"FINDING REALITY"

Psalm 65; Luke 18:9-14

It was four hundred and ninety years ago,

plus or minus three days,

when Martin Luther got fed up with the church.

At that time it was "the church,"

because there were no denominations.

Today we'd call them Roman Catholic,

but back then they were all small-c Catholic.

Martin Luther had had it

with priests who were asking people to pay them for forgiveness;

with bishops and popes who wouldn't allow priests to marry;

and with everybody

who thought that you could earn your way

or even buy your way into heaven //

without the grace of God.

He couldn't foresee the magnitude of his suggested changes,

but he knew that changes needed to be made.

The parable that Jesus tells us this morning

was probably right up there at the top of Luther's hit parade

when it came to passages that inspired his thinking.

The book of James,

which tells us that "faith without works is dead,"

was at the bottom of his list.

Luther went so far as to call the book of James

"an epistle of straw."

He believed,

in the words of a contemporary of mine inUtah,

"salvation equals grace plus nothing."

There's nothing, or no amount of things,

that we can do to earn God's grace.

It's pure gift.

And the best way we can be open to God's grace

is to start by recognizing our own sinful nature.

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So here's Jesus telling this story

about the wise-guy Pharisee

who brags to God about all the great things he's done

and even goes so far as to thank God

for not making him like other lesser mortals.

Then Jesus tells about another man,

a tax collector of all people,

who comes in to confess his sins before God

and ask for God's mercy.

There it is -

justification,

being made right with God,

by God's grace,

through the faith of one who believes.

Hooray for the tax collector,

and shame on the Pharisee, right?

David beats out Goliath again.

Well, it would be great if it were that easy, wouldn't it?

But it isn't.

We find ourselves cheering

when we read Jesus' take on this story.

After all, it's about time

that those self-centered, self-righteous,

jot-and-tittle Pharisees get their due, isn't it?

It's a lot easier to identify with the underdog.

But when we begin to root for the tax collector

and boo the Pharisee //

is the precise moment

that we should stop dead in our tracks -

because as soon as we have said or thought

or done something like that,

we have judged. 

We have become the ones who,

in Jesus' words,

"trusted in themselves that they were righteous

and regarded others with contempt."

In that moment

we have become the Pharisee we love to hate,

because we have just made the same kind of judgment.

As per usual,

Jesus' neat little parable has become a velvet hammer.

Anytime we put ourselves in a position of judging,

whether we judge something to be good or bad,

right or wrong,

then we're trying to usurp God's role.

We're acting as if God is not the only God.

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These six verses get pretty scary

once we start to realize

that we stand not nearly as close to the tax collector in this story

as we do to the Pharisee.

Friends, just by virtue of our being here today,

we're part of the "in crowd" just like the Pharisee was.

We're supposed to know better.

We know good and well

that we're supposed to give generously if not tithe.

We feel good about our church attendance,

no matter what level it's at.

We might serve on a committee,

and maybe we never miss Sunday School.

(or if we don't, we at least think well of it!)

But friends,

the Reformation is still in force for us today.

Days like Reformation Sunday

remind us that every day,

we are saved by the grace of God

as we experience it in the gift of Jesus Christ.

We don't have to do anything to deserve God's love,

though hopefully we do the things that we do

out of gratitude for what God has done for us.

But when we start drawing dividing lines,

comparing ourselves more favorably than one another,

setting up false competitions between "us versus them,"

or "9:00 versus 11:00,"

or "choir versus praise team,"

or "boys versus girls,"

or even "Presbyterians versus Baptists,"

then we have missed the boat.

In that moment

we have moved away from a stance of utter dependence on God

to a stance of entitlement,

roping ourselves off from anyone

who doesn't have the good sense to believe exactly as we do.

Friends, the good news of the gospel

is that there is no longer a rope.

In Christ Jesus all the barriers have been broken down.

Or in the words of the Psalmist,

"To [God] all flesh shall come,"

not just the ones who look like us or agree with us

or the ones that we want to come along.

Any dividing lines we try to set up

are artificial at best

and idolatrous at worst.

God grants grace just as much

to those of us who come every Sunday

and know all the books of the Bible //

as God does to those of us who know ourselves to be sinners

without a hope in the world.

That's because, thank God,

a gracious God is in charge of meting out grace.

The reality of the gospel

is that God gets to pick sides,

except that where God is concerned,

there are no sides.

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How many of you have been to a high school reunion?

If not, for the younger set, they're coming,

and for the high school graduates among us,

they're probably not going away!

My high school in Dallas was big enough

that we haven't tried to hold reunions

more often than every ten years.

I went to the first one

because I thought I was supposed to.

My girlfriend who'd promised to go with me

chickened out at the last minute.

But I went anyway,

thinking that I would miss out on something if I didn't go.

And as you might visualize,

the jocks were over here,

the cheerleaders were over there,  

the journalism nerds - all six of us -

were at one table,

and the band nerds were having the best time of all.

It was like your worst prom nightmare

I left early,

and still couldn't get out of there fast enough.

Twentieth reunion?

No way, after all the fun I had the first time!

We were living in California then,

so I got to plead "broke newlywed"

and stay home.

I was never so glad to live in California!

But when the thirtieth came around,

we were in Bonham.

Still broke, but at least in Texas!

I didn't have that excuse anymore.

I was happy with who I was

and where I was in life.

The jocks and the cheerleaders and the band nerds

were just human beings now.

Heck, I was even married to a band nerd!

And so I let myself get involved,

even going so far as to help locate missing classmates

and signing off on the plans for the weekend.

We had a ball.

And I'd do it again tomorrow.

It was great

because after thirty years,

we finally saw ourselves as human beings,

men and women who'd had measures of success and of failure,

who'd lived through tragedies

and been sustained by joys.

It was a lot more fun

when all the labels we had given each other in the old days

were too old to stick anymore.

We were just fellow survivors of High School

who were glad to see each other again.

We were able to be real with each other

and with ourselves.

What if it were that way for us, every Sunday,

right here in this place?

This room is not the place for Pharisees,

or for people who think they have to look and act like one.

So many people I talk to

think that they have to play the part,

and look and dress and act a certain way

and make a certain amount of money

in order to come to church

because everyone else looks and acts and dresses that way

and makes a certain amount of money.

Not so.

This is the place

where you and I can be most real with each other,

more than any other place in the world.

This is the place for us to come every week

and ask for God's mercy upon us as sinners.

To remind ourselves that ours is a gracious God

who can and does forgive even us.

To see and hear and touch water

so that we can remember our baptism and be thankful.

To line up in front of and behind other sinners

to receive the grace freely given around this table.

To welcome other sinners

and share with them the grace that has so freely been given us.

And to go once again,

to live in the world with humility,

serving that gracious God with joy,

breaking down any and all false barriers,

treating all others as equally sinful and equally forgiven,

knowing who we are and Whose we are.

That is reality.

Let's live like it's so.

Amen.