Who Can Find Mercy Before God?

Who Can Find Mercy Before God?
Luke 18:9-14; Psalm 65; Joel 2:23-32

Marjorie Proctor-Smith says that parables are like fishing lures.(1) They are full of attractive features—feathers and bright colors—and then end with a sharp little barb. The parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector is one of those beautiful lures. Taken at face value, it is very straightforward. It addresses the problems of spiritual pride and puts forward the benefits of self-aware confession.

The problem with an attractive lure is the hook at the end. If you are familiar with fishing hooks, you know that they actually have two barbs. One that readily goes in and a second that prevents an easy removal, that is it prevents the fish from slipping the hook and getting away.

Parables are often like these double-barbed hooks. They grab the listener, but what grabs isn’t the first barb, but the second. Today’s parable contains a trap. The reader/hearer is hooked by the contrast between the two characters – the Pharisee and the tax collector. That’s the hook going in. Then the reader/hearer says to him/herself, ‘Thank God I am not like this Pharisee!’ And the snare is complete. The reader/hearer is trapped by the second barb.

This trap is completely unseen. Who is going to get trapped by prayer of all things? Prayer is good, not bad. In fact, Luke has a greater emphasis on prayer than the other gospel writers. As Luke reports many of the same events as Mark and Matthew, he adds a comment that Jesus is praying: at his baptism (3:21); the night before selecting the twelve (6:12); before he asks the disciples, “Who do the crowds/you say that I am?” (9:18); on the mountain before the transfiguration (9:28, 29); and before the disciples ask him to teach them to pray. In addition, Luke has three parables about prayer not recorded by Mark and Matthew: the friend at midnight (11:5-8, which is followed by the Lord’s Prayer); the widow and the judge (18:1-8); and the Pharisee and the tax collector (18:9-14).

Luke Timothy Johnson writes about Luke’s emphasis on prayer:

The parables together do more than remind us that prayer is a theme in Luke-Acts; they show us why prayer is a theme. For Luke, prayer is faith in action. Prayer is not an optional exercise in piety, carried out to demonstrate one’s relationship with God. It is that relationship with God. The way one prays therefore reveals that relationship. If the disciples do not “cry out day and night” to the Lord, then they in fact do not have faith, for that is what faith does. Similarly, if prayer is self-assertion before God, then it cannot be answered by God’s gift of righteousness; possession and gift cancel each other.(2)

We say to ourselves, ‘Thank God I am not like this Pharisee!’ And we are caught. So who can find mercy before God?

The parable seems to encourage humility and to condemn spiritual pride. But how do those things fit together? The story is told of a fairly bland woman who was involved in many things but was never in the limelight. She did many good things and never sought any recognition for her work. The community wanted to recognize her humble life, so they gave her great party, a large plaque, and a gold medal on a fancy ribbon to hang around her neck. She was at first flustered by all the attention. But she decided to hang her plaque in the front window of her house where everyone could see it. And she wore the medal wherever she went and showed it to everyone she met. The following week the community took back the plaque and medal. Her pride had ruined her humility.

If we arrive at a place of appropriate humility, we are tempted to take pride in our accomplishment.

But the other side is just as precarious. “God, show mercy to me, a sinner” – “God, be merciful to me, a sinner,” in the older wording. It seems like a simple formula. Don’t assume that you are spiritually pure. Confess your sins before God, and you, like the tax collector, will go home justified. And the danger is, we want to say, “I thank you, God, that I am not like that Pharisee.” How difficult it is to be truly humble, to confront without flinching, as the tax collector does, our own sin, and to seek God’s mercy without excuse.

We Presbyterians come from a long line of Christians who truly believe that our first parents, there in the garden, freely made a conscious choice to do the very thing that God told them not to do (just like any toddler). They listened to another voice, another viewpoint, another perspective on life. They chose as they did. Everyone ever since has been stuck with the ramifications of their choice.

Twentieth century Reformed theologian Karl Barth looked at this parable and said that there is a clear distinction between the goodness of God the Creator and the sinfulness of the creature, and Jesus wanted his hearers to comprehend this reality. The Pharisee sees his own status before God to be a result of his own actions. His prayer is about what he is doing. The tax collector is ashamed of his actions. His prayer is about what he has done.

Barth says that both men are equally shamed before God. The difference between the two is that the Pharisee is ignorant of his standing with God. The Pharisee is proud of his religious acts and justifies himself, because he doesn’t do certain things and is not like certain people. The tax collector is humiliated before God and others. He recognizes his misdeeds and his brokenness. The Pharisee has no inkling that he is no better than Adam. The tax collector hopes that he can be saved from Adam’s punishment.

The beauty of this parable is that when we recognize and openly admit that we are sons and daughters of Adam and Eve and that we are subject to their original sin, then we can accept and embrace two things: that there is nothing within us that can save us, and that we are totally dependent on God for salvation.

The key word in the conclusion of the parable is “justified.” For you grammar buffs out there, it is a perfect, passive participle. Perfect, because it is something that happened in the past that continues into the present. It is passive because it is a reversal of subject and object in sentence position. The easiest way to understand the construction is to recast the simple sentence, “the tax collector has been justified,” to read “God has justified the tax collector.” In contrast to Luke’s introduction to the parable which Jesus addressed to “certain people who had convinced themselves that they were righteous,” this grammar indicates that it is God who justifies the tax collector. It is not something he did for himself.

Remember the words of Paul to the Romans: “God shows his love for us, because while we were still sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). And again, Paul wrote the Ephesians: “You are saved by God’s grace because of your faith. This salvation is God’s gift. It’s not something you possessed. It’s not something you did that you can be proud of. Instead, we are God’s accomplishment, created in Christ Jesus to do good things. God planned for these good things to be the way that we live our lives” (Ephesians 2:8-10).

The end of October marks the 496th anniversary of Martin Luther’s nailing his 99 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Church. One of the hallmarks of the Protestant Reformation which he began, and which was carried forward by faithful folk like Martin Bucer, Philip Melancthon, William Farel, Huldrich Zwingli, John Calvin, John Knox and a host of others, is the concept of sola gratia, which asserts that we are justified by God’s grace alone—the only means by which we inherit the righteousness of Christ. To suggest any other means is to reject the free grace of God.

In the name of Jesus Christ, we are forgiven. Thanks be to God.

(1) Marjorie Proctor-Smith, “Luke 18:9-14, Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010) Year C, vol. 2, 213.
(2) Luke Timothy Johnson, Luke (Sacra Pagina) (Collegeville MN: Liturgical Press, 2006), 473.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com 
Copyright 2013 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

Found Faithful

Found Faithful
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7; Psalm 66:1-12; Luke 17:11-19

I am attracted to the passage from Jeremiah. Maybe its because I’ve always been told that property is worth having but I’ve never owned any. In several public capacities, I have bought and sold property or been involved with the purchase and mortgaging of property. When we sell property, we are generally happy with what we get, although we always think it is worth more. (I have that same feeling whenever I trade cars.) And sometimes we are glad to have the property out of our hands. When we buy property, we often think that we paid more than we should have, but were afraid of not getting it at all. Once in a while we get something at a steal. And once in a while we buy a money pit.

So Jeremiah, with all the clairvoyance of Ben Bernanke of the Federal Reserve Board or Jamie Dimond of JPMorgan Chase, sends the quarterly investment advice to the exiles in Babylon. In spite of the numbers, it’s a bull market: buy property, build houses, put in landscaping, plot out gardens, can and freeze the harvest, raise a family, get to know the neighbors, join the PTA, sock away your 401ks and 403bs.

I wonder how Jeremiah’s prognostications were received. Given the reality of the exile of the political, social and artistic elite from Jerusalem to metropolitan Babylon, I can imagine two kinds of responses.

The first is one of total disgust and abandonment:

God has turned his back on the people whom he said were his own. How else can one explain the fact that Jerusalem fell and the people deported. God is two-faced. God sold the nation down the river. God doesn’t care. God has gone on vacation. God is a sham. God is no God at all because the Babylonian god handily bested him. 

Don’t you sense the anger and the disgust which flows out of that viewpoint? The people really felt betrayed.

It’s all God’s fault. If God had paid attention and done what God was supposed to do, this would never have happened. We would not be in this mess.

The second response would be very different, very self-deprecating:

It’s our fault, Lord. If only we had listened to you. If only our parents had listened to you. If only they had taught us right. If we had done what you told us. If only we had paid attention to your prophets instead of going along with the crowd. If only the learned people hadn’t gotten above themselves. If they had spent more time reading and reciting your words than polishing their prayers and straightening their priest’s vests. Lord, we are sinners. We are bad, bad, bad. Lord, we deserved everything you have given us. And even then you have been merciful. But we don’t deserve mercy. We have ground you under our feet, we have ignored you. We don’t deserve anything good from you. It’s all our fault.

Those two responses are very opposite. The one blames everything on God and accepts no personal lame. The other absolves God of all responsibility and takes all the blame on themselves.  Whichever attitude an exile chose to take, it didn’t bode well for them.

The one would be so enmeshed in anger that they would be an overseer’s nightmare slave, no matter how competent they might be. They would be of little use to anyone, because their anger, either pent up or aboil, would prevent them from doing anything that might smack of helping the community celebrate God.

The other would be so self-flagellating that they would be next to useless because they had no get up and go, no oomph to do anything creative. They couldn’t do anything that would get them beyond their total despair about being the cause of the communities exile and hardship.

I don’t think that any of us have ever been in the kind of exile that was experienced in Babylon. But I suspect that most of us have been through harrowing situations that felt to us every bit as bleak and hopeless. And I suspect that our feelings about those situations ran the gamut from blaming any- and everyone else, including God, to so totally blaming ourselves that we were rendered incapable to accomplishing anything of value in our jobs or our family life. Either way, we were of little value to anyone, ourselves, or God.

Psalm 137 comes from the exile period.

Alongside Babylon’s streams,
there we sat down,
crying because we remembered Zion.
We hung our lyres up in the trees there
because that’s where our captors asked us to sing;
our tormentors requested songs of joy:
“Sing us a song about Zion!” they said.
But how could we possibly sing the Lord’s song on foreign soil? (Psalm 137:1-4)

In many ways, we can identify with the anguish of those predecessors in faith. We don’t recognize where we are. It is a foreign land, if not geography, then culture. As someone once quipped, if 1950 ever came back, we would be ready for it. But 1950 isn’t coming back and it never will. We are exiles from the time and place that we once knew. We are exiles from the physical health and mental acuity that once enabled us to burn the candle at both ends. Our bodies as well as the world and all its accessories seem to be at war with us, an ‘us’ we thought we knew and understood. And we are not happy.

Sometimes we want to rail against the world, the economy, the next generation, the government, God. And sometimes we feel like we are an utter failure, that we have messed up everything that we have come into contact with. We can’t sing the old songs, the light airy songs of joy and freedom that lifted us into faith and through the early days of our lives. It’s all so very discouraging. We feel hopeless, useless, wasted.

We are exiles. Our exile is not Babylon, but it is a Babylonian exile — powerless, worthless, hopeless.

Jeremiah’s words to the down and out Judeans and Jerusalemites are given to us, as well as to the
generations that connect us to his time, and to generations yet to come.

Jeremiah tells the people — tells us — to make peace with the here and now. The important thing is that God has not abandoned us in our illnesses and wearing out, in our despair and disappointment, in our ennui and enervation. Make peace with the world and the life that we find ourselves in. Settle down. Step back from the elusive grand vision of life that never really was, and look at the advantages of the present. There are some. And when fully engaged, they will actually benefit us and the community around us. Don’t hole up in our self-pity, but reflect on the needs of the community. As slaves, as prisoners, as exiles in a world which seems foreign to our upbringing and our comfort, we still have gifts to offer individuals and groups around us. We still bear God’s image and still inhale and exhale the power of the Holy Spirit.

Lots of things happen that we can’t explain. Those are good things as well as not so good. But because we are God’s people, called by name, blessed by the baptismal waters, we can recognize God’s handy work. We can pick up the forgotten instruments of joy and praise. We can sing in foreign lands and to unbelieving masters. Jesus calls us to be the single healed person, out-of-step with the world, who suddenly realizes how awesome, how life-affirming, how precious is the grace lavished on him through the redeeming Christ, sanctifying Spirit, and eternally loving God.

And we will be found faithful. “Get up and go. Your faith has healed you.”


Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com 
Copyright 2013 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

Great Is Your Faithfulness

Great Is Your Faithfulness
Luke 17:5-10; 2 Timothy 2:1-14; Lamentations 1:1-6, 3:19-26

(A Conversation with Jesus)

“Increase our faith.”

That would be nice, Lord. I desperately want to believe in you. People keep telling me that’s what I need to do, just trust and obey, just believe.

So, Jesus, increase my faith. Give me faith, a lot of faith. Here, fill my wheelbarrow full of faith. Please, Lord. . . .

What’s that, you say? I don’t need a wheelbarrow to be filled with faith. . . .

Oh, yes, I do, Lord. I need a lot of faith. This world’s a mean place. There’s chemical weapons in Syria. There’s car bombings in Baghdad, murders in Chicago, a ferry boat capsizing off Sicily. There are meth labs all over the county. They’ve raised the speed limit between Chillicothe and Columbus. The Indians didn’t make it into the division championship. The leaves are falling, snow’s a-coming. I need a ton of faith. . . .

No wheelbarrow load of faith. . . .

Jesus, what’s a person going to do? No one wants to join the church club any more. No one wants to sing the old songs, no one wants to do Gregorian chant any more. No one wants to wear coats and ties or gloves and floral trimmed hats. No one wants to say what their faith means to them. No one wants to think about community. They just want to think about themselves. If they’re not the center of the world, just forget it. Lord, it takes a lot faith deal with that. Jesus, increase my faith; fill this wheelbarrow with it. . . .

No wheelbarrow. . . .

All right, all right. I’ll ditch the wheelbarrow. . . .

I’ve got this bucket. Will you fill my bucket with faith? If I use it sparingly, it might last me. I know I’m not going to live forever, but I’ve still got some time left. I might be able to make it through with a bucket of faith. Please, Lord, just a bucketful? . . .

No bucket. . . .

Jesus, don’t abandon me like this. I’ve got to have some faith to work with, Lord. Why can’t I have a bucketful?

If I can’t have a bucketful, how about a jarful? I promise I won’t waste it. I’ll use it only in emergencies. You know, like when the sky is falling, or an asteroid is heading for the earth, or when I’ve got no one else to turn to. The problem is — I hate to admit it, Lord — there are lots of those times. It will be hard to decide which one or two to put the faith into. I’ll have to keep saving it for some worse time than there is at the moment. It might go unused. I can keep it safe, Jesus. I could always seal the lid with duct tape.  Make it a computer password. I can never remember them; I’d never get in. . . .

No jar. . . .

What to do you mean, no jar? Lord, I’m helpless here. I’ve got to have some faith. It’s like that extra hundred dollars I keep in the checking account in case I subtract wrong. Please, Jesus, just a little faith.

Here’s a thimble. How about a thimbleful? I don’t think that would be enough for any one occasion. But maybe I could use it like the cross people hold up to ward off vampires. Yes, Lord, how about a thimbleful of faith? I could wear it around my neck right next to my lucky rabbit’s foot. . . .

No thimble. . . .

Lord, don’t you love me? Don’t you care for me. I’m all alone here, Lord. Don’t you care that I’m dying here, Jesus? What happened? Did I get put into a standup comic’s worst nightmare by mistake? Surely you could spare a little faith for me? . . .

Oh, you will. . . .

Thank you. . . .

A mustard seed’s worth. . . .

Faith the size of a lousy mustard seed! “Pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon?” Sorry, Lord, I know that’s not funny. But nothing’s making sense to me. I asked you nicely for some faith and all I get is a mustard seed. A mustard seed to combat all the evil in the world and to wage peace; a mustard seed to feed the hungry and cure diseases; a mustard seed to stop stupidity and arrogance; a mustard seed to proclaim your name; a mustard seed to see me through the dark nights of the soul. Just how long do you think that mustard seed is going to last? It wouldn’t last, even if I had a whole pickle jar full of mustard seeds. . . .

No pickle jar. . . .

Not even kosher dills? . . .

Oh, it’s not about the container. . . .

I don’t need a container. . . .

I already have a container. . . .

I do? . . .

How tall am I? . . .

What’s that got to do with anything? 5' 10". . . .

What do I weigh? . . .

Hey, I thought you knew everything there was to know about me? 168 lbs. . . .

Fat. . . .

You’re getting personal now. That’s between me and my doctor. . . .

I’m the container. . . .

You mean, like, “I’m a little teapot, short and stout, here is my handle, here is my spout”? I’m about ready to spout, Jesus. . . .

All right. I’ll listen. This better be simple. My brain is woozy. . . .

Why don’t I need a wheelbarrow or a bucket or a jar or even a thimble for faith? . . .

I asked you first. I don’t know. Why? . . .

Faith can’t be kept in material containers. . . .

The next thing you’re going to tell me is that I can’t get faith. . . .

I’m right. . . .

What do you mean, I’m right? Why can’t I get faith? Isn’t that what we’ve been talking about? . . .

There’s a difference between getting faith and having faith. . . .

Oh Lord, not another grammar teacher. I’m sorry, Jesus, I didn’t mean to take grammar teachers in vain. I’ll pay attention. . . .

Faith doesn’t come off shelf in a church supermarket. . . .

So, I shouldn’t bother going to Cokesbury? Is that what you’re saying? . . .

Okay, if I don’t get it somewhere, how can I have it? . . .

I already have it. . . .

What do you mean, I already have it? . . .

Faith is already in me. It’s part of God’s image implanted in me. It’s activated by the Spirit. It has the potential to fill my being, fill my whole life. . . .

How does that work? . . .

Faith is not what we see, but how we see. Faith is how we respond to what we see around us. A life empty of faith looks at the world and sees a hopeless, unredeemable mess. Little faith doesn’t see any God activity. On the other hand, a life filled with faith sees the same mess, but instead of hopelessness, it sees potential, opportunity, God at work. . . .

Oh, just like in the bulbs I need to plant this month. There will be a flower next spring.

So, you are telling me, Lord, that I already have faith in me. Okay. But you are also telling me that I have to let it grow, that I have to stop bottling it up. How so?  . . .

If I repress the faith that is in me, I am like a clog in the pipeline of faith that spans generations past and future. . . .

It’s true. I have learned a lot about you, Lord, from people who had a lot more life experience than I did at the time. I can think of quite a few church mothers and grandmothers, church fathers and grandfathers, church aunts and uncles. You are right. They didn’t have containers of faith, but they did look at the world faithfully. . . .

So you want me to recognize the faith that I have, and to let it flow forward like the faith of people who came before me. . . .

Even in this messy, devastated world which is being eroded by floods, storms, and other natural disasters? Even when a more devastating erosion is caused by politicians who don't have a clue as to the sorts of lives so many of their constituents live? Even when this world is anything but pretty? . . .

Oh. Not “even when” but “because.” . . .

Sorry. Why “because”? . . .

Because God’s faithfulness to us is great, renewed every morning, strengthened every evening. God has put faith in each of us to let this faith flow through each of us. . . .

Lord, forgive me about the wheelbarrow and the bucket and the jar and the thimble. And the crack about the Grey Poupon.

All I need is right here, this table of set before me. This bread, this cup. This life-giving, life-affirming table of Christ. This remembering.

Thank you, Lord.

Amen.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com 
Copyright 2013 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.