“Being Right or Becoming Righteous”

A Sermon Based Upon Luke 18: 9-14

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Year C, 23rd Sunday after Pentecost, October 27th, 2013

“The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, 'God, I thank you that I am not like other people…. (Luke 18:11 NRS).

In this story Jesus tells, the Pharisee has everything going for him.   He’s better than most: He’s not a thief, he’s not a deceitful rascal, he hasn’t committed adultery and he doesn’t work for the government.  Besides what he’s not, he’s also doing his very best to do what he’s supposed to do: He shows control over his natural appetites by fasting, not once but twice in a week.   He shows his control over his spiritual life by giving a tenth of his income to God.  In the way he knows, he’s is doing everything right. 

However, Jesus says this Pharisee still comes up short of “getting things right with God.”   His lifestyle of ‘being right’ doesn’t even measure up even the worthless life of this “sinner” who has gotten it all wrong; who has probably has been a deceitful rascal,  maybe has committed adultery, and certainly has been working for a very corrupt government.   This ‘sinner’ has been wrong all along, but according to Jesus, he’s the one who God says, has finally gotten it right.       

Can’t we still see just how scandalous this story was, and is?  It’s the very kind of talk that made people mad enough to kill Jesus.  We should be able to understand why.   If this is true-- that you can be wrong in your rightness and you can be righteous, even with your wrongness---what’s the reason to try to do what’s right in the first place?   How can this kind of approach to religion or righteousness save a single soul, let alone save the world? 

IT’S NOT WHAT’S WRONG WITH US, BUT WHAT’S MISSING IN US.

To help us understand why Jesus pictured God’s rule in our world with such a shocking story, we need to start by remembering those people who crashed the White House party back in 2009.   Do you remember the Salahis?  Somehow they were able to get past White House security and walked right into a presidential party of dignitaries.   They claimed to be invited to the party to honor the Indian Prime Minister, but the truth was they were nothing more than thrill seekers, party crashers, people who thought they were important enough, or wanted to be, but they weren’t.  It was what was “missing” in their credentials that made it all so crazy and outrageous.  In no reasonable way, were they the people they pretended to be (For the full report see:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/25/tareq-and-michaele-salahi_n_371336.html).     

Even a room full of lawmakers couldn’t find anything wrong with what the Salahis did.  They simply beat the system.  Their SUV got stopped in traffic, they took off on foot and got to the door, and due to the rain and the rush, nobody had time to check the lists very closely.  You also can’t find any wrong with the life of this Pharisee either.  The problem was not in what he did wrong, but it was in what was ‘missing’ in his life and in his attitude toward everything he did.  He came to God in prayer, but it was a prayer which was ‘self-assured’ of in his own right ‘standing’ before God.   The trouble was, he did not approach God in prayer as if he were really ‘standing’ before God.  It was all show. Because he claimed to be as good as God is why Jesus had a big problem with him (recall Jesus asking, “why call me good, there is none good but God”).  Only when our very partial “rightness” is done in full sight of God’s perfect righteousness, can our own “rightness” be has as modest and humble as it should be.   

People in our world today, who seem to about as self-absorbed as the Salahis, speaks volumes to the self-assuming, self-focused, and haughty spirit that permeates our culture.   Our instant access to wealth, knowledge, and power, has caused many, to overstep their bounds and assume a position of prerogative and entitlement.   It figures, that having the world at our fingertips can make just about anybody assert a form of ‘rightness’ without seeking or pursuing the righteousness of God.   With the divine perspective missing, life will most easily be reduced to “my” opinions, “my” views, and “my own” thoughts, without any regard or reference to God.    

Especially In a moment when people can express whatever they feel at the click of a mouse, we must watch out even more for the Pharisee in us.  For example, we have watched the use of personal ‘people’ power in the so called ‘Arab Spring’, which quickly swept across the Middle East, especially in Egypt.  It is a people power that has toppled governments and regimes, many of which were unjust and corrupt.  But does ‘power’ make ‘right, even when it is the power of the people?   Well it didn’t in Egypt, did it?  Is the power of ‘rightness’ by the people any more ‘right’ than when it is in the hands of one person?’  Maybe, it can be, or maybe it doesn’t come that easy?  Whenever a tyrant is toppled, we all pray that the door for justice and righteousness will fly open wide, but it is no guarantee, is it? 

Unless people come together and keep coming together in humility, with mutual respect, having genuine compassion accompanied with a vision of fairness and justice ‘for all’ that is also ‘under God’, our own views of rightness will not necessarily equal righteousness. Only genuine humility before God can grant us the reality of righteousness, which remains forever beyond all human claims of rightness.  This is the testimony of Scripture: God’s righteousness can’t be seen, realized, or appropriated alone in our own human strength or effort.  The Pharisee of this story, who was seen ‘standing alone’ in prayer in his own little world, might claim his own rightness, but he can never claim God’s blessing of righteousness.  Righteousness is a much larger vision of truth and justice that comes as a gift of God when people humbly work together to discover what it takes for righteousness and “justice to flow like an ever flowing stream.”   Without this divine vision of the ‘righteousness of God’, our own rightness will always fall short.

IT’S NOT HOW FAR YOU GO, BUT WHERE YOU ARE WILLING TO GO WITH GOD.

With this understanding that only God’s righteousness can make us “right”, we need now to consider this sinner, who had so much wrong in his life.  We aren’t told everything that was wrong with him, but we are told that he was a ‘tax collector’.  In that world this made him the worse scoundrel anyone could imagine.  Tax Collector’s made their living by taking more money than the government required.  So how could Jesus ever suggest that such a sinner, through a few nice words, could automatically make everything right with God?  How could his “wrongness” be made right with mere words, even if they were sincere?   Again, we might get how the Pharisee got it wrong, but could such a sinner get it right?

When I consider this story, I couldn’t get it either if it were not for the rest of the story of Jesus, which gives us the bigger picture.   Just to say a few words, even if they are the right words, and even if we mean them with our whole heart, certainly does not justify any of us.  Certainly Scripture clearly shows that ‘words without deeds’ will not grant anyone the full gift of God’s grace.  But what does ‘begin’ to unlock the gift of God’s righteousness and grace in us is that we come to God with the right kind of heart, the right kind of perspective, and the right kind of humility.   When we know that all we can do, whether we are at our best or we are at our worst, is to put ourselves at the mercy of God, then we unleashed God’s grace, because we have come to God in a graceful and saving way.   That’s what this Sinner did and what the Pharisee never did.   The Pharisee’s haughty attitude blocked the way of God’s mercy in him, but the sinner’s genuine spirit of humility paved the way for God’s grace and mercy to take hold in his life.

When we know that our hope, our only hope, is, as the song say, in “Jesus’ blood and righteousness”; and when we know that the mercy of God is all any of us ever really had, have, or ever will have, we begin to understand what God’s righteousness means.   When we know this, are ready to live our lives in a whole new way.  For in Jesus, it’s not where people were or have been in the past that matters, but it’s where they go and what they do after mercy and grace appears in them.   God does not save us by looking back at what we did or didn’t do, but God saves and justifies us by looking to what Jesus has done and by looking forward to what we become in Jesus Christ as we recognized God’s mercy, grace, and righteousness that flows through us as a gift of grace.     

This is exactly what happened to Albert Switzer, the Medical doctor, professor, theologian and talented organist, who left all the position and prestige he had in England, to work with the poor in Africa.   More recently, it happened to an American mom, Beth Masters, who along with her son Jake, got involved helping handing out toys to children in a violent, drug ridden area of South Africa.   She was so moved over the situation with these children, now she runs a non-profit organization to tutor these children and help them make good enough grades to move into private boarding schools and then graduate.    It all started with her son’s high school service project and now it is a major effort to save these children from certain destruction.   She now lives her life based on a promise to these children,  “study hard and do your best and I will be hear to shake your hand at your graduation.” (http://www.today.com/news/american-mom-vows-help-miracle-kids-south-africa-8C11055436). What we all need to understand about faith in Jesus Christ is this.  It’s not about being right, but about being righteous.  And as the book of James says,  true righteousness in Christ is: “religion that is pure which helps orphans, widows (James 1.27); or cares for any of those who are the last, the least and the lost.      

IT’S NEVER ABOUT WHO WE ARE, BUT IT’S ABOUT WHO GOD IS.

What Jesus has done for us is not the end of the story, but only the beginning.  The grace that God gives this sinner makes no sense unless his words for mercy are the only beginning of a whole new kind of living in Christ, just like very different kind of lives that were lived by others who were transformed by faith in Jesus, such as those other Tax Collectors like Matthew, or Zacchaeus.   Humble words must be followed by holy action because this is what the gift of God’s righteousness works in us.  It not only humbles us, it makes us new people who are willing and ready to live the rest of our lives in Christ, because we are grateful to him.  

But, this talk of righteousness that works, is not works righteousness, which is made clear in in the third great lesson from this parable.   This is something we should already know, but we often forget:   God’s righteousness is never finally about who we are, nor how good we are or how right we are, but the righteous life we live in Christ is always finally about who God is.   It is all about God as revealed in Jesus Christ, because only God can give us the righteousness we need.

You need to know how important this final truth is; not through some theory but through real life.  It is the kind of real life situation the Amish in our neighborhood faced a few weeks ago, with a young 27 year old, Father of three, lost his life in a construction accident.   Our entire community was in shock over the incident, and few of us can feel what those young children, ages 5, almost 4, and 2 were feeling.   The 5 year old girl leaned up on the casket and could only peek into the casket at her Father, not able to fully bear the weight of what she understood.   But the boy who was almost 4, gave us the real insight into the pain they experienced, when he refused to eat after the Funeral.   When one of the adults encouraged him to eat something, the little child answered,  “I’m not eating until Daddy comes home.”   When I heard that, my heart broke all over again.

What we must be able to say, in life and in death, is that our lives are not finally about us.   This is the only hope we have.   Because if this life is only about us, we are hopeless.   None of us will ever get home or ever come home again,  unless the revelation of God’s righteousness in Jesus is true.   Everything we are, hope and believe is based in the righteousness of God revealed in Jesus.   Listen to what the apostle Paul wrote to the Romans:   “But now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been revealed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, ²² the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, ²³ since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; ²⁴ they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, ²⁵ whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; ²⁶ it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus (Rom 3:21-26 NRS). 

You certainly don’t have to get all the details of what Paul says here to grasp the big picture.  The ‘righteousness’ we are to live is never our own alone, but it always and forever remains the righteousness ‘of God’.   Over and over, Paul is saying the same thing:  our salvation in Christ and the hope of the justification of our lives is revealed as God’s righteousness in Jesus.   Our only right response is to put our faith in Jesus Christ and to commit to living the rest of our lives in him.

With this in mind, let’s go back once more to the beginning to see again what this Pharisee did wrong by being right, and what this sinner did right, by being wrong.  The Pharisee was ‘standing alone’ when he prayed, and that never changed.  He never really stood ‘before God’ in his prayer, but he only stood alone because he only compared himself with others.  He was as alone in his praying as he was in his religion, because it was all about him.  That’s all his faith was ever about: him.  Because his life was only about him, his life ends with nothing.  

The sinner on the other hand, was not left alone in his praying, because his prayer was never about him, but his prayer could only be a cry to God for mercy.  There was nothing else good in this sinner’s life that his prayer could ever have been about.  He could not even look up, because he knew he was bowing in God’ very presence and this is why he could only throw himself down at the mercy of God.   What justifies this sinner is not his wrongness or rightness, but his complete faith and trust in God’s mercy.   When you take all your own ‘rightness’ out of the picture, God’s righteousness can’t help but come flowing in.  God’s grace and mercy do not like a vacuum.  This is the physics of faith: If you get yourself out, God comes in.  If you stand in the way, God won’t come.  For the person who’d rather go it alone, there is no mercy given, because in their heart, they have decided to go it alone.   But that is not where we want to be left standing, is it?   We don’t want to stand alone in our rightness, but we want to stand with Jesus in his righteousness.   We can only be found righteous standing together, and standing in him.  Amen.