THE REV. ROBERTO DESANDOLI
20th Sunday after Pentecost / Reformation Sunday
Genesis 27: 1-10
Psalm 65
2 Timothy 4: 6-8, 16-18
Luke 18: 9-14
“Justification”
On this Reformation Sunday morning, I would like to start with a quotation from John’s Calvin’s Institutes a book that has shaped our Reformed and Presbyterian traditions from the very beginning:
[The Tax Collector, in the parable we have just heard] is justified by the acknowledgement of his iniquity. Hence, we may see how much favor our abasement has before the Lord, so that the heart cannot be opened to receive his mercy unless it be utterly empty of all opinion of its own worth. When it has been occupied with these things it closes the entry to him. That no one should doubt concerning Christ was sent to the earth by the Father with this commission: “To publish good tidings to the poor, to heal the contrite of heart, to preach liberty to the captives, deliverance to the imprisoned… to console the sorrowing… to give them glory instead of ashes, oil… instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of the spirit of grief” [Isaiah 61: 1-3]
In this teaching on the parable of the righteous Pharisee and the repentant Tax Collector, Calvin has named for us the crux of the story:
There is nothing we can do; no words we can speak, no opinion we can give that will make God consider us righteous, and, in fact, if we spend time trying to do so, we will only block Jesus from our hearts with too many words from our mouths.
The Grace we struggle to accept is that through Christ’s death and resurrection, this act of justification has already been accomplished.
Despite the ways of this world: despite the ways of a world in which we are quick to name ourselves as righteous, a world in which we are convinced to compete in the marketplace of opinions to stake out our own righteous place, God is not convinced by such words.
Through God’s work of justifying us by faith alone, there is nothing at all we can do to earn or prove our own righteousness.
Righteousness belongs only to God.
Exaltation belongs only to God.
Christ teaches us that all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.
In this morning’s parable, Jesus asks us to consider the prayers of two people:
The first, a Pharisee (a teacher of the Law) who prayed ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’
And the second, a lowly and much despised Tax Collector who confessed: ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’
“I know which one I would rather have in my congregation”
This was the response that broke the silence following the reading of this passage in my Minister’s Bible Study at Queen’s House last week. The voice speaking these words belonged to my new friend; a well-accomplished professorial theologian and retired minister:
“I know which one I would rather have in my congregation”
Indeed, given the choice between the righteous Pharisee and the repentant Tax Collector, I do not know a minister or church leader who wouldn’t prefer a whole church full of Tax Collectors over one that included just a few righteous Pharisees.
Going back to an illustration we have heard a number of weeks ago, this preference illuminates the truism that a church ought not to be a hotel for saints but rather a hospital for sinners.
“A Church is not a hotel for saints, it is a hospital for sinners!”
In this sense, the repentant Tax Collector is the perfect patient. He comes readily to God, he cries out, holding nothing back, he names the grace and the mercy that he is seeking from his Father in Heaven, the only one who can give it:
“God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”
The Tax Collector—though his profession of collecting dues for Rome made him a traitor to his country, though he knew and struggled with the disconnect between this work and his identity as a child of God—this Tax Collector was justified, not in his righteousness, but in his repentance.
“God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”
14 I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted. (says the Lord)
This man, this Tax Collector, made no mistake about where he was before God. He went up to pray that day, not in order to shore up his own righteousness, not to prove himself worthy for the hotel of saints, but rather to stand in the Emergency Room of the sinner hospital and ask for God’s help.
This is an ideal text for Reformation Sunday, not only for the image of the Tax Collector, working out his salvation with “fear and trembling,” not only for the image of a God that upsets our expectations and draws us into a deeper mystery, but because it hangs so closely off of the single verse that began the whole Protestant Reformation in the first place.
502 years ago, Martin Luther sat down at his Bible and discovered something that would change the world:
As Luther reached verse 2 of the third chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, he discovered that the Latin Bible of his day had gotten it wrong.
The message that John the Baptist was preaching in the wilderness of Judea (“Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand”) did not call for people to “seek absolution,” but rather to “repent,” to literally “turn around.”
Not to seek forgiveness in men
Not to seek forgiveness in the church
Not to seek forgiveness in good works
But to seek forgiveness and to accept the gift to try again from Christ alone, the designer and perfecter of our faith
The Tax Collector that Jesus shows us this morning is repentant, he is upset by the unrest in his soul, he is ready to humble himself completely before God and receive whatever punishment he has earned, and yet, through the work of the Reformers, people like Martin Luther and John Calvin and John Knox, people who sought to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to make this Gospel accessible to everyday people, we know that this Tax Collector’s debt of sin is payable only to God; a God who wills only that this man “turn around” and believe the Good News.
The Good News that Jesus came to save sinners.
The Good News that there is nothing we can do in our earthly lives that can separate us from the love of God.
The Good News that salvation belongs to Christ alone and that we are justified not through our righteousness, but through the power and mystery of the Gospel.
By inviting us into the story of the humble and yet exalted Tax Collector, Jesus invites each of usto see the story of our own lives and to receive His forgiveness and mercy:
As I have mentioned, this man’s profession as a Tax Collector made him a traitor to his country.
This is because as a Tax Collector, as one hired to collect Roman taxes in his own land of Judea, this man would have been despised by his neighbours as one who made his living off of their occupation. Like a prison inmate who makes his own life more comfortable by tattling on his fellow prisoners to the guards, this Tax Collector would have been seen as the lowest of the low:
As low as a traitor, as low as a turncoat, as low as a rat
In Jesus’ day Tax Collectors were considered so low that the Rabbis (the trusted keepers of Judea’s law and history) taught Judeans not to associate or even eat with them.
The Tax Collectors, as well as being despised, as well as being tormented by their own moral struggle, were as socially isolated as a person could be.
The Tax Collectors were alone. Hopelessly and utterly.
And it is one of those lowly Tax Collectors that Jesus asks us to consider this morning. Isolated, despised, carrying a heavy burden of shame and a burning desire to be made better, he climbed the temple steps.
And as he reached the top, he heard these words coming from the other figure on the temple, a man whose clothing and speech was impeccable, a man who’s standing in the community was unquestioned, a man who represented everything that the lowly Tax Collector was not.
And these are the words that this figure, this Pharisee spoke:
“God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.”
The Tax Collector, already as low in his community as one could be, was not shamed by these words because he had no more pride to lose, rather he cried out to God in all honesty and humility, holding nothing back:
“God, be merciful to me a sinner!”
God, be merciful to me a sinner! God I know that I am unworthy, I know that I have sinned against you and my neighbours, I know that I am mired in sin, I ask only that you do not close off your mercy to me, give me the chance to Repent, let me try again to turn around and seek your justice.
“I know which one I would rather have in my congregation”
Friends, who are the Tax Collectors in our own time?
Who are those who are despised?
Who are those who are outcast?
Who are those we cross the street to avoid?
Who are those who do not “fit in”?
Who are those who, on the days when we are tempted by self-righteousness, we might find ourselves praying to God saying “God, I thank you that I am not like…one of them?”
I do not mean to give an answer. I suspect that for each of us the answer will be different. Though I also suspect that just in asking this question, the answer has popped into your mind quite quickly.
Who is that person?
What does he or she look like?
Can you see them in your mind?
And do you believe that if that person came into this church as you were praying and shouted “God be merciful to me, a sinner” they would be justified?
“I know which one I would rather have in my congregation”
One who humbles rather than exalts himself.
One who is repentant and open to Grace and Mercy.
One who, despite being despised by his own community of faith, knows that there is still something in Him crying out for God, something that is not beyond salvation.
Christ has gone to the cross to justify the outcast:
Those who feel left out of community
Those who feel despised
Those who feel isolated and alone
Indeed, Christ lifts these people up as an example!
As an example to all of those who are tempted to trust in their own righteousness
As an example to all those who are tempted to thank God that they are not like “those people”
As an example all of us that no matter who we are, no matter how pretty our words, or how righteous our works, there is nothing we can do to earn the undeserved yet freely given Grace of God
The Good News this morning is not only that Christ justifies sinners.
Not only that Christ calls us to repent and confess again.
Not only that Christ has a special place in His Kingdom for the outcast and despised.
But that Christ has written His word on our hearts to remind us of this truth:
That all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.
The Good News is that through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, we are justified, not by anything we have done, not by our right attitudes or thoughts or actions, but by the undeserved yet freely given Grace of God in Jesus Christ. This is the faith that Christ calls us into over and over throughout our lives.
That every time we become convinced of our sin and cry out “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” Christ welcomes us home and justifies us through the miracle of Grace.
Amen.
