The Unexpected Gift At The Foot Of The Cross

October 23, 2022

Hope Lutheran Church

Rev. Mary Erickson

Luke 18:9-14

The Unexpected Gift at the Foot of the Cross

Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.

What are the fibers binding groups together? It depends on the group.

• For college alumni societies, it’s their mutual connection to their alma mater. Their love for the college and common memories bind them together.

• Packer fans definitely are bound by their love of the Green Bay Packers. You can go to any major city, or even some places overseas, and find a Packer bar.

These groups create their own subculture. For instance, take the cheese wedge crown, jerseys bearing the number of your favorite player, the Lambeau Leap. They signal to fellow Packer fans.

High schools have very interesting cultures. They have subcultures within the larger context of the school: the jocks, band members, industrial arts students, math nerds. Then throw in race, class and gender distinctions and you have a highly complex cultural system. And yet students very quickly calculate the ins and outs and ups and downs.

Each group and society known to humankind has something that connects them. As a community of faith, what binds us together?

Today we hear a parable of Jesus. And Luke shares the context which prompted Jesus to tell it. He was addressing a group of people who “trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.”

These people have assessed others in their faith community and made judgements about them. They’ve constructed rankings about who is more or less righteous.

What holds them together as a community of faith? In their context, they’ve ordered their religious community into hierarchical divisions from righteous and acceptable to condemned and despised.

So Jesus tells them a story. He means to challenge and shake up their righteous judgements. The story involves two men. They couldn’t be more different from one another. The one is a respected Pharisee, a holy man, devoted to his faith. The other is a tax collector. He’s sold out his fellow Israelites to the Roman government so that he can line his own pockets.

Both men come to the temple area in Jerusalem. The temple complex is already laid out in a very segregated way. It radiates outward in consecutive rings of holiness. At the very center is the Holy of Holies. Only the chief priest can enter this alcove in the rear of the temple. Next comes the rest of the temple interior. Only priests are allowed in the temple, no laity. Just outside of the temple building is the Courtyard of Israel. Jewish males can enter this area but no further. And outside the Court of Israel is the Court of Women. This is as far inward as Jewish women can enter. And surrounding all of this is the Court of the Gentiles. Unclean Gentiles are not allowed to enter further within the temple complex. Gates and fences and curtains keep each group within the confines of the area where they are allowed.

These two men have come to the temple to pray. And Jesus tells us that both of them are contained by circles of separation.

First, the Pharisee. When he prays, he stands by himself to utter his self-righteous prayer. “I thank you that I’m not like other people, God. I’m better than them. Look what I do.” He stands apart both literally and figuratively. This man has drawn a line of separation between himself and everyone else. It’s self-imposed.

The tax collector barely allows himself to enter the space of the other Israelites. Jesus says he stands far off. He stands along the perimeter and doesn’t dare approach other people. Nevertheless, he’s drawn to God. He wants, he needs to be near God. He’s drawn in by God, but he’s skittish by the scorn of other people. He makes his prayer standing as far removed from others as possible.

Lines of division. The righteous Pharisee draws one around himself to separate his fellow believers from him. The tax collector stands outside of the line drawn by polite society to exclude him.

But there’s a twist to Jesus’ story. The tax collector prays a raw prayer, he bares his soul to God. HIS prayer is heard and he goes home justified before God. But the Pharisee…well, there was nothing to forgive. He didn’t ask for it. He didn’t need God because he was right within himself.

The tax collector prayed, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner!” Biblical commentator Bruce Epperly says, “This prayer is the beginning and end of the spiritual journey.”

Back to our original question: what binds us together as a community in Christ? The tax collector’s prayer illuminates it perfectly. What binds us together, what we all have in common is our reliance upon the mercy of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. We all stand in the need of divine mercy and grace. Our realization of this drives all of us to the very same place, to the foot of the cross. And standing there, we receive the most unexpected gift. There, at the foot of Jesus’ cross, we receive the communion of saints, our brothers and sisters in Christ.