God Ain't Studyin' That!

The Holy Gospel According to St. Luke, the 18th Chapter

Jesus also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Jesus told this parable “to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.”  It’s just too bad these parables don’t speak to us in our day and age!  Right?

That, of course, was sarcasm.  You can’t escape people proclaiming their righteousness and holding others in contempt these days even if you never watch TV and put your fingers in your ears and shout LALALALALA 24/7!  Folks are positive they have never and will never make a mistake.  If they are forced to apologize they do so only conditionally, saying, “if anyone was offended” and in doing that they both fail to apologize AND blame the one they hurt for having thin skin.  Folks are sure they are right.  Anyone with a different idea is wrong, a criminal or even a traitor.  Politicians may be the easiest to see doing this at this time of year but us regular folk are often just as convinced that we are better than the rest or at the very least, we’re definitely better than “them”, whoever “them” may be.  

Who hasn’t thought they were better than someone else because of something they did or didn’t do.  I’ve never burglarized a house, but years ago my house was burglarized!  That makes me better than them! Right?  God must like me more than them!  But that’s just not the way God works.  As much as a part of me WANTS to think I’m better than whoever broke into my house, the truth is that sin is sin.  His breaking and entering is no worse and no better in God’s eyes than my holding a grudge against him for burglarizing my house!  

No matter who you are and no matter how well you live, we have all fallen short of the glory of God.  We are all sunk without God’s grace.  You could live your life as saintly as a perfectly as the Pharisee in the story; you could pledge a full 10% tithe to the church (you could, you know), you could volunteer for every charity, you could be at church every time the door was open, you could feed the poor and clothe the hungry; you could do it all, and the fact is that your “perfect” life STILL isn’t good enough.  You could be Saint Teresa of Calcutta, and without God’s grace, given to you as a complete and total gift in Christ, you're sunk.  

The same is true on the other end of the spectrum; the same is true of the worst of the worst.  No matter what you have done in your life, no matter who you have hurt, what lies you have told, how many people you have trampled on and no matter how many Pastor’s houses you’ve broken into, without God’s grace you don’t have a chance.  You could be the worst human being that has ever lived and without God’s grace, given as a gift in Christ you are sunk.

Now, it’s a bit easier to see and realize that you are sunk without God’s grace if your falling short is more spectacular.  That was true in Jesus’ day and it’s still true today.  Why do you think it was the lepers, Roman centurions, the unclean, the tax collectors, harlots and the demon possessed that Jesus got through to most often?  They were so obviously apart from God they simply couldn’t fool themselves into believing that they could get to God on their own.  The gap was so obvious they threw themselves at Jesus’ feet and begged for mercy because they KNEW mercy was their only hope.  

For us good and loyal churchgoing folks… it’s harder to see the gap between us and God; we’re good after all!  But if you don’t see the gap… if you see yourself with God already, then their isn’t much of a need to throw yourself at Jesus’ feet and beg for mercy.  And that’s the trap.

We think of sin as something that works on a scale… like a knob that turns from 0-100.  100 is for the genocidal maniacs, an 80 is for murderers, a 50 is for bank robbers, a 25 is for software pirates, 15 is for people who walk off with someone else’s pen, 5 is for Ethyl who said a bad word…once…back in ’48 and 0 is for Mother Theresa and the like.  Burglars who break into pastor’s houses are about a 47 by the way.  

But this isn’t God’s scale!  It’s US who have manufactured this scale of sin and it’s US who look around and measure other people and measure ourselves and we try to figure out where we fall on this cosmic scale of sin.  But God simply doesn’t care!!  We insist on this scale of sin, but God could care less.  

For God, we will never be so good that we don’t need God’s gift of grace.  And for God, we can never be too bad to be out of the reach of God’s gift of grace.  It simply doesn’t matter where you fall on that sin scale because God doesn’t use that scale!  We’ve already been made right in God’s eyes!  We can never do enough right to make God like us and we can never do enough wrong to make God abandon us.  

So, take that gift you have been given… God’s unconditional love and grace… and do your best, as the fully loved mixture of saint and sinner that you are, and pass God’s love on to the people you will encounter this week with the same reckless abandon that God first gave it to you.  The world right now desperately needs that love because, that love, you see, has the power to change the world.  Amen.