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.