a sermon preached on October 27, 2013
at Faith United Church of Christ, International Falls, MN
scripture: Luke 18:9-14
I just can’t believe how many things I’ve run across in the last 24 hours or so that just totally illustrated this scripture passage in modern terms!
First there’s a riddle going around on Facebook. If you don’t answer the riddle correctly, you’re supposed to change your profile picture to a giraffe for 3 days! (Profile pictures are usually a head-shot of yourself, but can also be other things or people you like.)
Here is the riddle: It’s 3:00 am, the doorbell rings and you wake up. Unexpected visitors, it's your parents and they are there for breakfast. All you have is strawberry jam, honey, wine, bread and cheese. What is the first thing you open? If you get it wrong, you have to change your profile picture to a giraffe.
Think about it carefully. I thought I did.
What’s the first thing you open? Who’s brave enough to answer here?
Well, I thought I was SO smart because I realized it was a trick to try to get you to pick cheese, or wine or bread and jelly for breakfast when you had to open the door and let your parents in first!
But no. I was so sure of myself that I sent a note to my clergy friend who had it on her page and said “the door!” I was feeling SO smug because I didn’t get caught by this tricky riddle. But she wrote back and said, “You're going to trip on the way to the door since you didn't open your eyes.”
Well, I thought waking up automatically meant opening your eyes, but yes, in this whole scenario the first thing you open is your eyes.
So this picture is now my profile picture for 3 days! [change slide, pause, change back]
My smugness made me think of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector parable told by Jesus in Luke’s gospel. What a smug, self-righteous Pharisee we have here. I wouldn’t want to know HIM, would you?
And yet the Pharisees get mixed press. We have come to think of them as bad guys because of stories like this one. But really, the Pharisees were mostly like good deacons, elders or stewards. They were the ones who did the work of the church and provided the financial support necessary to support religious institutions. In general, they were devoted to God and righteousness. Most of their faults were the result of over striving for holiness. They were zealous in their desire to please God, even though their zeal was often misguided because it got ahead of everything else. People who adhere to the rules to the exclusion of everything else are not generally popular with everyone else.
The tax collector was hated by the people who were hearing Jesus’ parable. He was the instrument of economic oppression by the Roman Empire. He generally overcharged people in order to pay the Roman tribute and have money left over for himself—sometimes more than the general population thought he was entitled to. So tax collectors were not only misunderstood, they were unclean and they were on the wrong side religiously, politically and economically. So both of these characters in the parable would have evoked strong—but mixed—reaction from Jesus’ audience.
But Jesus is true to form in using unexpected examples to teach his audiences a lesson.
This brings me to something else I ran across yesterday. It was an article entitled “When Poor People Have Nice Things.” Think about that a minute.
Have you ever heard people complain about someone on welfare who has a nice car? Or have you heard someone complain about a poor person with a fancy smartphone? Or a leather jacket? Or expensive running shoes? Or maybe even someone who’s on food assistance also buying pet food? I’m sure you can think of other examples.
Like the author of the article, I get upset when people I know post things on Facebook—or say things in conversation—that are extremely prejudiced toward “poor people.” The example in the article is “Maybe someday I’ll be able to afford an iPhone like the person in front of me at the grocery store. The one paying with FOOD STAMPS!”
The author goes on to say there are always people who agree and make comments objecting to to poor people owning something of value. He says, “The rage is evident: How dare someone on food stamps have a smartphone! Why should they even be allowed to have a phone at all? Our tax dollars blah blah blah blah.”
He went on to say that yes, there are people who abuse the system. BUT “no one knows the life situation of every single person on the planet, no matter how much they think they do.” He went on to explain many reasons why someone who’s unemployed or on public assistance might have nice things. There could be circumstances about which we—the observers—have absolutely no clue. And it’s not our place to judge. And it reminded me of my argument that anyone job-hunting in this day and age NEEDS a smartphone because everything’s done electronically these days and their phone may be the most reliable internet to which they have access.
The point is, of course, that we get in big trouble when we make judgments about things we know nothing about. And even when we make judgments on things we might know a tiny little bit about.
We become smug—like me thinking I knew the answer to the riddle this time for sure. We become arrogantly self-righteous—like the Pharisee who assumed that he was a far superior person to that horrid tax collector over there.
And yet… the tax collector pours out his heart to God and buries himself so deeply in his anguish, his profound awareness of his own weaknesses, failures and sins. that he is completely oblivious of the Pharisee, and certainly doesn’t compare himself with the Pharisee. “He flings himself on the mercies of God and depends on God to do something memorable in his life.”
We should be used to all the reversals in the gospel of Luke by now. So is it any wonder that Jesus says this hated collaborator with the Romans goes home “justified” while the observant religious person doesn’t?
Hopefully, it’s enough to make us stop and think before we pass judgment on people and situations we really aren’t familiar with, and before we become smug and self-righteous thinking we know all the answers or are entitled to judge.
It’s hard, believe me, I know. These are the hard things. We’re all prone to making snap judgments with totally inadequate information. But Jesus reminds us that honest and humble prayer is the best. And I’d add that compassion for everyone is the best way to live too. It’s a kind of “there but for the grace of God go I” situation. And we should remember that God’s grace is available to everyone—no matter who we are or where we are on life’s journey. AMEN.
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