Yearning or Earning (sermon, October 24, 2010)

Luke 18:9-14

The Methodist preacher Will Willimon recently wrote about a trip he took:
“I’m driving down a road in South Carolina and a I pass a church with one of those sign boards out in front...This sign read,

“Repent! Now is the day of salvation.”

“Just down the road was a church of a different denomination from the first. It also had a sign out front. The sign proclaimed,

“Happy Mother’s Day.
Virtues are learned at Mother’s knee,
vices at some other joint.”

Willimon thought to himself, “What does the world that knows nothing about Christianity except for those signs, think about the Christian faith?”
Then he passed yet another church with a sign out front. This one read:

“Do you know what hell is?
Come and hear our preacher.”

And just down the road there was another one. “Still more churches on this road?” he asked himself, amazed. This church’s sign read,

“We’ve got room for you at our table.
Hospitality practiced here.
Everybody welcome.”

Finally! Willimon thought. Something that sounded like Jesus! No judgment, no criteria for entry, just hospitality and everyone welcome. The trouble was, Willimon looked more closely at the building as he drove past and realized that although the sign was in front of what had once been a church, it was now labeled Shady Dale Restaurant. A restaurant had the one sign that actually belonged in front of all those churches. (1)

I suppose it’s one of the perks of ministry that people like to send me emails about notable church signs. Have you seen the one about the battle between the signs at a Catholic Church and a Presbyterian Church over whether dogs go to heaven?
First there was the Catholic church’s sign that announced, simply,

“All dogs go to heaven.”

The Presbyterian church’s sign countered with,

“Only humans go to heaven
Read the Bible”

Then the Catholics changed their sign to read,

“God loves all his creatures,
dogs included”

To which the Presbyterians responded,

“Dogs don’t have souls
This is not open for debate”

Then things got personal. The Catholic church sign proclaimed,

“Catholic dogs go to heaven
Presbyterian dogs can talk to their pastor”

And the Presbyterian sign shot back,

“Converting to Catholicism does not
magically grant your dog a soul”

To which the Catholic sign replied,

“Free dog souls with conversion”

I hate to think of what Jesus might have thought of that exchange, but I suspect it wouldn’t have had much to do with dogs. It should probably come as no surprise to us that it’s incredibly complicated to try and articulate complicated theological concepts on a church sign where space is limited and which people are trying to read while driving. Yet it seems that Jesus also chose a means of explaining things that was at least as frustrating as church signs: parables. By their very nature, parables are meant to surprise, confuse, and defy easy explanation.

The parable we heard today is no exception. With this story of the Pharisee and the tax collector, Jesus attempts to teach us something about righteousness and justification. These are two big theological concepts that we often hear thrown about in worship; righteousness can simply be thought of as being in right relationship with God. Justification is the process of taking a broken relationship with God -- broken because of our sin -- and restoring it, making it whole again.

At first glance, the lesson in this story appears crystal clear and there’s hope that this parable won’t be so confusing after all: the Pharisee has a rather high opinion of himself, so high, in fact, that his self-righteousness apparently cancels out the many ways he serves God by keeping -- and even exceeding -- God’s law. He doesn’t just fast on the high holy days as the law required, he fasts twice a week. And even though there were many interpretations of the law that defined tithing as something less than a full ten percent of one’s income, he gives a tenth anyway.

Now remember, even though sometimes the Pharisees get a bad rap in the gospels, to Jesus’ first audience, the Pharisees were the good guys, the faithful, the rule followers. Surely no one, and particularly not Jesus, would argue that it is his actions that condemn the Pharisee; rather it is his preoccupation with his actions. Just listen to all the “I’s” in his so-called prayer: “I thank you that I am not like other people...I fast...I tithe...” Furthermore, his only reference to others is to pass judgment on someone he deems lesser than himself: “Thank God I am not like the tax collector.” The Pharisee is convinced that he has earned justification.

The tax collector, on the other hand, refers only to his failings: God, be merciful to me, a sinner, is his simple prayer. Luke’s original audience would have known just why he called himself a sinner, too. This is no honest IRS agent. Back then, tax collectors were the lowest of the low. They worked on behalf of the Roman government and they were notoriously corrupt, lining their pockets with money they stole from the masses. Yet the tax collector comes to the temple all too aware of his failings in God’s eyes. He begs for mercy, convinced that he can only yearn for justification.

In this parable Jesus offers us two extremes: a faithful, law-abiding Pharisee who is certain that by his actions he has earned God’s favor, and a tax collector whose daily labor is sinful and who is convinced that he will always be an outsider, yearning for God’s love and favor but never actually receiving it. And yet Jesus says that only the tax collector leaves justified, restored to right relationship with God.

The point is obvious right? We need to be more like the tax collector: not judging other people but keeping our own sin ever before us and humbling ourselves before God. But as soon as we come to that conclusion, as soon as we pray, thank you, God, that I am not like the Pharisee, we have done the very thing the parable warns against: assuming that we can earn God’s justification by our good behavior. Looks like this parable might not be so straightforward after all.

Stan Musial, one of the greatest players in the history of baseball, had his worst year in the late 1950s as a player for the St. Louis Cardinals, hitting seventy-six points below his career average. At the end of the season, Musial went to the General Manager of his team and asked for a 20 percent pay cut from his salary of one hundred thousand dollars. Later, when asked why he did it, he explained, “There wasn’t anything noble about it. I had a lousy year. I didn’t deserve the money.” (2)

Contrast this with the prevailing view of those who work on Wall Street. Almost any major bank we could name would not exist today without the bailout approved by Congress. And yet, as a group of journalists discovered in their recent interviews with Wall Street bankers, bankers have no sense of gratitude for the government’s help.

These journalists went into a bar across from the Federal Reserve late on a Friday afternoon and talked to a group of men who worked in three different fields for three different banks. Each of them declared that they are the victims, they are being scapegoated for all the government’s problems. When a journalist observed that “your banks would have gone under if not for the bailout,” one of the bankers replied, “You’re crazy!” and insisted that he still had his job “because I’m a smart person...it is not because of the bank bailout...it’s because I’m smarter than the average person” and knew how to make the best of a bad situation. (3)

As human beings we have a nearly uncontrollable urge to determine our worth by comparing ourselves to others. These days it seems there are few people willing to admit their mistakes publicly, much less, like Stan Musial, actually ask to be held accountable for them. Instead, we tend to divide the world into those we want to be like and those we are grateful not to be like -- just think back to the dueling Catholic and Presbyterian church signs. And yet, by the very act of comparing ourselves to others we end up yearning -- wishing we were better, different, more than we are -- or earning -- congratulating ourselves for what we have done that has elevated us above someone else, even if only in our own eyes.

The real problem is, our own eyes will always deceive us.

In the Presbyterian Book of Common Worship there are several examples of assurances of pardon, words of comfort that a minister offers a congregation after the confession of sin. One of them begins like this: “Who is in a position to condemn?”

How might we answer that question? When we come to church on a given Sunday, and bow our heads to pray and particularly to confess, what are the voices of condemnation that we hear? Our own? The voice of a parent or spouse or teacher? Some unknown voice from society? Well, this particular assurance of pardon sets all of those aside. “Who is in a position to condemn? Only Christ. And Christ died for us, Christ rose for us, Christ reigns in power for us, Christ prays for us.”

None of us can earn God’s love and not one of us is left in the position of simply yearning for it. Because the most important thing about justification is this: only God can do it, only God can restore our relationship; only God can take what is broken in our lives and make it whole again. And God justifies us regardless of what we done, no matter how good or bad it may be. God’s grace and love simply is...it is all around us, constantly available to us. We do not have to work tirelessly to earn it or live in fear that we will only ever yearn for it.

Father Gregory Boyle tells the story of taking two gang members, Chepe and Richie, out of the projects of LA several towns away to where he was scheduled to give a few speeches. One night, Boyle took them out to a restaurant called Coco’s for dinner. Coco’s was, as he put it, “one notch above Denny’s, one notch below everywhere else.”

When they walked in, they encountered a hostess who made no secret of the fact that she strongly disproved of Boyle’s dinner companions, whose dress and tattoos clearly marked them as gang members. Boyle is furious at the way she treats them. “I know exactly the origin of her displeasure, and I volley some of my own right back at her,” he writes. “I judge her just as surely as she judges them.” Finally, she grabs three menus and takes them through the restaurant, far into the back where there are no other diners.

Chepe and Richie haven’t missed what’s happening. “Everybody’s looking at us,” Richie says. “Don’t be ridiculous,” responds Boyle, but, he writes, everybody was looking at us.

Their discomfort lasts until the waitress comes. For whatever reason, she is a whole different breed of person than the hostess and all the diners whose judgment of the gang members was so palpable. She puts her arms around Chepe and Richie, calls them “sweetie” and “honey” and brings them refills they didn’t ask for. Says Boyle: “She is Jesus in an apron.” (4)

God’s love is already ours. We don’t have to earn it or just yearn for it. What we can do is share it. The best way to communicate the gospel is through the lives we live -- not lives of perfect behavior, like the Pharisee, or lives of only brokenness and pain, like the tax collector, but the perfect combination of saint and sinner that each of you is even as you is each God’s beloved. In your everyday lives, you too can be Jesus in an apron, not constantly comparing yourself to others, but by showing mercy and compassion to the lost and broken who have not heard or refuse to believe God’s love is real. That’s the only signboard any church needs. Amen.

Endnotes:
1. This story appeared in the April 24, 2010 edition of Pulpit Digest and was quoted by the Rev. Mark Ramsey in his sermon “Church Signs” at Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church, Asheville, NC, on August 29, 2010.
2. Told by Malcolm Gladwell in his article, “Talent Grab” in The New Yorker, October 11, 2010, p. 93.
3. This American Life, “Crybabies,” September 24, 2010, listen to it here.
4. Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart, Free Press, 2010.