11th Sunday after Trinity + Luke 18:9-14

In the Name of the Father and of the Son + and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Jesus tells us a parable about two men who go to the temple to pray. The first is a Pharisee. He goes to the temple to thank God, though not for anything that God has given him. He says, “God, I thank You that I am not like other men -- extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.” He asks nothing from God because as far as he’s concerned he needs nothing from God. He can take care of himself and God should know how good He’s got it to have such a fellow in His temple. He doesn’t extort money or goods from others. He’s just in all his dealings with others. He’s faithful to his wife. And he’s certainly not like the tax collector, a public sinner who works in a profession known for its covetousness and greed and extortion. He’s not like other men, sinful men. Instead he fasts twice each week, disciplining his body. He gives tithes of all that he owns to support the ministry of the Temple. He is, outwardly speaking, as righteous as they come and he thanks God for it.

Opposite the Pharisee is the tax collector, a man whose profession attracts the covetous and greedy because no one will know if you collect more tax than Rome requires, though they’ll suspect it. Tax Collectors were no good. They were often lumped together with “sinners,” meaning people who did not live pious lives according to the Law of Moses, but lived public lives of willful sin. Tax Collectors were so reviled and despised by the Jews that in Matthew 18:17 Jesus tells His disciples that if someone refuses to repent after repeated pleas, they are to “let him be to you like a heathen and a tax collector.” The Tax Collector is no good. But he knows it. He goes to the temple to pray but unlike the Pharisee, he doesn’t have anything to thank God for. His attitude toward worship is entirely different from the Pharisee’s. He knows that God, who has made that temple his holy habitation is a consuming fire (Deut. 4:24). He knows with David in Psalm 5:4, “You are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness.” He has no good works to bring before God as the Pharisee does. No fasts or tithes. And if he does have those works he knows better than to bring them before God because God knows his heart. He offers nothing to God. Rather, he asks everything of God. Head bowed, fist beating his breast in sorrow over what he’s done and who he is. “God, be merciful to me a sinner!”

That’s the parable. One man exalts himself, imagining that he’s righteous because he’s done righteous looking things. The other man humbles Himself in God’s presence, confesses that He is a sinner, not just that has individual sins but that he is a sinner to his core, and seeks mercy. Then comes the verdict. “I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other.” The one who came into God’s presence to tell God about his good works, his charity, and his righteousness didn’t go home justified by God. And if he’s not justified that means that he went down to his house still in his sins, because to justify means to acquit guilt and declare righteous. The Pharisee was still guilty for his sins. In spite of his very high opinion of himself and his works, God didn’t declare him righteous. He ignored the words of Psalm 143:2, “Do not enter into judgment with your servant, for in your sight no one living is righteous.”  He assumed, like the pagan philosophers, that doing righteous things makes you righteous. But the Tax Collector had it right all along. What justifies a man isn’t his works, his imagined righteousness, or anything within him all. God only justifies those who humble themselves to confess their sinfulness, not just their individual sins, and then earnestly seek mercy from Him. That’s the one God justifies.

Our age is no different than when Jesus walked the earth. Men still imagine that they are righteous by what they do, or by what they refrain from doing. They imagine that the sole purpose of going to church is to thank and praise God, to give their time to God, to give their money to God, to show up so that God can see their attendance and be pleased with them. More and more in our age refuse to even darken the door of a church because they’re not “extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector.” They’re think that by avoid outward sins, public sins, they are righteous and have no need for church. And if church is really only about giving God your thanks and praise, your time and money, then they’re right. So many, too many, equate being a Christian with living an outwardly decent life. They exalt themselves, trusting themselves that they are righteous and despise others who don’t live up to their standard.

But no one is righteous in God’s sight. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” says Paul in Romans 3:23. The same Paul who had once been a Pharisee like the one in the temple. If there had ever been a truly righteous man, it was Paul of Tarsus. He told the Philippians his former reasons to boast. “Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; concerning the law, a Pharisee; concerning zeal, persecuting the church; concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless.” Yet none of that justified Paul because none of it dealt with his sin. In fact, He sinned by trusting that all that made him righteous because he made all that his idol, the thing from which he expected all good to come. But God resists the proud. He humbled Paul and shown Him the worthless of his own righteousness and his own works. Then God exalted him, forgiving his sin through the preaching of the gospel. “I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.” Christ humbled Paul so that Paul confessed himself, not as righteous, but as a sinner. Then He lifted up Paul through this gospel, that Christ has earned the forgiveness of sins for all mankind and a perfect righteousness that avails before God, and that these gifts are not earned by our works but received only by faith in God’s mercy for Christ’s sake. The same Paul writes in Romans 4:5, “To him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness.” Formerly he had trusted himself that he was righteous and was not. Now? “By the grace of God I am what I am.”

Christ tells this parable and sets before us the example of St. Paul today so that the self-righteous might humble themselves, confess their sins and sinfulness, and seek mercy from Him on account of His bitter, innocent suffering and death. He also sets this parable, and St. Paul, before us to show us that He does in fact exalt those who humble themselves in penitence and faith. The one who confesses his sinfulness, earnestly sorrows over his sins,  and honestly seeks mercy for Christ’s sake go down to their houses justified; sins fully forgiven, consciences cleared of guilt, and heaven opened to them. Paul wrote to the Philippians, “not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith” (Philippians 3:9). There’s only one way to go to church and only one way to live: with humility of heart, daily confessing your sinfulness, and daily looking to Christ for mercy. The one who does that goes down to his house justified in God’s sight, not by works, but by faith. Amen.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son + and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.