all honesty, this guy is telling the truth: he is righteous.
He lives a blameless life according to the Jewish Law.
He fasts and gives a tenth of all his income and, on the outside, he looks nothing like the repulsive folks he compares himself to.
So, what in the world is his problem?
Why does Jesus say that he goes home guilty?
While the Pharisee might be right about the kind of life he should live, he is extremely confused as to the source of that kind of life.
For while he prays to God, in truth, he is really just praying to himself.
And because he misses the source of his blessing, he despises those other people that God loves just as much as God loves him and everyone else.
He misses the most important aspect of the Law or the heart of the Law which is love for God and love for neighbor.
And so, although outwardly, he seems to be righteous according to the Law he is not.
That is, he is not called righteous by God.
For it would never occur to him to ask God to make him righteous.
He’s doing it all just fine on his own, thank you very much!
In Matthew 23 Jesus called the guys like this hypocrites… “whitewashed tombs which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and all kinds of filth.”
He said they have “neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith.”
I often find myself neglecting justice, mercy, and faith as well—how about you?
It’s easy for us to try and take the speck of dust out of someone else’s eye while not noticing the log in our own.
It’s easy to judge other people and miss the fact that we are guilty of the same things and often much more.
Jesus told this parable “to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.”
When we act this way we are making ourselves righteous rather than allowing God to make us righteous.
In fact, when we are acting this way, we feel we have no need for God at all.
We often call this self-righteousness.
And self-righteousness follows a common tendency to define ourselves by defining others.
What do I mean by that?
Well, instead of looking at our own selves, and our own need for improvement we focus on what makes us better than others.
Have you ever judged another driver who is either driving too slow or too fast for your taste?
Have you ever called them an idiot or worse?
Ever judge someone who is overweight or isn’t wearing what is, in your opinion, the proper clothing for whatever they happen to be doing or wherever they are?
Have you ever thought of yourself as better than someone else because of the way they talk or walk or whether or not they have tattoos up and down their arms or piercings in their nose and lips?
It’s easy to do.
It makes us feel better about ourselves, does it not?
“I’m so thankful that I’m not like them.”
And there is often a group dynamic to this as well.
It’s a kind of game we play, shoring up our group identity by joining in a chorus of condemnation of others.
Ever been in a group where people were saying “Aren’t they awful?” about another group of people or type of people or whatever?
It gives us a sense of closeness as we stand together against a common enemy.
It’s the Joy of Gossip!!!
And it’s a deadly sin that is addictive and difficult to shake.
It can be thought of as a type of religion or godliness that despises other human beings.
It’s like stabbing someone else in the back.
And isn’t it fun?
Teresa Lockhart Stricklen says, “Self-justification has no need of God.
In fact, it sets itself as God!
The godliness that despises other people becomes idolatry as we put down others and exalt ourselves.”
(pause)
The Pharisee in Jesus’ parable is standing in a prominent place in the middle of the temple.
He’s praying in his well-practiced “stained glass window” voice—“I thank you that I am not like other people—thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector…”
At the very same moment, standing off to the side is the tax collector.
He is, perhaps, the most hated and reviled member of Jewish society.
Remember that Israel, at this point in time, was not independent.
It was a colony of Rome, a nation under military occupation.
The people groaned and staggered under the tax burdens of King Herod and the emperor.
Israel had no Internal Revenue Service.
There were no tax laws to insure, at least, some degree of fairness.
All of Israel was a network of freelance tax collectors—turncoat Jews working for the king and for Rome, whose job it was to squeeze out as many shekels as they could possibly extort.
It was a license to steal.
The first-century tax collector was kind of like the sheriff in Robin Hood.
He had tons of power; he was widely hated and feared, and there was no one who could stop him.
So, can you imagine the gasps in the crowd when Jesus declared that the tax collector was justified (which means considered just by the mercy of God) and the Pharisee was not?
Many of us can probably remember, as children, getting into roughhousing games and wrestling matches with other neighborhood kids.
Usually, these matches ended up with one child sitting on top of the other.
The wrestling would continue until the one on the bottom uttered the magic word.
The word was “uncle.”
It didn’t matter how you said it: whispered, shouted, breathless, laughing—as soon as those words made it out of the mouth, the fight was over.
Everyone would get up, brush themselves off, maybe even shake hands.
“Crying Uncle” means something very similar to “mercy.”
It means,
“I’m beat.
It’s over.
I’m pinned.
I can’t recover.
It means I can no longer help myself, so you help me, please!”
“Uncle” or “Mercy” is the very prayer the tax collector is uttering in the Temple.
Who knows what he’s been going through in his life, how he’s hit rock bottom, what depth of repentance has brought him to this place.
But as Jesus tells the story, Jesus leaves no room to doubt that the tax collector’s repentance is real.
There’s not much more the tax collector can add to that simple prayer: “God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” says it all.
It’s an earnest plea to make a decision for Jesus.
The guy was completely lost.
He could trust in nothing other than God’s mercy.
And after-all, that is the only thing any of us can trust in.
When my mother was in her 30’s and living in New York City she went out with a group of her friends.
When she got home, she came to the realization that she had spent the entire evening tearing down one of her best friends—who had not been with her that night—from top to bottom.
My mother felt extremely guilty about this.
It caused her to realize the depth of her sin and her need for God.
And that is what prompted her to give her life to Jesus.
And it makes sense, when I think about it, that this is the sin that brought my mom to Christ.
And the reason is, that my mom is was known by everyone who knew her, to be a person who never put another person down behind their back.
She didn’t gossip.
Instead, she was full of grace for the other, full of empathy and forgiveness for our shared human condition.
Jesus had transformed her into this kind of person.
Jesus “told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.”
In the King James Version, “with contempt” is translated as “despised others.”
In Greek, the verb means “to make of no account, to despise utterly.”
That same verb in other places is translated as “set at nought.”
And what does “nought” mean?
It’s another word for zero, nothing, not there.
In other words, Jesus is talking about those who see others as less than.
The Pharisee used religion to feel better about himself.
Some of the most toxic self-righteousness in the history of humankind has come out of this misuse of religion.
But as James 1:26-27 says: “If anyone considers [themselves] religious yet does not keep a tight reign on [their] tongue, [they] deceive [themselves] and [their] religion is worthless.
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: ‘to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.’”
(pause)
Wow!
Jesus sure is speaking to me through this parable this morning.
I definitely need to hear this.
It’s been said that “if we are not found guilty in hearing this parable, we are deluding ourselves.
We pray the prayer of the Pharisee all too often.
With too much justification.”
It often starts out as a brief observation or comparison.
A glance that sizes up the other.
An aspect of another individual that we find distasteful.
And then it leads to judgment.
Judgment without understanding.
Judgment without empathy.
Judgment without any attempt to see as Jesus sees.
This parable calls out this sin of ours—the sin of dismissal.
The sin of one-upmanship.
The sin of assessment before compassion.
And this parable calls out the need all of us have to rely on the great mercy of God to save us from ourselves, from our sins…
…to transform us.
…to heal us…
…to change us from condemning judges into loving and merciful Christ followers.
Let us pray together:
Merciful God,
Have mercy on me, a sinner.
Make this prayer real to me.
Enable me to cast my whole self on
Your mercy, Your love that is without conditions or limits.
Help me to understand that this is the most important prayer I can pray because it comes from a clear-eyed understanding of my human condition, and more importantly, from confidence in Your character…
…for You are a God who welcomes sinners, and even self-righteous saints.
Help me to see others as You see them.
Help me to love as You love.
Help me to see myself in a clear light, at all times, and if I get off course, which I will, enable me, remind me to return again and again and again to this prayer:
“God have mercy on me a sinner.”
Thank you for your love and great mercy oh God.
Through Jesus Christ I pray.
Amen.
