Genesis 4:1-15/1 Corinthians 15:1-10/St Luke 18:9-14
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
It is easy to hate the Pharisee; he’s an offensive character. His values don’t fit well with middle America. He’s a conceited bigot. The irony is that it is easy to look down on him even as he looked down on the tax collector and get caught up in a sick spiral where you think you are better than he is because you don’t think you’re better than other people like he does. Except that you do. You think you’re better than him. In an attempt to avoid that trap, let us drudge up a little sympathy for him.
First off, the Pharisees, as a group, tend to get a bad rep. Sure some were involved with the plot to murder Jesus. But they were generally not conniving, evil, vindictive men, who gathered in a dark corners, greedily stroking their beards, trying to bilk widows out of their last mites. By and large the Pharisees were pretty upstanding citizens. They were of the remnant of Israelites that had come out of captivity in Babylon. And they had a modicum of faith left to them when so much of Israel had become pagan secularists.
The Pharisees were, in a sense, the upper echelon of Israel; they were separatists. You had all the regular believers – they fasted once, maybe twice a year on Yom Kippur and perhaps Pentecost; they tithed of their incomes and went to the Temple on the major feasts. Separated from them you had the Pharisees. They fasted twice a week! They gave tithes of everything they had, money, goods, food. Even down to the spices in their cupboards! They went to Temple regularly. Many of them knew the Torah by heart. They rigorously were rigorous interpreters of the covenant Law and extremely pious men.
By comparison the tax collector was of the dregs of society. He receives less than honorable mention in the prayer of the Pharisee: other men, extortioners, unrighteous, adulterers, oh, and this tax collector. He’s not the bottom rung, he falls below that. The Pharisees were considered heroes. The tax collectors were traitors. They sold themselves out to the Roman occupation, working for the oppressive regime, collecting money from their own people on behalf of the enemy. And they earned their cut by taking more than required, usually at the point of a sword. The modern equivalent is not an IRS agent. It is a mobster. This tax collector was not Don Corleone, but he was a goodfella.
You see, this parable is barely a parable at all. It is incredibly straightforward. Two men went to church for worship. One guy was a well-dressed, clean, upstanding, middle class guy; had a good job, was a decent father, never cheated on his wife. The other was a drug-slinging, child pornographer, tattooed up both arms, stinking of booze. Right. Polar opposites. Jesus goes to the extremes to get His point across.
And the point of this parable is not: “Appearances can be deceiving,” or “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” It’s not even, “You can’t understand a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes.” The point Jesus is making is this: Not everyone who says to Me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven. Good works. Fasting twice a week. Tithing. It’s not enough. These things don’t get you into heaven.
From start to finish this parable is about one thing: justification; how one is made right with God. The problem with the Pharisee is not his prayer. You pray the same things as he. Don’t believe me? Visit Riley Children’s Hospital some time and you’ll see. We do pray in thanksgiving that our Lord has spared us the crosses of others. We are not like the starving children in Ethiopia, or the women veiled and scarred in Saudi Arabia, or the homeless men on the streets of Philadelphia. By comparison our burdens are relatively minor. Everyone suffers. Everyone bears crosses. Nothing has befallen you that is not common to man.
But these aren’t what’s really wrong with the Pharisee. His problem is not his words, but what he meant; what was in his heart. He trusted in himself and despised others. He points the tax collector out to God because he wants to be compared. He thinks it’ll make him look good. But it doesn’t. It only shows his sins.
There are two religions in the world: one of works and one of grace; one of Law and one of Gospel. There are all other religions, and then there is sacramental Christianity. What one thinks about worship, prayer, faith, baptism, good works – it all boils down to this: justification. How are you made right with God? Is it by sacrifice and works, like the Pharisee? Like Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Papism, Osteenism, every other –ism out there? Or is it by mercy? The sheer grace of God given you through Jesus Christ our Lord? Unmerited. Unearned. Undeserved.
This is what St Paul received and what is of pre-eminent importance: the Gospel, full and free. That Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. If you believe this Gospel, if you stand upon it, you are saved. This is the dividing line, the separation. It is what separated Cain from Abel, Job from his “friends,” Abraham from Abimelech, Isaac from Ishmael, Jacob from Esau, Joseph from Potiphar, David from Saul, Mordecai from Haman, Daniel from Belshazzar, Joseph from Herod, the beggar Lazarus from the rich man, and, the Pharisee from the publican in the Temple. What defines men is not whether they are good or bad, but whether or not they believe in Jesus.
This parable serves as a warning. What if we said, “Good thing for God I am here today. I have a lot to add to Him. He really needs me.” Of if we said, “There, I gave God my Sunday morning, that is more than He deserves, the rest of the week is mine to spend as I want.” Arrogance is dangerous. It’s deadly to be impressed with ourselves and what we give or do for the Church. It’s not curiosity that killed the cat. It was pride.
Repent. Sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it. That is, do not think more highly of yourself than you ought. God does not need your good works. He doesn’t eat the food the Pharisee fasts. He doesn’t spend the money the Pharisee tithes. He is not impressed with the handle full of weeds you picked up on your way into church and call them flowers.
Repent, but do not despair. Come up to the house of the Lord and learn to pray and worship as the tax collector, “O from our sins, Lord, turn Your face; absolve us through Your boundless grace. Be with us in our anguish still; free us at last from every ill.” (LSB 615:5) This is true religion: to despair of your works and self-sacrifices, and to throw yourself on the mercy of God in Christ Jesus. For this is the sacrifice He desires: a broken and contrite spirit. And He is a God of mercy and grace who loves to forgive.
This is the promise of the parable, as well. The tax collector did go home justified. He threw himself upon God’s mercy. For he had no righteousness of his own. He was ashamed of the things he had done, of the lies he had told, of the evil he had committed against his people and against those who loved him. He wanted to do better. He wanted to start over. To do that he needed mercy. He needed a God who would be propitiated toward him by virtue of another. He needed a Savior and Redeemer.
And that is why he was in the Temple. For there, at that hour, the hour of prayer, the hour of worship, the lamb was being offered up on the altar for the sins of the people. The innocent one was dying for the guilty. The blood of the sacrifice covered the condemnation of the Law. The wrath of God was appeased. The Lord is merciful.
For the One who tells this parable is the One who humbled Himself, Jesus Christ. He humbled Himself to the point of death, even death upon a Cross, that by His sacrifice you might become the righteousness of God. This is the Gospel. This is the promise. No one who hopes for mercy in Christ Jesus is denied. The tax collector was justified. And so are you. You are made right with God by the blood of your Brother in the flesh. It declares you righteous. God is here not to be served, but to serve. He forgives and loves sinners. By the grace of God you are what you are, a sinner declared righteous; a Pharisee made a tax collector, given the riches of heaven.
For Christ is mercy in the Flesh, sent to call sinners to repentance, to heal the souls of men disfigured and sick, bent inward on themselves; to rescue those held captive by the devil, afraid of the judgment to come. He came to seek and to save the conceited and arrogant, the cheaters and cowards. He came to eat with extortioners, adulterers, tax collectors, Pharisees, liars, thieves, prostitutes, gang-bangers, and drug-pushers. It is not too late. He will even accept and love life-long Lutherans. No one who hopes for mercy in Jesus Christ is denied.
So come and get it. The Table is set. The Lord comes to serve you; to give you His risen Body and Blood for our nourishment and strength, for your comfort and joy, out of His perfect, ever-giving mercy. And this day you go down to your house justified.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
It is easy to hate the Pharisee; he’s an offensive character. His values don’t fit well with middle America. He’s a conceited bigot. The irony is that it is easy to look down on him even as he looked down on the tax collector and get caught up in a sick spiral where you think you are better than he is because you don’t think you’re better than other people like he does. Except that you do. You think you’re better than him. In an attempt to avoid that trap, let us drudge up a little sympathy for him.
First off, the Pharisees, as a group, tend to get a bad rep. Sure some were involved with the plot to murder Jesus. But they were generally not conniving, evil, vindictive men, who gathered in a dark corners, greedily stroking their beards, trying to bilk widows out of their last mites. By and large the Pharisees were pretty upstanding citizens. They were of the remnant of Israelites that had come out of captivity in Babylon. And they had a modicum of faith left to them when so much of Israel had become pagan secularists.
The Pharisees were, in a sense, the upper echelon of Israel; they were separatists. You had all the regular believers – they fasted once, maybe twice a year on Yom Kippur and perhaps Pentecost; they tithed of their incomes and went to the Temple on the major feasts. Separated from them you had the Pharisees. They fasted twice a week! They gave tithes of everything they had, money, goods, food. Even down to the spices in their cupboards! They went to Temple regularly. Many of them knew the Torah by heart. They rigorously were rigorous interpreters of the covenant Law and extremely pious men.
By comparison the tax collector was of the dregs of society. He receives less than honorable mention in the prayer of the Pharisee: other men, extortioners, unrighteous, adulterers, oh, and this tax collector. He’s not the bottom rung, he falls below that. The Pharisees were considered heroes. The tax collectors were traitors. They sold themselves out to the Roman occupation, working for the oppressive regime, collecting money from their own people on behalf of the enemy. And they earned their cut by taking more than required, usually at the point of a sword. The modern equivalent is not an IRS agent. It is a mobster. This tax collector was not Don Corleone, but he was a goodfella.
You see, this parable is barely a parable at all. It is incredibly straightforward. Two men went to church for worship. One guy was a well-dressed, clean, upstanding, middle class guy; had a good job, was a decent father, never cheated on his wife. The other was a drug-slinging, child pornographer, tattooed up both arms, stinking of booze. Right. Polar opposites. Jesus goes to the extremes to get His point across.
And the point of this parable is not: “Appearances can be deceiving,” or “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” It’s not even, “You can’t understand a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes.” The point Jesus is making is this: Not everyone who says to Me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven. Good works. Fasting twice a week. Tithing. It’s not enough. These things don’t get you into heaven.
From start to finish this parable is about one thing: justification; how one is made right with God. The problem with the Pharisee is not his prayer. You pray the same things as he. Don’t believe me? Visit Riley Children’s Hospital some time and you’ll see. We do pray in thanksgiving that our Lord has spared us the crosses of others. We are not like the starving children in Ethiopia, or the women veiled and scarred in Saudi Arabia, or the homeless men on the streets of Philadelphia. By comparison our burdens are relatively minor. Everyone suffers. Everyone bears crosses. Nothing has befallen you that is not common to man.
But these aren’t what’s really wrong with the Pharisee. His problem is not his words, but what he meant; what was in his heart. He trusted in himself and despised others. He points the tax collector out to God because he wants to be compared. He thinks it’ll make him look good. But it doesn’t. It only shows his sins.
There are two religions in the world: one of works and one of grace; one of Law and one of Gospel. There are all other religions, and then there is sacramental Christianity. What one thinks about worship, prayer, faith, baptism, good works – it all boils down to this: justification. How are you made right with God? Is it by sacrifice and works, like the Pharisee? Like Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Papism, Osteenism, every other –ism out there? Or is it by mercy? The sheer grace of God given you through Jesus Christ our Lord? Unmerited. Unearned. Undeserved.
This is what St Paul received and what is of pre-eminent importance: the Gospel, full and free. That Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. If you believe this Gospel, if you stand upon it, you are saved. This is the dividing line, the separation. It is what separated Cain from Abel, Job from his “friends,” Abraham from Abimelech, Isaac from Ishmael, Jacob from Esau, Joseph from Potiphar, David from Saul, Mordecai from Haman, Daniel from Belshazzar, Joseph from Herod, the beggar Lazarus from the rich man, and, the Pharisee from the publican in the Temple. What defines men is not whether they are good or bad, but whether or not they believe in Jesus.
This parable serves as a warning. What if we said, “Good thing for God I am here today. I have a lot to add to Him. He really needs me.” Of if we said, “There, I gave God my Sunday morning, that is more than He deserves, the rest of the week is mine to spend as I want.” Arrogance is dangerous. It’s deadly to be impressed with ourselves and what we give or do for the Church. It’s not curiosity that killed the cat. It was pride.
Repent. Sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it. That is, do not think more highly of yourself than you ought. God does not need your good works. He doesn’t eat the food the Pharisee fasts. He doesn’t spend the money the Pharisee tithes. He is not impressed with the handle full of weeds you picked up on your way into church and call them flowers.
Repent, but do not despair. Come up to the house of the Lord and learn to pray and worship as the tax collector, “O from our sins, Lord, turn Your face; absolve us through Your boundless grace. Be with us in our anguish still; free us at last from every ill.” (LSB 615:5) This is true religion: to despair of your works and self-sacrifices, and to throw yourself on the mercy of God in Christ Jesus. For this is the sacrifice He desires: a broken and contrite spirit. And He is a God of mercy and grace who loves to forgive.
This is the promise of the parable, as well. The tax collector did go home justified. He threw himself upon God’s mercy. For he had no righteousness of his own. He was ashamed of the things he had done, of the lies he had told, of the evil he had committed against his people and against those who loved him. He wanted to do better. He wanted to start over. To do that he needed mercy. He needed a God who would be propitiated toward him by virtue of another. He needed a Savior and Redeemer.
And that is why he was in the Temple. For there, at that hour, the hour of prayer, the hour of worship, the lamb was being offered up on the altar for the sins of the people. The innocent one was dying for the guilty. The blood of the sacrifice covered the condemnation of the Law. The wrath of God was appeased. The Lord is merciful.
For the One who tells this parable is the One who humbled Himself, Jesus Christ. He humbled Himself to the point of death, even death upon a Cross, that by His sacrifice you might become the righteousness of God. This is the Gospel. This is the promise. No one who hopes for mercy in Christ Jesus is denied. The tax collector was justified. And so are you. You are made right with God by the blood of your Brother in the flesh. It declares you righteous. God is here not to be served, but to serve. He forgives and loves sinners. By the grace of God you are what you are, a sinner declared righteous; a Pharisee made a tax collector, given the riches of heaven.
For Christ is mercy in the Flesh, sent to call sinners to repentance, to heal the souls of men disfigured and sick, bent inward on themselves; to rescue those held captive by the devil, afraid of the judgment to come. He came to seek and to save the conceited and arrogant, the cheaters and cowards. He came to eat with extortioners, adulterers, tax collectors, Pharisees, liars, thieves, prostitutes, gang-bangers, and drug-pushers. It is not too late. He will even accept and love life-long Lutherans. No one who hopes for mercy in Jesus Christ is denied.
So come and get it. The Table is set. The Lord comes to serve you; to give you His risen Body and Blood for our nourishment and strength, for your comfort and joy, out of His perfect, ever-giving mercy. And this day you go down to your house justified.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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