By Rev. Charles J. Tomlin, BA, MDiv, DMin.
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership,
November 10th, 2019
There was a very lost, wicked, rebellious man who decided it would be good for business if he went down to the church and joined it. He was an adulterer, an alcoholic, and had never been a member of a church in his life.
But when he went down to the altar to join the church, he gave public testimony to the church that there was no sin in his life, and that he had grown up in the church, and they readily accepted him as a member.
When he went home he told his wife what he had done, and his wife, a very godly lady, exploded. She excoriated him for being such a hypocrite, and demanded that he go back to the church the next week and confess what he really was. Well, God used his wife to really break him, and he took it to heart.
The next Sunday he went back to the church, walked down to the front again, and this time confessed to the church all of his sins. He told them he was dishonest, an alcoholic, an adulterer, and he was sorry. They revoked his membership on the spot. He walked out of the church that day scratching his head and muttered to himself: "These church folks are really strange. I told a lie and they took me in; and when I told the truth they kicked me out!" (As Told By James Merrit).
Jesus once told a story of two men in a similar situation who got totally different results. One man tried to talk himself into God's kingdom, but he didn't make it. The other man tried to talk himself out of God's kingdom and he got in. What creates this strange difference; a good man doesn’t get in, and a bad man, a scoundrel, does? Why does it turn out this way? Luke makes it plain who Jesus told this parable about and for. In verse v.9, Luke explains: "Also He spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others." The main point: trusting in yourself will not get you in. Trusting God completely, will get you in. So now that you know the main point, let’s move on to some details you might have missed.
I’M NOT LIKE OTHER PEOPLE (v. 11)
Let me ask you: Do you ever look at people who don't go to church, and think you are better than they are because you do go to church? If so, Jesus is talking to you.
Do you ever look at people in prison, and think you are better than they are because you are not? If so, Jesus is talking to you.
Do you ever look at people who are divorced, and think that you are better than they are because you are not? If so, then Jesus is talking to you.
Do you ever look down your nose at anyone for any reason, and think you might be better than them? If so, Jesus is talking to you.
I promise you, every one of you will find yourself somewhere in this story today. And in this sermon, you are also going to learn, surprisingly, I might add, what does impress God, and what doesn't.
First, we want to talk about what doesn’t impress God. To do this, this parable helps us move beyond the many complex faces and feelings we have. We are looking into the human heart for what is universal among all of us. I found an example of this on, of all places, on Netflix, after a friend recommended I see watch a show.
Of course, it’s getting harder to find good things to watch on TV these days, but the story of an Orthodox Jewish family is an exception. In these two series of episodes, called Shtisel, a young Orthodox Jew is struggling to find his life’s calling and the love of his life. His story reminds us that feelings and emotions like love, and longing to live with meaning and purpose, are universal, but they can also be very complicated too. Especially for those who think everything in life should be viewed in right or wrong, or ‘black and white’, feelings can be both simple and complicated at the same time.
Jesus’ story about ‘Pride’, often entitled, the Pharisee and the Publican, should be seen a simple, but also a complicated story. What I mean by ‘complicated’ is that most of know already, that there is there is a good way to have pride in yourself, just like there is a bad way to be ‘prideful’ about oneself. It is good for your self-esteem, and your self-image to ‘take’ pride in who you are and what you can do. But there is also a bad way to be prideful about yourself, which is exactly what Jesus’ story, or parable is about.
How a person can quickly move from good self-esteem to wayward pride, comes from the well-worn story about a 5th grader who came home from school so excited. She had been voted "prettiest girl in the class." The next day she was even more excited when she came home, for the class had voted her "the most likely to succeed." The next day she came home and told her mother she had won a third contest, being voted "the most popular." But the next day she came home extremely upset. The mother said, "What happened, did you lose this time?" She said, "Oh no, I won the vote again." The mother said, "What were you voted this time?" She said, "most stuck up."
This story reminds us why Jesus’ story about pride matters? It reminds us why it’s so important for us to get ‘pride’ right. A lack of self-esteem and self-worth can lead to very negative self-image and a downward path of self-destruction. Most people living negative lives, lack good self-esteem. Having the wrong kind of pride about oneself, can be also be self-destructive; not only to ourselves, but also to others, and to our relationship with God. When you think too highly of yourself, you can get the ‘big-head’; you can forget that you are human, your ego gets over inflated, and you living without a sense of reality about yourself and the world. In this story, the man’s selfish- pride had made him too big for his spiritual britches. As C. S. Lewis once said, "A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and of course, as long as you are looking down, you can't see something that's above you."
Having a good sense of pride and self-respect, rather than a negative or overinflated one, is a balancing act. It’s a lot like riding a bicycle. You have to make sure you keep your eyes on the road ahead. You’ve also got to think about where you’re going, and to make sure you stay upright. This is what Jesus’ parable attempts to display: how we can get ‘pride’ right, and how we might get it wrong.
This Pharisee’s attitude reveals pride in its worst form. His selfish pride promotes such a narrow view of self in leads to other forms of sinning. This is why, in the Christian understanding, pride ranks at the top of the list of Seven Deadly Sins. Not only is pride destructive self, it leads to destructive behavior that hurts others. Like a noxious weed in the garden, pride grows, spreads, and chokes out all life around it.
However, pride does not start out looking down on others. It starts with a narrow, misguided, illusionary view of self. Girolamo Savonarola, the great fifteenth-century Florentine priest, was said to have noticed an elderly woman worshiping at the feet of the statue of the Virgin Mary outside the city's cathedral. When he realized she came every day, Savonarola said to a colleague, “Look how devout she is. She so reveres the Blessed Mother.”
“Don't be deceived by what you see,” the other priest replied. “Many years ago the artist commissioned for the statue chose that woman as his model. She was a lovely young woman with a look of innocence on her face. The statue was completed decades ago and every day that woman has come to WORSHIP HER OWN IMAGE.”
So, what’s wrong with this Pharisee, other than he has a really big, ego? Well, it all starts with an appearance of what is good and right. The Pharisee appears to do everything right. He has a lot going for him, too. He’s good. He’s not greedy for money. He’s honest. He’s just the right kind of fellow, except for one thing. He thinks he’s better than everyone else.
He just may even be better than most people, but he because he knows it (or thinks it), he’s become the worst kind of fellow. Selfish pride is pride of the worst kind exactly because it’s only focused on self. Selfish pride fails to consider the other. It sees only the good in one’s self, and fails to look for any good or value in anyone else. This narrow view not only destroys any hope for community, it also limits the work of God’s love. It’s the kind of pride that keeps us from seeing what God wants us to see. It doesn’t see the other person as someone God loves unconditionally, simply because they are God’s creation. In other words, selfish pride only sees what the self wants to see. Selfish pride fails to see what wants us to see and to feel what God feels.
Seeing beyond ourselves may be the most important need, not just for Christians, but also for churches today. Churches who are stuck only thinking about themselves, even trying to ‘save’ or persevere themselves, are caught in a downward spiral of decline. The only way out of this decline, say the experts, is not to fix oneself, but to focus on what God sees, who God loves, and what God has called us to do; and to move beyond thinking only about ourselves. A church stuck on itself, is a church that is stuck in a culture that goes along with this Pharisee and can’t be justified as healthy, holy or helpful.
In a recent study of businesses who are also, like churches dealing with constant change and transition, one author says that organizations should learn to think of problems as challenges instead of threats. In other words, focus on the need, the challenge, not only yourself. The business who are only thinking about being on top, and seen their business as in competition against another, will is only doing more to harm its business. It hurt’s its own business, because it has think only about itself, and not about its mission. Recently I saw a TED Talk about why the Wright Brothers where successful inspiring others to work with them at achieving FLIGHT. All kinds of people were attempting it, at the time. The Wright Brothers had less money. They had people working for lower salaries. They had less skill and information. There were scholars at Harvard and other elite schools who knew so much more. How did the Wright Brothers do it? It was not about ‘head’, but it was about ‘heart’. The Wright Brothers failed many times, and they were not afraid to admit it, to face it, and to learn from it. Also, because the Wright brothers’ focus was not on being first, not on making money from it, but it their focus was on ‘believing’ is what they were doing, it was ‘heart’ that enabled them to do what others could not. As the Ted Talk speaker said, ‘Because the Wright Brothers answered the question “why” (Belief) first of all, they were able to get to the ‘what’ (Flight) before all the others https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action?language=en.
By getting ‘stuck’ on himself, it was ‘who’ this Pharisee could not see that was most self-destructive. By being ‘stuck’ on himself, he couldn’t see beyond himself, and he couldn’t see what and who he needed to see. Selfish pride is self-destructive because it creates an isolated, insulated, individual world that cuts itself off from the life; the life of reality, and the life of others, whom we, as social creatures, all need to be in relationship with to survive, and to thrive.
This Pharisee’s saw no one else. He needed no one else. His vision of life became short-sighted and it shorted out. Isn’t that what a ‘short circuit’ is? It’s which the flow of electricity gets stuck and can’t continue to flow as it should because something creates resistance. In order to flow, the current must continue to flow freely, running through all its circuits rather than getting stuck in one place. In the same way, God has created humans to keep looking around, to keep seeing life, not just through our own view of ourselves, but by seeing others and focusing God’s love for all.
Recently a respected pastor in NC died of a brain tumor. He had been recognized for leading his church in Durham to see the needs of immigrants and to respond as a church to those needs. In order to do this, he once wrote about how he had to face himself, his own prejudices, and ask his church to consider the biblical call to welcome the stranger. One thing he discovered, which is what we all discover when we go on mission with God, is that we can’t begin to think about the neighbor, if our only focus is on ourselves, our own desires, needs, and opinions. We have to also try to ‘put ourselves some elses moccasins’. In this way, it wasn’t just that the Pharisee only saw good in himself, but Jesus mentions his great failure because the Pharisee couldn’t see the good in the other. He failed to recognize both the good and the need beyond himself.
HAVE MERCY ON ME A SINNER (v. 13)
If the Pharisee only saw himself, what is really so different with the ‘publican’ or the sinner? Wasn’t he only focusing on himself too? What makes this sinner a better person in God’s eyes? The Pharisee only sees himself as good. This sinner only sees himself as bad. So, what’s the real difference? Aren’t they both just focusing only on themselves? What is it that Jesus sees in the sinner that he didn’t see in this self-described ‘saint’? Besides that, we all know that negative self-esteem isn’t good for you either, just like too much ego. Just like people should over inflate their self-image, people also shouldn’t carry around such heavy guilt and negative thinking about themselves. What ‘good’ does Jesus see in this fellow who appears to be too hard on himself?
Before we get to an answer, let’s look more closely at this ‘sinner’ and how he prays. While the Pharisee ‘stands’ while he prays, the ‘sinner’ won’t even look up. He bows his head. While the Pharisee ‘thanks God’ for ‘not being like other people’, the ‘sinner’ goes straight to the heart of God, saying, “God, have mercy on me, a sinners!’ The Pharisee is thankful for what he thinks he is and has. The Sinner faces what he knows he is, and isn’t? In short, the Pharisee prays a ‘fake’ prayer and needs nothing from God, but the sinner’s prayer is ‘real’, honest, and has nothing, unless God delivers him. The Pharisee doesn’t need God for anything. He does it all himself. The Sinner needs God in everything. He is completely and utterly dependent upon God’s mercy, grace and love.
With a closer look, you come to understand that it’s not that this ‘sinner’ is negating himself, but what he’s really doing is ‘putting himself’ completely into God’s hands. He’s surrendering himself, so that he can move beyond himself, move beyond his own good, or in this case ‘bad’ deeds, so that now, he can be used of God. In other words, in this fellow understanding of himself, he’s a sinner, just like everyone else is a sinner. In his own view of life, there are no chiefs and Indians, good or bad, saint or sinner, but everyone is an Indian, everyone fails, and everyone is a sinner. Jesus lifts up this ‘sinner’ above the ‘Pharisee’ because, like him, and before God, and God’s perfect righteousness, everyone stands of prayer, of love, of mercy, of understanding, and in need of forgiveness from God, and from the other. The theme song of the sinner who understands our human limits and dependency upon God is: “It’s me, It’s me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer?
THIS ONE WENT DOWN JUSTIFIED…. (v. 14)
So, now that we see the difference; that the Pharisee could only see himself, was stuck on himself, and couldn’t see his need of God, and that Sinner, by humbling himself, faces the reality that everyone ‘stands in need’ of God’s mercy and grace, what does this matter? We are told in the text, that the sinner ‘went down justified’, but what does that mean?
Practically, we’ve already said, haven’t we? The one who ‘humbles’ himself is the one who completely depends upon God, so that he or she is able to get themselves out of the way and are now able to focus on others. Recently, in our first Dinner Church Bible Study, we were talking about how one Church in Seattle, was able to start a new form of church, that was really an old form of church. As a decline church, it started to realize it’s face it’s decline because it realize that it wasn’t trying to ‘rescue’ people. Only when it became a church able to move beyond itself, was it able to focus on the most needy people in its community and then find God’s blessing and purpose that rejuvenated its ministry.
One of the question that was asked in the book we were studying, “Welcome to the Dinner Church”, was simply this: “Do you see God’s Church as primarily being in the rescue business? Why or Why not?
One of the answers that was shared was that “ it has been difficult for churches to be in the business of rescuing others, because we are still too busy at having to rescue ourselves?” What do you think that’s about? Is it because preachers keep putting guilt trips on us, or we keep putting them upon ourselves? What is it that keeps from getting involved in God’s mission?
Many years ago a man conned his way into the orchestra of the Emperor of China, although he could not play a single note. Whenever the group practiced or performed, he would hold his flute against his lips, pretending to play, but not making a sound. For years he received a good salary and enjoyed a comfortable living.
Then one day the Emperor requested a solo from each musician. Well, the flutist got very nervous. There wasn't enough time to learn the instrument. He pretended to be sick, but the royal physician wasn't fooled. On the day of his solo performance, the imposter took poison and killed himself. The explanation of his suicide led to a phrase that found its way into the English language: "He refused to face the music."
The way to move on with your life and with the life God has for you is to ‘face the music’. You can face the music now and be a part of the heavenly band. Or you can face the music later and be kicked out of the orchestra. But when admit your need of God, and how day by day you depend on Him, this is what impresses God and it’s what fits us for work in God’s kingdom and on God’s mission. Again, the great truth in the life of this ‘sinner’ is that he was casting himself on God, once and for all. He went home justified because he left everything there. When he left everything in God’s hands, realizing he could never justify himself, he could ‘get up’ ‘justified’ and ready to serve God in focusing God’s call and mission. The Pharisee could never get this far. He was stuck where he was, because he was stuck on himself.
This brings us to the question this text raises for us? Where do you see yourself in the mirror that Jesus paints? Do you show up as the person who has everything you just the way you want it, because you are holding something back? And because you hold back, you can’t move forward in the flow of God’s love that starts with you, and then moves toward others. Or, are you the person who is willing to lay everything on the ‘altar of God’ holding nothing back?
Once, a King of Israel, Saul won a battle, but lost the main ‘war’ because he ‘held back’ what he should have dedicated completely to God. The prophet pointed out his failure, but it was too late. But what Jesus’ story is telling us is that it’s never too late, as long as you have today, to ‘confess your sins’, to ‘cast all your care upon’ him, and know that he cares for you. This form of humility is not to beat you down, but it’s to set you free, so you can have a healthy view of self, and you are ready follow Jesus in the mission and purpose he has for you.
Today, you can ‘go home’ justified too. In order for this to happen, you must first, humble your true self before the God who forgives unconditionally. He forgives, not only because he loves you, wants to free your from your sins and failures, but he forgives you because life is not only about you, it’s also about those you will see when you start to move beyond you. Will you come and give yourself to God, so he can use you in all that God still wants to do to bring love, life, and hope into the world? Please, don’t hold anything back that will keep you from receiving all God has for you! Will you come? Amen.
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