Proper
25 :: Jeremiah 14: 7–10, 19–22 / Psalm 84: 1–6 / II Timothy 4: 6–8, 16–18 / Luke
18: 9–14
This
is the homily prepared for St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, by Fr. Gene
Tucker for Sunday, October 27, 2019.
“A FAULTY PLATFORM”
(Homily
text: Luke 18: 9–14)
Our
Gospel text for this morning places before us the very familiar Parable of the
Pharisee and the Tax Collector (Tax Collector was translated as Publican, in
older translations). Today’s parable, like the one heard last week (the Parable
of the Unjust Judge), is one of many parables that Luke alone among the Gospel
writers passes along to us.
And,
as was the case with last week’s parable, Luke inserts an editorial remark
prior to relating the parable, outlining exactly what the meaning and the
application of the parable is meant to be. His preamble to today’s parable
says, “He (Jesus) also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that
they were righteous, and treated others with contempt.”
So,
in the parable, the Pharisees stands, by himself, and prays, thanking God that
he is not like others are, and especially not like that (hated) tax collector
who’s standing nearby. The Pharisee then recounts all of his righteous deeds,
keeping – as the Pharisees were keen to do – each and every minute detail of
the law handed down by Moses.
A
way to picture what’s going on here is to imagine that the Pharisee is standing
on a platform, a fairly high one, high enough so that everyone around him could
see him plainly. But the problem is that the Pharisee, while using the good
planks of the Law of Moses, forget to put those planks together in a sound
design, so that the platform would be sturdy and stable. Consequently, the
Pharisee is standing on something that lacks a sure ability to support him
safely….he has used good material (the Law), but for the purposes of promoting
himself.
By
contrast, the tax collector stands afar off, and won’t even lift his eye toward
heaven. “Have mercy on me, O God, a sinner.” The tax collector has no platform
at all to stand on, only the bare ground, and we might imagine that it is only
by God’s great mercy that the ground doesn’t open around him and swallow him
up, taking him away from God’s sight forever.
The
tax collector has only one thing to offer, himself. Furthermore, he
acknowledges that even the gift of himself is a shabby one, for he says that he
is a sinner.
Now
in the parable, the Lord reverses our normal expectation by declaring that it
is the tax collector that goes away justified. Our expectation is that it would
be the Pharisee, the one who’s burdened himself with enormous efforts to do
everything the “right” way, who would find favor in God’s sight. (At this
point, it’s worth noting that reversals of roles, and a turnabout of the normal
expectation of things, is a favorite theme in Luke’s writing.)
If
we’re honest with ourselves, we must admit that the gift we bring to God, the
only gift we can bring, is ourselves. And when we bring that gift of ourselves,
our hearts, minds, souls and bodies, we bring a gift that is stained with sin,
one that is tattered and worn and nearly useless because the inherent goodness
in all of those things has been distorted by our wayward and disobedient ways.
But in God’s sight, the gift of ourselves is the very gift He cherishes the
most. We can’t earn God’s favor, like the Pharisee tried to do, for our efforts
are misguided and misshapen by sin’s cloudiness. The only thing we can do is to
bring ourselves, and when we do, admit our unworthiness.
But
that’s where God wants to begin with us. It’s a “zero-sum” deal. Only when we
admit we have nothing of value to offer, then it is that God can say to us,
“You are valuable to me, extraordinarily valuable.” So it is that God doesn’t
leave us where He finds us, for God’s plan for us is to reshape and remold us
into the full image of Christ. But that remolding and reshaping can only happen
when the raw material of our hearts is softened by the awareness of our own
unworthiness before God.
How,
then, is our platform constructed? We have two choices, the ones that the Lord
outlines in the parable we hear this morning: Have we, like the Pharisee, been
putting the planks of our accomplishments and our good deeds together, but in a
way that won’t support us when we step atop what we’ve made? To be sure, we
lack the ability to design a platform that will hold up to God’s scrutiny. It’s
far better, then, to follow the second option, the one taken by the tax
collector, to step off that platform and to stand on bare
ground, helpless and hopeless before God, for that’s exactly the place where He
will find us.
AMEN.
