Comparisons / Based on Luke 18:9-14 and 2 Timothy 4:6-8 /
Delivered on October 27, 2019 to CCH
Hymns: They’ll Know We Are Christians, Just As I Am, Because
He lives
Luke 18:9-14
18:9 He also told this parable to some who trusted in
themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt:
18:10 "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a
Pharisee and the other a tax collector.
18:11 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.
18:12 I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.'
18:13 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!'
18:14 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."
Good morning and Happy Sunday to you! I am Darci Strutt McQuiston, one of the Lay
Servants of the United Methodist Church up on the hill from here. It’s my joy to be with you this morning.
I’m building off two of the lectionary scriptures assigned
for this Sunday; Luke and 2 Timothy.
I’ve already read the full Luke passage and will add in Timothy within
my message.
Here are the three ideas I’m pulling from the scripture
today.
Don’t compare with others
Run your own race
Depend on grace
Don’t compare with others
The Pharisee sounds like a good solid member of the spiritual
community.
18:12 I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.
His prayer is thanksgiving to God, so where did he go wrong?
The scripture itself gives away that answer.
18:9 He also told this parable to some who trusted in
themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt:
He failed to see that all humans fall short and require God’s
grace. He compared himself to others as
if being better than some would give him a leg up on God’s accepting him.
18:11 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.
Those thieves, rogues, adulterers, and the tax collector
praying beside him are all God’s children just like he was. Everyone of them were on their own journey of
developing faith. The people Jesus told
the story to no doubt employed this type of comparison. “I may not be perfect but I’m far closer than
these other nasty folks.”
The tax collector chose to compare himself with what God
required and recognized he fell short.
18:13 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!'
18:14 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."
I’m going to talk a little more about that final verse toward
the end of the message.
Run your own race
The faith journey is a personal journey run in
community. If you’re going to do any
comparison to another human do it with your past self. I led the service at the United Methodist
Church last Sunday. Part of my
meditation on the scripture caused me to think about Darci of 30 years
ago. It made me realize how far I’ve
come in my faith journey from those days when I questioned whether God was good
enough at loving sinners that he could love me too. Those were dark days. Today God’s love is surrounding me! I realize it was surrounding me then too!
My son, Paul, was a runner on the cross-country team in High
School in Hudson, and at UW-Oshkosh. The
runners were partially focused on winning the race for their team, but the
coach made them also focus on raising their PR – their Personal Record. Were they improving themselves? That became an important indicator on their
running journey. You can always run
against slower people, but are you doing your best to get faster independent of
who you are running against.
The Apostle Paul used the running imagery in his letter to
Timothy.
4:6 As for me, I am already being poured out as a libation,
and the time of my departure has come.
4:7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I
have kept the faith.
4:8 From now on there is reserved for me the crown of
righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me on that day,
and not only to me but also to all who have longed for his appearing.
The image of being poured out as a libation was that of a
drink offering sacrifice. The Apostle
Paul had given his life to God. He
didn’t indicate he was better than anyone else, just that he finished the race.
I think of marathon runners.
Yes, there is a winner, but just completing those 26.2 miles is enough
to feel victorious. Everyone of those
that complete the race get a metal.
Winning isn’t as much of the goal in such long races as just finishing
the race is.
The journey of a faithful life is a marathon not a sprint.
Depend on grace
No matter how much you improve your service to God during
your life you still need to depend on God’s mercy and grace. This parable was told to enlighten those, “who
trusted in themselves that they were righteous.”
Don’t make the Pharisee a bad guy and the tax-collector a
good guy. That’s doing comparisons of
your own. The Pharisees were often at
odds with Jesus for the wrong reasons.
They wanted their power to continue, but they also were attempting to
protect the Jewish people from getting punished by the Romans. The tax-collector on the other hand was often
a thief and was certainly a traitor to his Jewish people because of his work
exploiting them for personal gain and the gain of the Roman Empire. This is not a parable praising
tax-collectors. It was explaining the Pharisee
and the tax-collector were equals in needing God’s grace because every human on
earth relies on God’s grace.
Romans 3: 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory
of God, 24 and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption
that came by Christ Jesus.
There’s that word “justified” again. The final verse of our Luke scripture says
the Tax-collector was justified but the Pharisee was not.
I looked up the word “Justify”, and one entry listed two
definitions. The first was legal, “to
show a sufficient lawful reason for an act done”, and the second had to do with
typed text, “to space (lines of text) so that the lines come out even at the
margin.”
It’s easy to justify our typing on the left side of the
page. That’s where all typing
starts. It’s much harder to keep the
text lined up on the right side of the page.
I could maybe do it if I was working with a paragraph of short text. I couldn’t imagine aligning something as
large as a book by hand.
Our life, once lived, becomes our biography. It is a very long book. The prayer of the tax-collector was one of
humility. Realizing he couldn’t meet
God’s law, he asked for mercy. I can
visualize his biography slowly adding in the spaces needed to bring the text
justified to the right side of the page through God’s handiwork of grace.
So why run the race at all if we can’t ever measure up? That thought leads me to another favorite
verse.
1 John 4:19 We love because he first loved us. 20 Whoever
claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does
not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom
they have not seen. 21 And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God
must also love their brother and sister.
I am not speaking to you today because I’m trying to earn
God’s love by my good behavior. I am
here because I feel God’s love surrounding me and helping me survive even my
darkest days. I know God loves each of
you in this same way. I feel compelled
to let you know about that love, because that is what loving God and loving you,
my brothers and sisters, looks like to me.
We love because he first loved us. That’s the thought that led me to choose
“They’ll Know we are Christians by Our Love” as our first hymn today. We are equally loved and are called to love
each other. We are not called to judge
each other or compare ourselves as better or worse. If you are looking down with contempt on
another person you need to remember that person is a child of God just like
you. Stay humble before God.
Micah 6:8
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the
Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly
with your God.
We each have our own relationship to work out with God. We each have our own faith journey to run. At the end of that journey we pray we will
hear the phrase “well done good and faithful servant”, but the truth of it is
we are covered by amazing grace. We live
into eternity because Jesus lived and died for us. Because He lives, we can face tomorrow.
A funny definition of saint is – a dead sinner who’s been
revised and edited. God is our final
editor and through the grace and mercy Jesus demonstrated we can pray the
prayer “God be merciful” and trust in His love to justify the text in our book
of biography.
I wish us each the strength to fight the good fight, finish
the race, and keep the faith.
Amen
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