"Perfect in every way?" - Twenty second Sunday after Pentecost

LUKE 18: 9-14

Several years ago, a novelty song got close to the top of the charts. . It chorus proudly proclaimed;

“O Lord it’s hard to be humble
When you’re perfect in every way.
I can’t wait to look in the mirror
‘Cause I get better looking’ each day.

Well on first reading we have a character who fits into that song’s lyrics in the story of Jesus that we have heard this morning. So let’s take a look at the two characters that Jesus provides us with.

The first character was a Pharisee. Pharisees don’t get the best of presses in the Gospels - you can’t help but feel that they are people in need of spin doctors. And yet in the time of Jesus, they were greatly respected. After all, they took the Law that had been given to Moses very seriously indeed and they made every effort both to live by it themselves and to help others to do so. Certainly Jesus spent time with them and not of all of that time was spent adversarially. Later Paul defending his Christian faith would speak of his being a Pharisee in the present rather than the past tense. So whilst today, we too easily ridicule these people, they were at the time of Jesus generally respected for the devout lives that they led.

The other character was toll collector. They were certainly not well though of in Jewish society. Oh, they may at times have been rather well off. But the problem was how they had amassed their fortunes. And this was not a pretty story. For they were the traiors of their day who raised money from their localities on behalf of the hated Roman occupying forces. And in so doing, they were given the powers to extort extra funds on their own behalf . Traitorous fraudsters was in essence what they were - Quisling and Robert Maxwell made one!

Certainly Jesus’ audience would have seen the Pharisees as being much closer to God than these toll collectors.

But wait, Luke recounts this story to a divided church. Luke’s church was made of followers of the Galilean Jesus On that they were united. The problem is that they were also divided. And their division was between those who had a Judean worldview and those who were now being drawn into the church who has Gentile and Hellenistic worldviews. This was the controversy that rocked the early church and without doubt there were those on both sides who looked down on others. The vibrant Gentile Christian communities looked down on the Jewish communities from which the Gospel had come. Their demands for circumcision and the observance of ancient Jewish dietary rules, suggested to these people that the Jewish Christian communities were hung up on superfluous regulations rather than the grace of Christ. Equally, there were those amongst the Jewish Christians who held that the Gentile Christians were showing an arrogance by refusing to be grafted into the Israel from which the Gospel came.

I cannot help but wonder if Luke shapes this story around a need for both Gentile and Christian communities to place their emphasis upon being passionate about the things that really matter such as their prayer lives rather than by claiming a superior righteousness over those who thought and acted in a different way. If so, I suggest that there is a relevance to the diverse body that is the Christian church today.

Anyhow back to the story that Jesus told. In this story both have come to pray. The Pharisee prays;

“God, I thank you that I am not like other men - robbers, evildoers, adulterers - or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.”

It’s a pious prayer. Sure it contains an element of truth in it. After all what is wrong with thanking God for being at work in one’s life? The problem of the prayer is that in his thanksgiving to God, this Pharisee can be seen to be looking down on another person and denying the possibility of God’s grace being at work in that person’s life.

And in so doing, the Pharisee is denying a reality of God’s work. Sure, the toll collector has been no better than he ought to be. But his saving grace is that is aware of and acknowledges this reality. He knows that he is not all that he should be and so his prayer reflects his sense of need. Looking down out of shame and beating his breast, he prays;

“God have mercy on me, a sinner.”
He has understood something that the Pharisee has missed out on, the reality that in our relationship with God, none of us can come with entitlement but we can only come depending on God’s grace and mercy. We do not come before God on the basis of our attainments but as those who know that God is a debtor to no person.

And it is because the toll collector realises this as his situation and because he goes on to let the reality dwell within him, that Jesus ends this story with words which would have caused a sharp intake of breath from his listeners;

“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Oh does not this turn our expectation of the world upside down? Does it not challenge so much of what we have been brought up on? Well, that is the wonder of grace, the word that is at the heart of hope for humanity.

But there is something more. I pointed out at the beginning that Luke’s community would have encountered this story at a time when the temptation within the church to exclude those who were different was at its strongest. We can understand that because the temptation to exclude continues to exist today. So here we see a picture of how religion can be distorted. For surely, the offence of the Pharisee was not that he lacked religion. He had plenty of it, enough to make him a man of virtue. And yet, in sense he had not enough. He lacked enough religion to be inclusive. And religion that makes us virtuous but not inclusive cab be a hateful thing which creates hurt to so many. For as we are all made in the image of God, we all marr the image in some way or other. Within ourselves we do not have it all. We are none of us perfect in every way. So each of us as we look into the mirror need to see that we as much as others need the gift of being included - a gift that comes through Christ’s grace.

So this morning, may we celebrate God’s gift in including us and may we live lives of radical inclusion of others.


This sermon was preached at Gammaton Methodist Church on October 28th 2007