Thankful Memorial, Chattanooga; October 27, 2019; Year C, 20 Pentecost, Proper 25

Joel 2:23-32; Psalm 65; 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18; Luke 18:9-14

In the portion of Luke’s gospel we heard a few moments ago, Jesus tells a parable about two men who pray to God at the temple.  One, a religious man, prays: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people… I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.”  The other man’s prayer is very different.  The tax collector, whose whole profession depends upon him swindling others, prays, quite simply, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”  And Jesus ends the parable by showing preference for the tax collector, who “went… home justified rather than the other.” 

Now, Jesus’ preference for the rule-breaking tax collector over the rule-abiding Pharisee who tithes his income to the church is very inconvenient to me as I preach to you during our stewardship season.  Because, let’s face it, it would be very wonderful for our parish, and it would make my job a lot easier, if everyone at Thankful, like this Pharisee, gave a tenth of their income to the church.  So let me be clear that Jesus isn’t finding any fault with the Pharisee for his tithe! 

So where does the Pharisee’s fault lie?  He is, after all, thanking God in his prayer.  But his sense of gratitude has gone bad.  It’s true that he does start his prayer with thanksgiving, but if we look more closely, we quickly realize that he’s not actually thanking God for much at all.  The Pharisee isn’t so much praying as he is giving a self-progress report.  Look at what I’ve achieved! is his basic point.  The Pharisee knows himself to be righteous and he considers himself the source of that righteousness.  In simpler terms, he shows up in prayer to tell God that his relationship with God is right because of all the good things the Pharisee himself has done.  And there is no room left for the Lord.  No recognition of the role God played in the Pharisee’s righteousness. 

The tax collector, on the other hand, knows exactly how much of a role God must play in his righteousness – precisely all of it!  If his relationship to God is to be made right, clearly it must be God who does that work, since the tax collector has done nothing except ask for help. “Have mercy on me, a sinner!” he cries out to God, because he has no hope of righteousness unless God is “merciful” to him and rights the relationship.  And it is that awareness that allows God’s love and mercy to work in this man’s life, to right the relationship and to transform the man from the inside out, to make him “justified” before God. 

We don’t often talk about sinfulness in the Episcopal Church.  But sin is not a four-letter word.  Rather, it is a definition of our reality, a term to describe the facts on the ground.[i]  Sinfulness is more than the mistakes we make.  It is the brokenness that exists at the very core of our being, the stubbornness and blindness that make us incapable of fully opening ourselves to God and to others.  And the tax collector realizes that he has got it; he’s got the disease of sin that constantly thwarts his better attempts to change and grow and love fully.  So, he cries out to God in desperation, “Have mercy on me, a sinner!,” because he knows that he’s powerless against this sickness and only God is capable of healing him. 

But here’s the thing: the Pharisee has got the same disease.  He, too, is a sinner.  Each one of us has that same brokenness within and even if we work as hard as we can, even if we have the best of intentions, even if we give to charity and help our neighbors and pray daily and come to church and volunteer at MetMin, even if we do all the equivalents of the Pharisee’s tithe and bi-weekly fast, we cannot overcome our brokenness and sinfulness.  Only God can do that.

And though that may sound a bit depressing at first, it’s actually good news, really good news, for two reasons.

First, our shared reality of sinfulness levels the playing field in a shockingly wonderful way.  If we are all of us – and I mean all of us – sinners, then we can finally give up constantly comparing ourselves to others.  “I thank you that I am not like other people,” says the Pharisee.  His words imply that he is always looking around to make sure he’s not like those “other people,” to measure his righteousness against others’ as the only way to quantify his own so-called success. 

But the good news is that we don’t need to do that.  Our righteousness isn’t dependent on others’ sinfulness because we are all sinful.  Our righteousness isn’t even dependent on us, our own achievements and success because the things we do or don’t do can’t ultimately affect the reality of sinfulness at our core.  So we don’t have to try so hard.  We don’t have to constantly measure ourselves against one another.  And we can perhaps be inspired to treat others with the compassion and tenderness that comes from recognizing our common ground of shared brokenness. 

And it gets better because the second reason why the reality that we are all sinners is good news is the fact that it allows us all to receive God’s grace.  In the book of Joel, we heard a prophecy this morning in which the prophet envisions a time when God’s Spirit is poured out “on all flesh,” regardless of status or position: young and old, male and female, slave and free, all God’s people will receive God’s universal grace. 

And the good news of Christ Jesus is that the time that the prophet envisions is right now.  Right now.  Upon you and upon me, upon contemporary tax collectors and modern-day Pharisees, regardless of status or position, regardless of what we have done or what we have left undone, God’s Spirit is poured out with abundance upon us all, covering our sinfulness, restoring our brokenness, making our relationships with our Creator whole and right.  It is the great gift of God’s universal grace that justifies us and makes us righteous in God’s eyes. 

So, go ahead, act like the Pharisee.  Do the things that are the symptoms of righteousness.  Fast appropriately.  Volunteer at MetMin.  Treat your co-workers with kindness and compassion.  Pray daily.  Come to church week in and week out.  And by all means, tithe. 

But let us do all these things not because we seek to earn our righteousness.  Because we cannot.  Rather, let us do them as signs of our joy and great thankfulness to the God of love whose gift of grace, unasked for and undeserved, has made us sinners righteous.  And let us live lives transformed by that grace, lit up by that love, giving thanks and glory to our God, forever and ever.  Amen. 

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[i] For this exposition of sinfulness, I am indebted to the commentary, “On Confession” about this parable by Debie Thomas at Journey With Jesus: https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2412-on-confession