Trusting God
Luke 18:9–14
October 28, 2007
University Christian Church, Seattle, WA
Rev. Sandy Messick

• He’s trying to do it to us again. Jesus. Just when we think we’ve figured him out, that we know what he wants, that we know how things work, he turns things around again. He does it throughout the Gospels, but especially in Luke.
• The world says, be successful, have lots of people under you. But Jesus says, “the last shall be first,” and “If you would be great, you must be servant of all.” The world says, Blessed are the rich, for they can have anything they want. But Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor, for they shall inherit the earth.” The world says, “Do unto others before they can stick it to you.” But Jesus says, “Love your enemies, pray for those who would hurt you, turn the other cheek.
• Throughout the gospels, Jesus is forgiving sinners, eating with the outcasts, healing the undeserving, and challenging those the world holds up as examples.
• In the parables he tells he turns things upside down. The hated Samaritan becomes the hero who cares for the neighbor. The prodigal son is welcomed home with open arms. The 99 sheep are left in the wilderness while the shepherd seeks the one who has strayed.
• Over and over again, Jesus turns things upside down and inside out and challenges all our notions of what is good and right and valued in God’s eyes.
• And here he is trying to do it again. But this time, this time we’ve got him figured out.
• Here in the 18 th chapter of Luke, Jesus tells the parable of two men who went up to the temple to pray. The first is a Pharisee. Now we know all about Pharisees right? They are those awful Jews who expect us to follow every law down to its most minor detail. They’re the ones who would outlaw dancing and playing cards and drinking alcohol. They’re the bible thumping hell-fearing evangelicals who preach only judgment and have never heard the word grace or forgiveness except as it applies to them. Right? So here’s a Pharisee and he comes up and prays to God saying look how wonderful I am. And then there’s the tax collector. Now, we don’t know much about tax collectors these days, except they seem pretty loveable in the bible. I mean you’ve got Matthew, who was a buddy of Jesus, and you’ve got Zaccheus, the short fellow who climbed a tree to see Jesus, and Jesus seems to like them pretty well. And the tax collector looks really humble and everything. So we’re not too surprised to find out that God likes the tax collector better than the Pharisee. And it’s no surprise to find out that the point of this story is that we should be like the tax collector and not like the Pharisee. And so we leave church, still feeling smug and self-righteous, and thanking God that we are not like that smug and self-righteous Pharisee. Are we ready for a hymn yet?
• Except that when we do that, we’ve missed the point.
• You see, Jesus did it to us again. He turned everything around and upside down, and inside out. And challenged everything we thought we knew.
• So what did we miss here? Maybe we need to go back and take a closer look at this parable.
• What about this tax collector? We need to get real here. The tax collector in this story is no hero. He’s on the payroll of the Roman occupiers. He collects taxes from his fellow Jews and pockets a good percentage for himself. He extorts and coerces and threatens and manipulates, and we have no evidence in this story that he’s about to change his ways. This is not Zaccheus who after having dinner with Jesus promised to repay anyone he’d hurt. This nameless tax collector is a sinner, a thief. He is no cuddly hero or misunderstood Tony Soprano, and yet, his prayer is heard by God.
• And what about that Pharisee? See, we have this misconception of Pharisees, put in our minds by generations of anti-Jewish thinking, and too many years distance from the time of Jesus. Some argue that Jesus was a Pharisee. Some point out that when Jesus challenges the Pharisees, he was challenging his own system from within. The Pharisees were not the evil, hook-nosed, stereotyped Jews we’ve made them out to be. They were the good church folk. They were the ones on the committees and staffing the food bank, and serving as liturgists, and putting in their checks. The Pharisee in this story tithed! Truthfully, if everyone tithed, we wouldn’t have the financial problems we have in this church today, or any church. He was good church folk. And he fasted. And he prayed.
• The truth is, we could use a few more church members like him. He was the one that was getting things done. His resume is really quite impressive. And if we are honest with ourselves, most of us here are really more like the Pharisee than the tax-collector. We too have pretty impressive resumes.
• We’re an educated bunch. If we don’t have theological degrees, and many of us do, we have other letters after our names.
• We care about the issues of our day, and we write letters and call our Congress people about SCHIP legislation and the War in Iraq.
• I fasted for peace a few weeks ago, so I can put that on my resume and some of you can too.
• And we’re busy. Busy, busy, busy. Busy with good things, busy with good church work: We’re serving on transformation task groups, and teaching Sunday School, and singing in the choir, and pulling up carpet, and trying to balance the budget, and serving as liturgists and…and…
• You see, the fault of the Pharisee wasn’t in the things he was doing – but in what he thought about what he was doing. Luke spells it out for us in Verse 9, just in case we might miss the point: Jesus also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt. Those are the two sins of the Pharisee in this story. He trusted in himself and he held others in contempt.
• The Pharisee trusted in himself and in what he had done, rather than what God had done and was doing in him. He believed that his resume would somehow impress God; make God look more favorably upon him. Would love him more. More than that tax collector over there.
• The Pharisee also seemed to believe that all of what he did made him somehow better than others, more worthy of God’s love, more in line for God’s mercy. And so he stood at the front of the church where all could see and prayed not only his resume: Look God, look at me, look what I’ve done, but he also drew the distinction between himself and others: Look, I’m not like that tax collector over there, or that uneducated, ignorant, evangelical, or that Bush supporting Republican, or that closed-minded conservative. Thank God that I’m not like that.
• But over in the corner, way up in the balcony, where no one could see but God and him, the tax collector also prayed. God help me, I’m a sinner. Lord, have mercy on me.
• And therein lies the difference. One put his trust in himself and his accomplishments. The other knew his good works wouldn’t/couldn’t save him, so put his trust in God. And one left the sanctuary filled with God’s healing, while the other was left, too full of himself.
• Will Willimon, former Dean of Duke Chapel at Duke Divinity School, and now a Bishop in the United Methodist Church, tells the story of attending a mediation meeting on campus for one of the local fraternities. This fraternity had been on probation at the University for more years than anyone could count and was once again front and center in trouble. They scheduled a meeting for Sunday afternoon, on Palm Sunday of all days, and Willimon had to attend. So after preaching his sermon in the chapel, he rushed over to the meeting, and there, they hashed out the details of the offense. “Were you there when the couch caught fire?” “It was all just a misunderstanding.” Willimon found himself resenting the fact that he, of all people, was wasting his time there. He was a pastor after all, not a probation officer. Thank God he didn’t have to deal with this stuff. Thank God he wasn’t like them. After the meeting, a burly, unshaven, young man who was propping up the wall said to Willimon, “That was a killer sermon today.” Willimon was surprised. “You go to church?” “Sure, I’m there most every Sunday. I sit in the back with George (He pointed to another unshaven sort of person in an inappropriate T-shirt). George said he liked the sermon from a few weeks ago, better than the one today. But I needed to hear your sermon today. God really spoke to me.”

Willimon ends his story by saying: “Two men went to the chapel to pray. One a Methodist preacher. The other an unshaven Sophomore in an inappropriate T-shirt. Two men went back to the dorm afterwards but only one was made right by God.

For those who have ears to hear…hear.