Trinity 11
Beloved. The parable that Jesus told that makes up today’s Gospel reading comes in St. Luke’s Gospel right after another parable about prayer—the parable of the Persistent Widow. St. Luke says of that parable: Then [Jesus] spoke a parable to them that people always ought to pray and not lose heart. Of course, the parable in today’s Gospel has the line: Two men went up to the temple courts to pray. So prayer is a theme in this section of St. Luke’s Gospel. On the one hand, it seems like such an obvious thing—prayer—why would we need instruction on it? After all, as we read in our catechism [#194}: Prayer is speaking to God in words and thoughts. What should be easier than talking to God in our words and thoughts? After all, He is our dear loving heavenly Father and Savior. Why wouldn’t we want to speak with Him? But we all know from experience how difficult prayer is. For some reason, prayer always seems to be put on the back burner until we feel some great need or crisis. The simple fact of the matter is—because prayer is such a good and blessed thing, the devil and our own sinful flesh are always working together to hinder our prayer, to take from the blessing and comfort of prayer. A lot of times—for a variety of reasons—we may not even know what to pray but we have the promise of what the Lord spoke through St. Paul [Rm 8.26]: Likewise the Spirit also helps us in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. As long as we are still in this world, prayer will often be difficult and imperfect. That’s why our Lord in numerous places and through His apostles gives/ has to give instruction on prayer. This also means, then, that not everything we call prayer is truly prayer, nor is everything we call prayer necessarily pleasing.
That’s why we do well to ponder our Lord’s parable from today’s Gospel. It is a good parable to hold up to ourselves as a light into our hearts and as a mirror to ourselves spiritually. If anything, Jesus’ parable here is definitely not “preaching to the choir” and forces each one of us, “the choir,” the faithful Christian here in God’s house, the one praying, the churchgoer, to ask him/self: who am I when I come to church; who am I when I am in church; who am I when I leave church?
Who am I when I come to church? Jesus introduces us to the two main characters of the parable: Two men went up to the temple courts to pray. One was a Pharisee, and the other was a tax collector. For His hearers, these two men could not be any more different. Between them was the sharpest possible contrast. The Pharisees were one of the most honored and revered people because of their piety. Not only did they outwardly keep the commandments of the Law that God gave through Moses but they went above and beyond that kept all sorts of man-made laws. For example, in his prayer the Pharisee talks about fasting/ going without food twice a week, whereas God had only commanded the Israelites to fast one day a year. The average person held the Pharisees up in highest regard because of the holiness that they seemingly exhibited. And of course the Pharisees reveled and fed off this esteem—which is why they were so opposed to Jesus and His teaching. He was calling all people—even them—to repent. They were indignant when Jesus and His disciples would not keep the man-made laws; they thought Jesus could not be the long awaited Savior since He associated with open/ obvious sinners.
On the other end of the spectrum was the tax collector. Tax collectors were traitors to the Jewish nation, working for the hated Romans. Not only that but they were notorious for cheating their own countrymen, collecting more taxes from them than were required and then pocketing the difference. In the eyes of the people, the tax collectors were the epitome of sin and vice.
So yes, outwardly, there is a world of difference between the two. Jesus could hardly have contrasted two more different people. But what? Two men went up to the temple courts to pray. One was a Pharisee, and the other was a tax collector. The purpose of the temple was for all people to come to offer their prayers, praises and sacrifices and to receive from the Lord His gifts of grace and forgiveness. The purpose of going to church is to offer the Lord our prayers and praises, but mainly to receive His gifts of grace and forgiveness. So, yes, the churches are filled with people of varying outward degrees of holiness; the churches are filled with both tax collectors and Pharisees and everything in between. So someone may be outwardly seemingly more holy than you, and you may be outwardly seemingly more holy than another. So who/ which one are you when you come to church?
But when it comes down to it, it doesn’t matter if you are the Pharisee or the tax collector. Why not? Because as different as they may have been, as far from each other on the holiness spectrum as they might be, Two men went up to the temple courts to pray. They were both sinners going before a holy God. Rightly, neither of them deserved to go there and approach God—the holy, righteous God. And the same thing applies to each one of us—none of us deserves to be here in church in the presence of the holy God. So how do we explain us going to church, into the house of the Lord, after all we are all sinners. The Pharisee rationalized going into the presence of God because of his works, because he thought he was worthy to enter God’s presence because of all the good he did, because God somehow owed it to him. The tax collector, though, was bold to enter God presence not because he thought he was holy/ worthy enough but because he trusted in the mercy of God. He knew he was a sinner and on account of the coming Savior and for his sake, he prayed: ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’
In this parable, each of us hears Jesus asking: When you, church goer, come to church who are you—the Pharisee or the tax collector? Do I come to church because I am so good and worthy and seek to get my “weekly affirmation”, or do I trust in the Lord’s mercy and come because I am a sinner who desperately needs what God is offering me here: the forgiveness of sins and Jesus’ righteousness?
Our text: “The Pharisee stood and prayed about himself like this: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people, robbers, evildoers, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week. I give a tenth of all my income.’ However the tax collector stood at a distance and would not even lift his eyes up to heaven, but was beating his chest and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’” That leads us to the second question for self-examination: Who are you, churchgoer, when you are in church?
Notice the prayer of the Pharisee. All his attention is on himself. His supposed prayer of thanksgiving is basically him saying, “I alone am good. All the rest are robbers, evildoers, adulterers.” With his attention on himself, he stood and prayed about himself. Not everything a person calls prayer is truly prayer, nor is everything we call prayer necessarily pleasing. Where there is boasting of self, God is absent —both as the one being spoken to in prayer and as hearing that so-called prayer.
Here we must be very careful. We all have within us the notion that I can please God by my works, that I can be good enough/ worthy of heaven and salvation if only I do enough good things/ if only I do x, y, and z—like pray facing Mecca a certain number of times a day. This works righteousness, this self-righteousness is really the basis of every religion outside of the holy Christian faith. It was the basis of the faith of this Pharisee in Jesus’s parable. Really, it is something we all have to spend our whole lives fighting—especially the Christian. When we see so much sin and corruption in the world around us, it’s very easy to look at ourselves and say: God, I thank you that I am not like [the rest of the] people… That is not using God’s standard of the Law, which if we use it honestly and fully, will see nothing but sin in ourselves. We are not using God’s holy law correctly if we use it to condemn others and to make ourselves look good and worthy of God and heaven.
So what about the good works that we do? Don’t they count for anything? Should we just forget about doing good, living an outwardly decent life, since it seemingly didn’t do the Pharisee any good in the parable? I fast twice a week. I give a tenth of all my income. These are good pious practices but they do not merit us salvation/ favor with God. Fasting and tithing, and certainly other practices we can do as Christians are useful in our fight against sin. They help us train the body and its passions, to fight lust and greed for example. Evil works will destroy faith and pious practices can be good weapons in the fight against sin. But they can be a hindrance and detriment if we put our trust in them, if we hold our pious practices up to God as making us somehow worthy and meriting all His graces and blessings. Pious practices are worthless without a humble and repentant heart; and without a humble and repentant heart they lead to pride and judgment.
What is clear is that the Pharisee was offering up what he thought was a prayer; it wasn’t. The prayer of tax collector was a true prayer. Always but especially when we are in God’s house, may our prayer be the prayer for God’s mercy. The tax collector stood at a distance and would not even lift his eyes up to heaven, but was beating his chest and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ Prayer is not reliance on self before God, thinking that we are worthy to barge into His presence, to praise ourselves. As the tax collector makes clear, prayer is going to the Lord and seizing God’s mercy. We go to church, to pray, in humility, recognizing that I am a sinner worthy only of God’s eternal wrath and punishment. The tax collector stood at a distance and would not even lift his eyes up to heaven. But, in spite of my sin—my sin that I humbly recognize—I still go to the Lord in prayer, I still go to church because I know in the certainty of faith that He forgives my sin for Jesus’ sake. The tax collector was beating his chest. That is the sorrow over sin but it is not despair. Instead it is the sure confidence in the Lord’s grace and mercy. And in that forgiveness that Jesus won for me on the cross by His holy life and innocent suffering and death, I now strive, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to fight all the more against sin and to live a life more and more in accord with the will of the Lord! ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ May our attention always be on His mercy
And, dear church goer, who are you when you leave church? I tell you, this man [the tax collector] went home justified rather than the other, because everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted. Going home justified means that we have been forgiven and set right with God. In church—in the absolution, the word, and the sacrament God forgives us our sin and declares us righteous. May we be like the tax collector—going to church empty of any and all supposed holiness and righteousness, but leaving full—full of God’s mercy and His gifts of the forgiveness of sin and His perfect righteousness. Only when we are empty of any of our supposed righteousness can God fill us with the forgiveness of sin and the holy righteousness of Jesus. And that’s how God sees the poor sinner coming to Him in prayer/ coming to Him in church knowing and feeling his/ her sin and longing for His mercy and forgiveness. That justification/ righteousness in the eyes of God is not something achieved but something that is received in faith. As we sinners go to church to humbly pray for God’s forgiveness let us receive it in faith and so leave church justified—declared righteous. INJ