“Bringing Our Worst to God” Luke 18:9-14

Jesus told this story to some who had great confidence in their own righteousness and scorned everyone else.

I remember being in Mrs. Novak’s Sunday school class at the age of six or seven, when we’d sing songs, have a lesson on the flannel board and share snack time. Ah, the good old days. My friend Kevin and I would usually get to take the drink glasses into the kitchenette to wash and rinse them out. Kevin was cool, me not so much. I began to notice he dressed differently than I did. He wore cool slip on boots, my shoes had plastic soles and laced up. He had on a plaid shirt and western style neck tie, I had on a plain white shirt. He had creased slacks, I wore corduroys. He parted his hair down the middle, I wore mine just like I do today. He looked like Alfalfa, I was Porky. O-tay. He ate pizza from Yala’s. I got mine from Totino’s out of a box. He had a huge baseball card collection, I close pinned mine to the fork of my bike to hear them buzz in the spokes of the tires as I rode around with John Mellen.

Anyhow, that’s my first memory of comparison…of basing how I saw myself and my life on my perception of someone else and their life. If you take a moment, I’m sure you can remember one of the first times for yourself.

So, let’s look at our text;

⁹ Then Jesus told this story to some who had great confidence in their own righteousness and scorned everyone else: ¹⁰ “Two men went to the Temple to pray. One was a Pharisee, and the other was a despised tax collector. ¹¹ The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed this prayer: ‘I thank you, God, that I am not like other people—cheaters, sinners, adulterers. I’m certainly not like that tax collector! ¹² I fast twice a week, and I give you a tenth of my income.’

¹³ “But the tax collector stood at a distance and dared not even lift his eyes to heaven as he prayed. Instead, he beat his chest in sorrow, saying, ‘O God, be merciful to me, for I am a sinner.’ ¹⁴ I tell you, this sinner, not the Pharisee, returned home justified before God. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Advance

This text stayed with me last week as I’ve been thinking about a tattoo I saw while in the checkout line at the market last Wednesday. It was a quote tattooed on a lady’s arm. It said, comparison is the thief of joy.

That simple statement contains so much wisdom I think. We compare our income to that of others who make more money, we compare our looks to those we think more beautiful, we compare our actual relationship to the Facebook highlight reel of someone else’s and then we make the leap to assuming all these people are happier than us. Or more worthy of love. Or more valued as a person, or whatever. Comparison steals our joy. And comparison introduces despair when none is called for.

I mean, except when it doesn’t.

Because if I’m totally honest, comparison also introduces pride when none is called for.

Or as the text this morning puts it, comparison allows us to trust in ourselves that we are righteous and regard others with contempt or even scorn. Think about it, and don’t make me say it again. Okay, I will anyway. Comparison allows us to trust in ourselves that we are righteous and regard others with contempt.

Comparison introduces pride when none is called for because we humans need to maintain a ranking system for ourselves and others so we can be sure of our value.

You think this isn’t true? In a guarded conversation a few weeks ago, someone who hadn’t heard from a friend in a while, suddenly came out of the woodwork to inform this person that God “put it on his heart” to “speak into” my friend’s life, basically shaming him for his lack of action in a matter…You know, because obviously that’s how God spends most of God’s time these days. The person who had their life “spoken into” was deeply offended.

I’ll just cut to the chase—most times, when people say that God is giving them specific instructions about something, it almost always happens to set up a situation where they get to then, place themselves above others and not “speak into” their life, so much as speak down to them from above; putting that person ‘ipso facto’ in the position of God. It almost always seems that if God puts something on your heart, it results in some kind of spiritual dominance over another person. “You” get to be over “them.” 

And, man, are there a million ways of doing this as we compare ourselves with others in so many ways.

But the thing to keep in mind here, the thing to remember when we use God to place ourselves above others is that this is exactly the opposite of what Jesus himself did. Philippians 2 reminds us that Jesus himself—the one person in history who could legitimately pull that off, did not consider equality with God as something to be grasped, or exploited, but humbled himself to the point of death, even death on a cross.

As I said, comparison introduces despair when none is called for and pride when none is called for. But comparison has a more hidden insidious function as well: it also allows us to not have to look at certain things in ourselves. I mean, the best thing we can hope for if we feel ugly about something hidden in us or hidden in our past is to find someone more guilty to carry all of it for us. This is why we love having the gossipy church lady around because it’s such a convenient way to not have to look at our own clandestine conversations.

The parable we heard today is a well known one: a Pharisee and a tax collector go up to the temple to pray and the Pharisee was like, God, I thank you that I am not like this tax collector or other people: sinners, they’re the worst. I fast twice a week; and give a tenth of all my income.’ I suspect the Pharisee is conveniently leaving out some details here…like maybe he’s not so honest in his tax returns.

And so the Pharisee tries to impress God with how good he is in comparison to the Tax Collector, the tramp stamp guy that he is.

But Jesus has none of it. Remember he is the one who said, ‘You have heard it said—fill in the blank—but I say to you…Everyone around Jesus that day who considered themselves righteous were pretty bummed that Jesus would take that ranking away from them so quickly. But he doesn’t up the ante to be mean. He ups the ante so that we realize how futile the human righteousness ranking system is. And he does this so that we’ll finally trust in God’s grace and mercy, which is endless and not trust our own righteousness, which is like, very limited.

It’s a difficult reality to accept. Because, like the Pharisee, I want to be able to trust in myself that I am righteous. I want to be able to trust in my world-view that I am righteous. I want to be able to trust in my lifestyle that I’m righteous. I want to be able to trust in my Twitter X newsfeed that I’m righteous. Well, that one not so much because I never post on Twitter.

Maybe if the PR I spin about myself, was the whole story – or maybe if the way I like to see myself, or the way I like for others to see me was actually the whole story about who I am—then maybe that would be enough. But it’s not. Because I can never be righteous enough, and after being here 30 some years, you all know that by now.

Maybe this is why that amazing Lutheran theologian Detrich Bonhoeffer, said that the Gospel is frankly hard for the pious to understand. Because the Gospel confronts us with the truth saying you are a sinner, a great and desperate sinner. Now come as the sinner you are to the God who loves you madly and pours it out on you lavishly. God wants us to bring our worst to him.

This is why our human competition extravaganza is spiritually meaningless: because God isn’t ranking anyone. It’s hard for us to understand, especially when I tend to trust in myself that I’m righteous. It’s always so tempting to rank ourselves, and we are conditioned to do this, but I’m here to tell you that Christ put it to death on Calvary. It is finished.

Know today that the good news confronts us in our virtue, our piety and social justice purity and says, “You know what’s actually rigged? The ranking system is rigged and you’re a sinner. You need not rely on your ability to be better than others. Or your commitment to be better than others. But here sinner, here is something better. Lay down the ranking system. Step away from your projects of self-perfection and the PR about how good you are, or the PR about how much of a bad boy you are.

None of these things matter, because the terrible mercy of God reaches past those layers – it’s terrible for our righteousness because it reaches right into our souls and claims that soul as God’s own in Christ. God reaches past the photo-shopped, profile picture and into the stark reality of our actual hearts. None of it is safe from the terrible mercy of God. Because God is determined to redeem us – so determined that God will not allow us to maintain the delusion that we can redeem ourselves – and Thanks be to God for that.

In Christ there are no insiders or outsiders. There is no them, there is only us. Paul reminds us in Galatians 3 that, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

And we at The Sanctuary love this kind of thing, don’t we? We love an open door and an open table and as well we should.

But the thing that started gnawing on me last week was all the ways that, despite my own commitment to an open door and an open table, I’m still able to get trapped into the ‘us and them’ comparison game that some still play even in the church.

But the Gospel is only good news if it is good news for everybody. And man, is that hard to swallow.

But strangely, it really is good news that there is no room to boast. Meaning, all our attempts to put ourselves in the place of God are thwarted because we get the place of God wrong. If we think that “the place” of God is one of comparisons and evaluations, we’ve not been paying attention.

Which takes us back to Christ’s authority and the cross. Because Jesus himself, the one person in history who could legitimately pull off standing above everyone else, did so – but when he was above all of us, it was when he hung from the cross we prepared for him. He did not consider equality with God as something to be grasped or exploited, but humbled himself to the point of death—even death on a cross.

Here’s something I’ve found to be true. That keeping score, and knowing where I stand above or below others, and maintaining comparisons is just so exhausting. So I am grateful to again come to the table of God’s grace where there are no comparisons, there is no them, there is only us, knowing that it is Jesus and not me that has decided this.

Because what was true then is still true today. Jesus still calls the tax collectors and Pharisees into the very heart of God.

Let’s try this, church. Let’s bring our worst to God this morning as we come to his table. Let’s lay down our comparisons because the ground at the foot of the cross is level and there is room for all of us.

This is the Word of the Lord for the day.

Amen.