Child of God

Isaiah 7:10-16

Matthew 1:18-25

I can still remember some of the things people said to us before our first child, Kira, was born. Everybody had some kind of advice – some good, some not so great. One of the things I remember was you should go out on dates, do adult things, just take advantage of the fact that your time is your own. Because that life is about to end.

This is one of the things you sacrifice when you have children. But it’s only one of the things. Lots of things change when you have children no one ever tells you about. You only find out after the fact. They are definitely more expensive than the tax deduction you got, that’s one thing. The last time I slept through the night was over forty years ago, that’s another. You discover ways to worry and sources of frustration that you never knew before. Maybe it’s a good thing that you don’t know all this in advance.

You make many sacrifices when you have a child – this is what we all find out eventually. And so, to the degree that it is a choice, I find it fascinating that so many people do choose it.

For Mary, who was visited by the angel Gabriel and was told that she would bear a son, it was not clear that she had a choice in the matter. I do wonder about it, though. If Mary had told the angel, “NOPE. I’m not gonna do that”; if Mary had turned and run, screaming in terror; even if Mary had politely said, “Gosh, I’m flattered you would think of me for that, but I’m afraid I have to decline”; I wonder if Gabriel would have gone off in search of another candidate.

It is a possibility that Mary had a choice. But it is a certainty that Joseph did. 

When we are introduced to Joseph, Matthew lets us know that he is a righteous man. He and Mary are betrothed, which was binding. It wasn’t a casual thing to break off an engagement for them. It would have been an arranged marriage, according to the custom of the time, and once the families had consented to the match, it was a legal contract. 

During this period, before the wedding took place, Joseph learned that Mary was pregnant. He knew that he was not the father of the child. This in itself was grounds for legal action.

Joseph had some options. He could bring charges of adultery against Mary. If found guilty, which she certainly would be, Mary could be sentenced to death by stoning – a brutal punishment. But Joseph is a righteous man, Matthew tells us. Joseph has compassion for Mary, and he prefers to be merciful. So Joseph decides to quietly divorce her, which was the obvious merciful option. Mary would still suffer the shame of her condition, but it wouldn’t be so damaging. Of course, Mary’s future options would be closed off. Mary would still pay the price. But Joseph could begin again. For him there is the possibility of finding another bride. 

The law would allow Joseph to just walk away from this unfortunate set of circumstances, unscathed. Because, not only can he renounce the engagement, not only can he bring charges against Mary and see her punished, not only can he begin again with a clean slate, all possibilities still open to him – not only all that, but Joseph can also demand recompense. Financial remuneration. The return of the “bride price,” and whatever resources he had already invested in the marriage. 

This financial consideration was among all the options Joseph had before him. In his decision to make a quiet break with Mary, he had already decided to sacrifice the money. He would not make a big public case of it. But about all the other options he had, Joseph was not willing to make additional sacrifices. He’s done. 

So there he is, settled in his mind. Probably not an easy or happy decision. Joseph is disillusioned. With Mary, with the world and all the lousy things that happen on a regular basis. But Joseph decides he’s done. Checking out. He is decided before he drops off to sleep that night.

But then comes Joseph’s surprise. An angel, maybe the same angel who visited Mary, comes to him. “Do not be afraid, Joseph, to take Mary as your wife.”

“Do not be afraid, Joseph. The child she is carrying is from the Holy Spirit. Mary will bear a son. And you, Joseph, are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” 

And presumably also in his dreams, the words of the prophet Isaiah, “Look, the virgin shall become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel, which means, God is with us.” 

God’s word to Joseph. Matthew’s word to the church: Emmanuel, God with us. 

The word from the angel gave Joseph the courage he needed that night. Joseph would not divorce Mary, he would not walk away from the shame that was upon her, but he would walk with her and help carry that burden. 

He would take this child as his son. He would make all the sacrifices you make in raising a child – and even more. Joseph showed that he was willing to sacrifice his reputation in the world. Because, in the end, what is a reputation worth if it means abandoning the ones who need you? Abandoning the promise – the hope – of the redemption of the world?

Joseph changed his mind that night. He thought he was ready to check out, just pick up his battered ego and walk away. He thought this was a lost cause. Then the angel of the Lord came to him. 

Don’t be afraid, Joseph, to go all in. There will be hard sacrifices, no doubt. But knowing that this child is Emmanuel – that you will have God-with-us living under your roof – doesn’t that make all the difference in the world?

When Joseph said yes, everything in his life changed. And everything in our lives changed. The whole world changed. Emmanuel – God-with-us – brings every one of us together into Joseph’s household, into God’s family. 

Like Joseph, we are occasionally called to change our mind. To make a sacrifice we did not plan on making, to go all in and be a part of the change God is bringing to this world. It will be hard. It just is. But knowing that Emmanuel, God-with-us, lives in our hearts; knowing that there is reason to hold on to hope because of him; doesn’t that make all the difference in the world?

The One We Are Waiting For

Isaiah 35:1-10

Matthew 11:2-11

People often do like a new thing.

Kim and I have recently noticed the presence of a new fast food franchise in our area, which is drawing a lot of attention: Zaxby’s. I’ve never eaten at one, although I have noticed them while traveling. Apparently, they specialize in “chicken fingerz.” I hear they are really good. Every time we have passed the new one in Cambridge we’ve seen a line of cars stretching out on the road. 

That’s just something humans do. When a new place opens up people have to go there and find out what it’s all about. If there is enough buzz, and if it is really good, the energy might sustain itself, and it becomes like the Rise Up drive-through on Riverside Drive.

When we lived in Dayton, Ohio, food trucks were all the rage. A whole culture of food truck connoisseurs loved to talk about their favorites, and one of these was a certain hot dog truck: Zombie Dogz. At food festivals you might see hundreds of people lined up for this one. People would wait two hours in line for a Zombie Dog. And then they would rave about how good it was. It was “amazing” or “to die for.” Best hot dog ever.

Of course, if you have waited in line two hours for a hot dog, what else are you going to say? “It was okay. Not sure it was worth the two hours of my life. But my time isn’t worth a whole lot. So it was okay.”

Who’s going to say that? When we have invested in something, we want to be able to say it was worth it. 

In the big scheme of things, it really isn’t that big a deal if you spend one Saturday afternoon standing in line for a hot dog. If it makes you happy, okay. But what if you became a Zombie Dogz groupie, and you followed the Zombie Dogz truck around to all the food festivals every weekend, and your whole life started to revolve around Zombie Dogz? That would be a big deal. And you might, at some point, have to ask yourself if you have done the right thing, going all-in on Zombie Dogz. 

Sometimes, we have to face the big question about choices we have made: was it really worth it? Was this the right thing to go all in on?

Is this the one we have been waiting for? Or should I keep looking? Keep waiting?

Last week we met John the Baptist at the Jordan River, baptizing and prophesying. He talked about the one who was to come, who would be more powerful than him. He painted an image of a man with a winnowing fork in one hand and an ax in the other, ready to do some damage.

I said then that, although John was right about many things, he seems to have missed the mark about this one. John’s image of a Messiah coming through like a wrecking crew, judging each and every one, as either worthy or unworthy, and clearing out every person who doesn’t make the cut.

This was something John wanted, and perhaps many of the people who came to him for baptism also wanted. To clear away the unwanted ones – the “bad guys” – might mean that Israel could be free again, and peaceful. Clearly, the goal, the strong desire, was for Israel to be freed from their oppression, and John’s hope was for the Messiah to make that happen.

This was the one John was waiting for.

Time passed. John continued his baptizing and prophesying. He continued to get under the wrong people’s skin, looking very much like a threat to the existing order, and eventually King Herod had him arrested and thrown in jail. And as he languished in his prison cell, John had plenty of time to think. 

He began to have some doubts. He wondered if he had made a mistake of some kind. Was Jesus truly the one they had been waiting for, the Messiah? Was he the one who would restore the glory of Israel? 

John had to wonder, because it wasn’t playing out quite like he thought it would. Obviously, because John was sitting in a prison cell, at the mercy of this tyrannical king. 

And Israel still suffered under the iron fist of the empire. 

This was, of course, much bigger, much more consequential, than a choice of hot dog or chicken fingers. This was about life itself.

And for John, there was some urgency in this. How long must Israel wait to be redeemed? How long must he wait in this cell? Is Jesus the one they have been waiting for, or will they need to still watch and wait?

John sends his disciples with a message for Jesus, a simple question: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” But a simple yes or no answer is not forthcoming. Jesus needs them – needs us – to see for ourselves.

“Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, those with a skin disease are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” Do you see this? Jesus is making people whole. He is bringing Shalom.

Jesus points to what he has done, what he is doing, and asks John to make the connection. These are the things Isaiah prophesied. These are the things Mary sang about. Look, he says to John’s disciples. You see it all, don’t you? You know this is good news. Redemption is happening now, in this place and time. 

Everything that Jesus is doing, everything he points John to, each of these sights points beyond itself to the one who made this new wholeness possible.

Is this a hard thing for John to see? Possibly. Even though John is a prophet, a man gifted with a vision of God’s plan for Israel, he is struggling to understand how this man Jesus fits the vision. He is not bringing down the powers that are oppressing the people. He is not, as far as John can see, redeeming the nation of Israel.

Even John cannot quite see how Jesus is the one. Yet. Because John, like so many of us, has some preconceptions about what this redemption should look like. 

Perhaps Jesus does not look like a Redeemer, one who beats the bad guys and kicks them out of town. Jesus doesn’t look like Superman. Jesus actually looks quite ordinary. Quite human. A human with an unusual gift for bringing healing and wholeness, one person at a time. Shalom.

The word Shalom, which we usually translate as “peace” really means something bigger than that. The Roman Empire prioritized peace, but by this they meant total compliance with the rule of law. They mean that any disobedience would be dealt with harshly, violently. The peace of Rome required the oppression of many people. But the peace of God is entirely different. 

Shalom is universal wholeness and flourishing, wellbeing, reconciliation. Shalom – the peace of God – stands in contrast to what the world calls peace. 

And so, if John is to get the answer to his question, he will have to get his head around this new idea. We too, will need to understand this idea that, somehow, still feels like a radical concept. That Jesus is not going punch out the powerful to bring them down. But what he is doing is attending to the lowly to lift them up. And he is showing us the way, too.

He is the one we have been waiting for, and he will lead us on that highway in the wilderness, the Holy Way.

The One Who Is Coming

Isaiah 11:1-10

Matthew 3:1-12

I recently read a snippet from an interview with one of our most famous living Bible scholars, John Dominic Crossan. The topic of the Left Behind mania came up – you remember those books that were so popular in the nineties? They promoted the rapture concept, the notion that believers will one day, unexpectedly get scooped up into heaven, leaving behind a world on the verge of chaos. According to the theory, there follows a cosmic battle between the forces of good and evil, ending with the triumphal return of Jesus to earth. This is the kind of stuff that begs to be made into a movie franchise.

We touched on the concept last week, with our first Sunday of Advent texts focusing on the end of the world. 

Crossan had an interesting take on the rapture mania. He said he thought the obsession about Jesus’ second coming was a result of people being disappointed with his first coming. We have always kind of wished that Jesus had eradicated evil the first time.

And that is what many of those in Israel hoped for too, including John the Baptist. Listen to what he says:

“…the one who is coming after me is more powerful than I ... He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

Scary words. And John is a scary guy. What kind of person dresses in camel’s hair? Who makes a diet out of locusts and wild honey – wild honey! There is nothing domesticated about this man.

He comes out from the wilderness shouting orders: Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near! Prepare the way, make his paths straight! Get ready or get out!

The people swarm to him – they want in on this baptism. They are rightly afraid and will do whatever is necessary to get on the right side. I can imagine angry John standing in the river, waist-deep, as each new candidate for baptism wades into the water toward him, trembling. He grabs ahold of them roughly, pushing them down under the surface as they utter their confessions. 

He was a powerful presence, this John, and he drew a lot of attention. It swelled from the ground up, but eventually the men in positions of power took notice. They start coming down to the river, too, to check this out for themselves.

I can’t say I know what their motivations were. There might have been some authentic desire for this new life John was proclaiming; they might have felt compelled to repent just as the others did. Maybe they were afraid, too. But maybe they just wanted to check out this situation – this guy who rises up out of nowhere, an overnight sensation who might be a threat to their authority in Israel. Maybe they wanted to assess the danger.

Whatever brought them there, John does not assume they have come ready to repent. 

“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” He lets loose with a stream of angry warnings. If the people weren’t afraid before, they definitely are now. Then the big warning:

“His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

John the Baptist is on a mission to prepare the people for some serious housecleaning. And you know what? I imagine that many of them were thinking, “Yeah, it’s about time.”

Things were not great. The people lived in fear of the empire. They suffered poverty as a result of the corruption among the powerful. And the image of a Messiah with a winnowing fork in his hand and fire in his eyes was not unwelcome. Some of them probably wanted someone like John to come along and burn it all down.

Eradicate evil for good. This is what it sounds like John is telling them.

But John, he did have a few things wrong about the one who is coming. 

To be clear, John was right about a lot of things. He was right about the need to repent, which is simply turning toward God. To repent is to turn away from the ways that keep us estranged from God and toward the way that has been prepared for us – out of the wilderness – to reconnect with God. John was right to say that the kingdom of heaven has come near. Jesus was there in their midst, ready to begin his ministry on earth. God came down, love came down, ready to reconnect with all of us. The kingdom was near and is near.

John was right about the urgency. It is always urgent for us to turn away from our crooked, broken ways and find our way back on the path that has been made ready. It is urgent that we all acknowledge that it will not do to rest on the accomplishments of past generations. Just as the Israelites could not simply say, “We have Abraham as our ancestor,” it will not suffice for us to say, “We have this church that some good people before us built.” Complacency will not be enough. 

John was right. And Mary was right. In her song we find in the first chapter of Luke, the Magnificat, she proclaimed how the world was about to turn – filling the hungry with good things, turning the rich away empty. Scattering the proud in their conceit, casting down the mighty from their thrones, lifting up the lowly. 

Just as Isaiah was right. The wolf shall lie down with the lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the calf and the lion shall feed together, and a little child shall lead them.

I know what you are probably thinking. It is hard to believe that these words are true. We look around us and find them unimaginable. How could it be right?

In the language of the church, we are living in the age of “now” and “not yet.” Jesus came to usher in the realm of God’s love and grace. We live with one foot in this world and one foot in that realm. 

And so, it is right for us to heed John’s call to repent. Even though John, himself did not really know what kind of Messiah Jesus would be; even though his images of unquenchable fire miss the mark; even though John is terrifying, he is serving the important purpose of getting our attention. He is getting us ready for the world to change.

And the change he envisions, the change Mary and Isaiah proclaim, is a change that demands our participation. Not to answer violence with violence, but to be a part of changing the world, for good. 

Repent and see that the kingdom of heaven is so very near.

About Time

Romans 13:11-14

Matthew 24:36-44

It’s a bit quirky that the liturgical calendar which starts today with the first Sunday of Advent, usually begins with some thoughts about the end of things. The end of time, specifically. The end of the world as we know it.

There is a human desire to know in advance when that end will come. I think it must be because of some completely irrational idea that we might avoid it. If you know it’s coming maybe you can duck? But, as Jesus says, no one knows.

Still, people try to figure it out, as if it were nothing more than a tough riddle. And so it seems like there is always somebody somewhere offering up a prediction about exactly when the world will end. In fact, just this fall there was a prediction that caught a lot of traction.

A man from South Africa announced that he had been given a dream that told him the rapture would come September 23 and 24 of 2025. For anyone who is unaware, the idea of the rapture is that suddenly, in an unexpected and unannounced moment, the faithful will be scooped up out of this world. This notion, by the way, is a distortion of biblical beliefs. There is a brief passage in one of Paul’s letters to the Thessalonians that describes how Paul thinks the end times will affect both the living and the dead. And there is this passage from Matthew, although in this case, Jesus might actually be saying that it is the unfaithful ones who could be swept up. 

This South African man explained that the rapture was all about the 2026 Soccer World Cup, the connection being that with all the chaos that results from the rapture, the World Cup would end up being cancelled. I don’t know why that’s important. Perhaps Jesus doesn’t like soccer, but I find that hard to believe.

So, in preparation for this rapture, lots of people offered free advice. Don’t make any plans for the weekend, they said. Leave your phone unlocked, and maybe your house too, just in case someone you actually care about is left behind.

Just recently I saw a list of things to do while waiting for the world to end – compiled by someone who was thinking it might be coming soon. It included things like 1) forget about that plan to refinish your floors; 2) scratch War and Peace off your list of books to read; 3) don’t worry about your Christmas card list; and 4) do you really need to make your insurance payment? Just relax. What’s the point of doing anything?

Not exactly a faith-based perspective, though. I think of the story about Martin Luther being asked the question of what he would do if he knew the world were to end tomorrow. His answer was, “I would plant an apple tree.” 

Back when I was a campus minister there were a couple of these end-of-the-world predictions that people grew obsessed with. There was Harold Camping, the man who used some kind of creative math to calculate when the end would come. And when the end failed to come, he checked his work and realized he had made a mistake. Then there was this notion about the ancient Mayan calendar that caught on like wildfire. It seems that someone suddenly noticed that this calendar which had been around for thousands of years, ended in 2012. And they concluded that the Mayans must have known something. There were college students I worked with who were pretty disturbed by that. Afraid that it might be true. 

When I talked with these young adults about the end, I could see they were afraid. And it was not because they lacked faith. It was more about a kind of disorientation of their lives. They said to me that everything they were doing was focused on the future. Whether it was the term papers they were scrambling to get finished or the career they were hoping to find at the end of their college years. The student debt they would begin paying off when they got that good job. It was all somewhere out there.

But when I asked them what they would do if they knew the end was near, they struggled to reorient themselves to this present-moment focus. 

What would you do if the end of the world was coming tomorrow? Eat more pie? Binge-watch all the TV shows on your list? Sleep late? What would you do?

There are lots of things we do that are unimportant – maybe because we have too much time or too little focus. Looking at the end, however, does have the effect of helping us to see what is most important. It gives us a sense of urgency. And it is not a bad idea to give it some thought: what would you do differently if you approached life this way? What would you change if you had that kind of focus?

If you suddenly realize that this moment counts, that every moment you are living counts, this might be the best thing that could happen to you – what would change?

It seems like when you are facing the possibility of the end, there are two roads you can take: despair or hope. Despair if you feel that there are too many things you haven’t yet done and too little knowledge about whatever comes next. Despair if you feel unprepared, like you forgot to study for the test. Despair if you believe that your life has been a failure and only judgment awaits you. Despair is deadly.

But the way of faith is different: it is about hope, and this hope is available to anybody.

Because Christian hope is not based on the foundation of whatever our life circumstances are. Our hope is based on the possibilities of God even in the worst imaginable life circumstances. And, while these are not the worst of times, there are some things that give me pause.

It is apparent to me that, even though most of our lives are pleasant enough, we are living in very anxious times. It is in the news and media we consume every day. It is in a certain uneasy feeling we have about the economy we are living in. It is seemingly in the water we drink and the air we breathe. We are living in anxious times, and it is hard for us to navigate through the murk of anxiety to locate hope. 

Yet there is a way. And it is urgent that we find our way to hope.

The German theologian Jurgen Moltmann, who died last year, wrote frequently about Christian hope throughout his career. But in the last few years, he wrote of his concern about nurturing “a culture of life that is stronger than the terror of death, a love for life that overcomes the destructive forces in our world today, and a confidence in the future that overcomes doubt and fatalism.”  

The way to nurture that culture of life is the way of hope. And the way to hope is through community.

Community is something we make, of course. We find our clusters of like-minded people, kindred spirits, we might say, with whom we enjoy conversation and meals and other things. But community is also bigger than these circles we select. Community is where God places us and includes all the other people God places there.

In our community, like all communities, there are many people who lack some of the basic essentials for life. We are aware of this. This congregation is pretty conscious of the needs surrounding us, and responsive to them. We understand and embrace the ancient Christian values of mercy and compassion that Jesus taught us. 

But something that is a little harder, a bit more of a stretch, is to embrace the value of community. The belief that whatever our circumstances we are all in it together. 

The notion that the rich and the poor live in the same world. 

When we lose sight of that, there is a deathly loss of connection, of community, and no matter how much money you have, a poverty of community will bring despair. I think this is the deep cause of our prevailing anxiety. 

Quite simply, every human being needs to feel that someone cares. This goes deeper than material needs. It is beyond providing food, paying utility bills, or having a bed to sleep in. The human connection is the most essential of basic needs.

If you knew that the world would end tomorrow, I think the thing to do would be to make human connection – with anyone. Everyone. To look at a stranger and see another human being. To speak to someone with kindness, even if that person is wasting your time. Even to see someone who has committed a dreadful crime, like the man who shot two National Guard members last week, but still know that this person is not an animal, or whatever word you might say in anger, but a person made in the image of God – just like us.

This is something that would be worth doing if you knew that the world would end tomorrow. And, since we don’t know when the world will end, but it could end at any time, then this is something worth doing every day.

A Different Kind of King

 

Luke 23:33-43

There are moments when you look around and see some very clear signs that all is not right with the world. Actually, at these moments, that might be an appalling understatement. One might rather say that all is messed up with the world. At times.

In our Bible study we saw it this past week as we journeyed through the book of Judges, watching how Israel fell further and further into madness and darkness – maybe hurtling back toward that condition where Genesis begins, when God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep –

Before the time when God began creating order out of chaos.

We see it again in this story from Luke’s gospel.

We have heard this story so many times, haven’t we? Every year during the season of Lent we travel down this road with Jesus, descending with Israel into such unspeakable harm, such unreasonable actions. In fact, we have heard it so many times we might have become numb to it. We might have one eye on the journey up to Golgotha and the other eye on the day of resurrection we know is coming soon – with colorful dyed eggs, chocolate in baskets, a good ham dinner and pleasant company.

It's an odd story, really, for this time of the year. I listened to a colleague object to it being in the lectionary right now. He said, “We covered that ground already this year, didn’t we? I see no reason to go back and revisit it.”

Is there any good reason to revisit it?

It’s a story of a world gone mad. An innocent man is arrested, beaten, tried, and convicted to death. He is about to be executed in a wildly cruel manner – for what? And while this innocent man bears the suffering in his body, he is relentlessly mocked, ridiculed – even by the people he loved, it would seem. I suppose they took some pleasure in having power over someone – these people who had very little power over anything in their lives. But to abuse this man? Someone who did no harm? For what reason?

This is a world in disarray, a people in deep pain who really, truly, do not understand what they are doing.

And Jesus recognizes this.

“Father, forgive them,” he says from the cross, “For they do not know what they are doing.” And here we see, shining bright as the sun, a different kind of king. Here we see a kind of power that is rare on earth.

What we know about kings, although not much, is nothing like this. When we think of kings, or queens, we think of someone who covers themselves with gold and precious gems. Someone always accompanied by an entourage of helpers, scrapers, fawners, sycophantic flatterers because they know what they need to do to stay in the king’s good graces. We think of pomp and circumstance, red carpets, and thrones, because kings and queens must be pampered. Coddled. They need to be treated like royalty.

When we think of kings, we don’t think of a crown made of thorns. We don’t think of a man stripped and whipped and nailed up on a high cross for all to jeer and mock.

We don’t think of a person who speaks words of forgiveness from a place of persecution. We don’t imagine a human being who chooses to use his divinely appointed power in this way.

This last Sunday in the church year is known as Christ the King, or Reign of Christ, Sunday. It is a celebration that was established only one hundred years ago, in 1925, at a time when fascism was rising in Europe and the world was growing increasingly secular in our values and habits. It was an attempt to set a yearly reminder to the church that our allegiance is to our spiritual ruler in heaven – not to any earthly supremacy. God is our king. Christ is our king.

As a pastor, I have often approached this day with ambivalence. I have had a hard time finding meaning in it, understanding why it matters – to us.

We, in the United States, fought a revolution to be rid of kings, and the idea of kings makes us instinctively bristle – so there’s that. But also, I often think, how is this different from any other Sunday in the church year? As Christians we worship and serve Christ. We confess our belief that it is only through Christ that we are forgiven and redeemed. We pray the words, “Thy kingdom come on earth, as it is in heaven.”

I couldn’t quite figure out how I was supposed to feel on this day, what I was supposed to do on this day, that wouldn’t be like any other day. Does it matter that we have a day called Christ the King?

But I am thinking this year, on the 100^th anniversary of Christ the King’s inception, that it matters.

It matters to us because whoever we give our allegiance to is setting the tone by which we will live. Whoever we regard as our authority – in heaven or on earth – is determining what is valued, who is valued, and how we will live with one another.

And I am thinking that in a world where we can look around us and see how power and authority are exercised in ways that would make Jesus weep; where men and women in seats of power may choose to openly flaunt their corruption because their experience tells them there will not be any adverse consequences for it; where powerful people perform cruelty simply because they can, and they really don’t need to make the effort to be kind – I am thinking that a world like this is infected by darkness and chaos.

And if the ones in authority bear this kind of darkness, it becomes contagious. It affects us all.

The celebration of Christ the King – perhaps this works as a gentle reminder that the reign of God invites us all to live in a different kind of kingdom, where the questions of who is valued, what is valued, are answered quite differently.

And if we choose to live in this kingdom, where Christ is King, we will not jeer and mock immigrants who are in desperate situations. We will not feel righteous about pulling humanitarian aid to struggling nations or feel satisfied when food benefits are taken away from poor children in our own nation. Because if we live in the kingdom where Christ is King, we know that these little ones, the vulnerable ones, matter.

In this world there is always a danger that we will fall into that deep darkness, where we might even grow deliriously giddy about someone else’s pain, their “comeuppance,” we might have it. And we might not even understand what we are doing.

But then, may we remember that Christ is our King, and we live in a kingdom where there is a different kind of rule, a different way of being. We live under a ruler who will turn to the least ones, even the worst ones, and say, “Come and be with me – in paradise – today.”

Photo: Churchart.com

Things That Last

Isaiah 65:17-25

Luke 21:5-19

Recently, a friend described to me how it felt for him when he saw his childhood church building on fire. He was well into adulthood, married, and ordained to ministry. He no longer attended the church he grew up in. He was pastoring a different church in another city. But when he heard that the old church was on fire it shook him to his core. 

He said to his wife that he wanted to be there. He knew he couldn’t do anything, but he just wanted to bear witness. So he got behind the wheel, his wife in the passenger seat, and he began driving back to his old hometown. As they got close, he could see the flames as they overtook the old building. He told me it was so shocking he almost wrecked the car.

He said, “I knew that it was only a building. I knew that it is we, the community of faith, that are the church. But even knowing that, the feeling was overwhelming.” 

Because places are important to us.

I imagine that Israel felt that way, and even more, every time they endured another hardship.

The Old Testament book of Isaiah tells us of the trials that Israel endured during the 6th century BCE when they were invaded by a powerful enemy – the Babylonians. The city of Jerusalem was protected by strong walls, but the Babylonian army was big enough, powerful enough to wear them down.

They laid siege to the city, surrounded it, trapping the Israelites inside. No one could go in or out. The enemy waited. The people inside the walls went through all their food stores, and the Babylonians waited. They waited until the people inside were starving, and then they waited a little more. 

Finally, they attacked. They trampled, they killed, they set fires. They destroyed the holy temple. The temple that Israel had built with the idea that it would last forever. But now it was no more. It did not last. 

The Babylonians took the Israelites as prisoners and marched them off to Babylon. Which is where they stayed for around 50 years. 

But empires do not last forever; they come and go, and eventually the Babylonian empire was weakened and destroyed by a more powerful ruler. This ruler had a different plan for dealing with its captive Israel.

The plan was to let them go back home. To make them rebuild what had been torn down. And so they did, some of them, 50 years after they have been forced out, return to Israel. They are sent back to rebuild Jerusalem.

Some decades passed, little progress was made, and the people’s resolve was waning. They fought amongst themselves, and they turned away from God. The rebuilding they had accomplished seemed so much less than what they remembered from the glory days of Jerusalem, before the Babylonian invasion. What they had now was a mere shadow of its former self.

And in the midst of this the prophet offers them hope. Isaiah speaks to them of how God will set to right all things, and it will happen imminently. The deliverance of Israel and judgment on their oppressors. Things so glorious … well some might say the prophet went a bit too far, because these things he speaks of, they defy credibility.

He is speaking to them about things that last. And after all they have been through, that might have been hard to imagine. But he gave them hope – hope enough to carry on. 

The temple was rebuilt. The religious life of Israel was restored.

Several hundred years later, there was another new oppressor – the Roman Empire. This oppressor had taken an interest in the temple. King Herod was keen on rebuilding and refurbishing the temple for his own glory, rather than for the glory of God. But it was indeed beautiful, and the people of Israel appreciated it. Worship, study, sacrifices of all kinds still took place there; it was still the center of religious life for the people of Israel. 

But they clearly had a sense now of how things could fall apart. And so they handled their relationship with Rome delicately – treading carefully with the oppressor, so that they might not interfere with their rituals and traditions. The priests, the scribes, the Pharisees and Sadducees went to tremendous pains to maintain a peaceable relationship with the Romans. If they manage it right, they thought, this accommodation, this truce, it might just last forever.

And then Jesus tells them it will not. This temple, it will not last forever either. The day will come when not one stone will be left upon another. Once again, it will be left in ruins. All thrown down.

But a people who have lost so much, so many times, are alarmed when they hear this. No, they think. This cannot be. “When will this happen?” they ask him, “How will this happen? What will be the sign?” Can they prepare for it? Can they possibly avoid the calamity this time?

When Luke was writing, these things had already happened. Those things that Jesus described – the destruction of the temple – were already in the past. This beautiful temple, like the ones before it, did not last.

As many times as we build glorious monuments and as many times as we see them go down – in flames or in dust – we persist in imagining that they should last forever.  But they don’t. I have seen churches die – not from enemy attacks, though. What happens now is that people drift away. Members grow older and eventually die. Sometimes conflict takes over and newcomers shy away. And one day there are two or three people left, and they begin to wonder if this is the end.

We may find it unbearable, the idea that a church could die, because we believe in eternal things. But sometimes we confuse our forms – the things we make – with God’s everlasting promises. 

Nothing made by human hands lasts, no matter how good it is. Temples are destroyed, our church buildings might be emptied, sold, and even torn down to make room for something else. 

Nothing of human creation lasts forever. Our steeples and bells, our stained-glass windows. Our pews. Someday they will be gone. 

None of our human ideas or preferences last forever. Our orders of worship, our musical styles, the things about which we say “we have always done it that way” – even these things will fade.

The church of Jesus Christ is not immune to loss and hardship. Jesus warned his disciples that it would not be easy, and if anyone tried to tell them otherwise? Well, they had better run away from those soothsayers and false prophets. They best not be led astray by anyone who comes along with such false promises.  

But do not be terrified, he says to us. All things on earth will come to an end, but this will not be the end because God’s promises are everlasting.

Not a hair on your head will perish, he says. By your endurance you will gain your souls, he says. For God is making a new heaven and a new earth, and it will be filled with things of life and light and joy.

We see things end … we sometimes are called upon to rebuild, to make something new, like Israel did after their Babylonian exile. Like Jesus’ disciples did after his crucifixion and the empty tomb. Things come and they go, and the Presbyterian Church USA will not last forever, either, I assure you. But that is alright, because God’s promises are everlasting.

We are at a place right now where decisions must be made. Session has shared with this congregation some ideas that are still in development about changes that can be made to the chancel when we receive our new organ console. We finally have architectural drawings, which are a vast improvement over the crude graph paper models we saw a couple months ago. 

We must make some decisions – carefully, thoughtfully, and faithfully. And the honest truth is, we can take as much time as we need to take with this. To act with neither undue haste nor undue delay is the good Presbyterian way. I know that some would like to make the changes yesterday, and some would like to make them never, and some of you really don’t care what the chancel looks like – and that is fine.

I would only ask that, if you do care about this matter, you show a willingness to be a part of a conversation. Share your wisdom and keep your mind open to all the possibilities. Do you believe that God is doing a new thing, just as God has done throughout all history? 

I know that change is hard, all kinds of change, but especially change we don’t want. Perhaps for this reason we have often treated church as a refuge from change. But how could that be so when we know that change is how God ushers us through life?

Whenever we confront change there is risk and also benefit.

The risk when we confront challenges like this is the potential harm to the body of Christ. We can choose to lower the chancel floor, expand it, and any number of other things, and it will not be harmed. Or we can choose to do nothing except make the necessary changes to the floor for the new organ console, and it will not be harmed. Perhaps some of us will be disappointed, whichever way we go.

But there is benefit also. There is actually a hidden gift in times like this. When we find ourselves shocked by change that feels like loss, when we are afraid of what might come or angry about decisions others make, we are given an opportunity to practice faithful disagreement. 

Faithful disagreement is not something we often see. In our culture and in our politics, we see mudslinging and rumor-mongering. On social media we see a style of disagreement that says, “If you don’t agree with me then I don’t want you in my life anymore. Bye!” I see an approach to everything as a zero-sum game, as in, if you win that means I lose. And it saddens me deeply to know that all these things do not stop outside the church door. These unfortunate styles of disagreeing seep into the church too. 

But I see this current disagreement as an opening for us to take a better path, a faithful way. My invitation to you today is to take that path together, because this is what we are called to do in a time such as this. Really, if we paid attention to what Jesus said to his disciples we would surely know that church is no place for complacency. 

The question for reflection I offer you this week is this: If your home or your church home were on fire, what would you prioritize getting to safety. I very much hope that every one of us would say the people. That our priority would be the people.

We are near the end of a season.  Our church year is about to finish. In two Sundays, a new Advent will dawn, with all its anticipation and hope. The vision of the prophet, the promises of Jesus, these are our hope for all eternity.

What are the things that last? As Jesus said, “As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.” As Isaiah says, the former things will not be remembered or come to mind.”

Yet, be glad and rejoice forever in what God is creating, for God is always doing something new. 

We Have Some Questions

Job 19:23-27

Luke 20:27-38

I just read a book called The Brief History of the Dead. It takes place in a city that is very much like cities we know. It has cafes and libraries and shops and parks and apartment buildings. There are taxis and delivery trucks, people in cars, people on bikes and skateboards. The city is full of people, all kinds of people doing all kinds of things that people do. 

New people are arriving all the time, this is how it is in a big city. Everyone has a story to tell about how they got there – every journey different from the others. But one thing they have in common is that they are all surprised to find themselves there. They are all from somewhere else. And when they arrive, each one has to begin their life again in this new place. Some of them find a new opportunity to do the work they have always done, others take this chance to try the one thing they always wanted to do but never had the chance before. 

Sometimes people leave the city, but no one knows where they go. They’re just gone one day. But even with the departures, the city seems to keep growing, sprawling out farther in every direction with new apartments, new businesses, new roads.

It’s a city like any other big city. All kinds of people – young and old, from every culture in the world – all just living their lives, forming community. Looking for meaning, as we all do. They are much like us, really. The only thing that makes them different is they no longer have a beating heart. Their hearts are perfectly still.

This is a city of the dead, and none of them are sure why they are here. Or what’s going on. Or if there is anything beyond this.

They figure out pretty quickly that it’s not heaven, because there are still irritating garbage trucks with their beep-beep-beep and their grinding gears waking them too early in the morning. There are still unpleasant odors from garbage that sits out too long. They still encounter rude and nasty people on occasion. Surely there would be none of these kinds of annoyances in heaven. 

But they know that it’s not hell either, because there are bakeries with incredibly good croissants and dogwood trees that blossom in the spring. By process of elimination, they come to the conclusion that this is someplace they’ve never heard about before, someplace they never knew existed.

Someplace between heaven and hell, between life and nothingness.

The people in this city have questions, not surprisingly. Every time a newcomer arrives, they get peppered with questions from people wanting some news from the world they left behind. Do you know my sister? My brother? I’d like to know what happened to them. What’s going on with the wars? Who is fighting who these days? Are there any new sicknesses? Epidemics? Pandemics? What’s it like back there?

They have many questions. In that way, also, they are much like us and people of all times and places.

In both our scripture readings today, human questions live loudly. 

In the gospel story we have the Sadducees. 

If you’re not clear about who the Sadducees were, it’s because we don’t talk about them nearly as much as the Pharisees. But one thing we know about them, because Luke tells us so right here, is that they do not believe in a resurrection. Life after death.

The resurrection was one thing the Pharisees and the Sadducees disagreed on, but there were other things. The Sadducees were the originalists of the time. They insisted that the written law – that is, the collection of laws written in the Torah – is the only law. Nothing could be taken from it or added to it. And it must be interpreted literally. 

The Pharisees, on the other hand, seemed to regard the law as something like a living thing, that needed to be continually examined and reinterpreted. But for the Sadducees, it was carved in stone. Literally and figuratively.

So on this particular day Luke writes about in chapter 20, the Sadducees approached Jesus about the vexing question of marriage in the so-called hereafter. Assuming that there is a hereafter. They come at him with a complex hypothetical that reminds me of a word problem in a math textbook. 

Their question is based on the written law of Moses, of course. If a man dies leaving his wife childless, his brother is obligated to take his deceased brother’s widow as his wife so she may have children. But if he also dies, still leaving her childless, then the next brother must marry her. And so it goes, as long as there be brothers to marry, as long as she remains childless. You’ve heard of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers? This is the Bible version: One Bride for Seven Brothers.

The point of their question, I suppose, is to prove to Jesus that the idea of life after death just didn’t make sense. Because they couldn’t work out the details. This was a math problem with no solution. 

Another reason for this particular question is also worth noting: this law existed because of the importance of carrying on the family line through the generations. A worse fate for a man of Israel would be hard to imagine than to die childless, with no one to carry his name. And, of course, this was particularly important for the Sadducees, who believed that this was the only form of eternal life there could possibly be. To have children who would bear children, and on down the line, was the way one would live on after their death.

This is the searching need behind the Sadducees’ question – legacy. And among the many causes for Job’s distress, this was one of them. In the story of Job, this man lost everything that he had – his livestock, his home, his health, and his children. He lost his present and his future. And, therefore, his past will be lost because there will be no one to carry his memory forward. 

The premise of the story of Job is a flimsy thing, but the point of the story is how we human beings understand suffering. How we respond to loss.

Job responds with questions. He demands some answers.

Job had been raised to believe that if he lived a careful and righteous life, he would reap the rewards; that good fortune follows goodness, and bad fortune befalls the wicked. Job knows quite well that he has not been wicked, because he is a careful, reflective man. He has been obedient in the law, scrupulous in his piety, and up to now, enjoyed all the blessings he had accrued. He has done nothing to deserve this ill fortune, so now he is searching for the complaint department.

His friends are more than glad to step right up. They have nothing more interesting, more urgent, to do. They will pull up a stool, listen to all his complaints and then cheerfully tell him that, in spite of what he thinks to be true, it is obvious: all this harm has come to him solely because of his own transgressions. They don’t know what those transgressions were – they haven’t the slightest idea – but they know that, as sure as night follows day, punishment follows sin. And it’s as clear as anything that Job is being punished – for something.

But Job simply won’t accept that answer; he can’t make that square peg fit into the round hole. He needs new answers. His friends might be full of theological knowledge, but their answers simply don’t ring true. Job knows he did not deserve to suffer so greatly. He knows it in his bones. Job is still searching for answers. 

In the story about that strange city of the dead, the people are also searching for answers. They wonder a lot about the why of it all. Why are they here in this place, together? Why do people sometimes just disappear? And why do they sometimes hear that rhythmic, beating that sounds so much like a heartbeat? The theory that gains the most traction is this: each one of them is living in someone’s memory. That there is at least one human still alive who remembers them, and as long as that person lives, they will not be completely dead. 

I think the writer of this story was perhaps longing for the same thing the Sadducees were longing for, and the same thing that Job was longing for. The same thing that so many of us long for – to have a legacy here on earth. To somehow live on in the only reality we are certain about.

But Jesus suggests we shift our attention elsewhere. Jesus offers an alternative.

His answer to the questioning Sadducees who are so skeptical of the concept of eternal life, is this: Our God is a God not of the dead but of the living. To God, all of the ones we remember are alive. 

Life eternal is in God’s eternal memory and it is offered right here and right now. It will go on, beyond this world, into a realm we are yet to discover. But let us not forget that Jesus, the incarnation of our God, brings eternal life to us, right where we are.

Jesus would like to steer the Sadducees away from their preoccupation with this word problem they have concocted to win their argument. I think he would like to steer them toward more worthy questions. Like, why are we here, now? There are actually many ways we can live to increase love in the world, to walk the path that Jesus laid for us, to walk toward other people, to make caring connections and make more love. This is what the realm of God is all about, and if we seek to enjoy life eternally, in the hereafter, perhaps it would be good to begin allowing ourselves to be shaped into this form right here, right now. Jesus came to bring eternal life, and he didn’t say we needed to wait until we die.

We have a lot of questions. So many questions for which there are no earthly answers. Why do we suffer? Where do we go after we die? Will it be a direct flight, or will we have to make connections along the way? I don’t have the answers for any of these questions.

But here is a better question: What is eternal life? Look at Jesus and you will see. Listen to Jesus and you will know. And here is another question: When does eternal life begin? And the answer: It begins with Jesus; it is right here, right now – because this is where Jesus is – and to infinity and beyond.

The Blessing and the Woe

Luke 6:20-31

There is a story called Ordinary Grace, written by William Kent Krueger. Some of you may recognize the title, because we read it in our monthly book discussion group several years ago. The story is told from the point of view of a man named Frank looking back on one particular summer in his childhood. It was 1961 in a small town in Minnesota. He was 13 years old, his brother Jake was 9. And in that summer, they confronted death for the first time.

It wasn’t as though they knew nothing of death, actually. Their father was a minister, and they had been to plenty of viewings and funerals in their childhood already. But this summer was different. There were four deaths this summer for these young boys: lives taken by tragic accident, by violence, by unknown causes. Four deaths they met at close proximity. All four, lives taken too soon.

And throughout the story there is the question of faith – and grace. How does faith carry us through times of loss? How does God’s grace bless us in such times?

The experience of loss is one of the inevitable elements of human life. No matter who you are. No matter how much your life might be characterized by blessing, no matter how much it might be characterized by woe. 

No matter who you are, you will know loss.

The experience of pain is something that comes to all of us – physical, spiritual, emotional. We will all, at some time, have the need for relief, for healing, for comfort.

Here is a dimension where life is leveled out. You know it when you go to a hospital. The rich, the poor, the young and the old. No one is exempt. There isn’t necessarily a hierarchy for suffering. We all share it in common.

And this was the make-up of the crowd that gathered around Jesus that day Luke writes about in chapter 6. There was a great multitude of people who came to Jesus – to hear him, to be healed by him, to be rid of the unclean spirits that troubled them. So he came down to a level place to be amidst them – all of them. The blessed and the woeful.

The weeping and the laughing, the hated and the admired, the rich and the poor, the full and the hungry. Everyone who had need were there. They were all represented in the crowd that day.

They have to be there. Because Jesus is speaking to all of them.

I think perhaps when we read the list of blessings and woes in these verses we try to locate ourselves in them, and the people we know. Who am I? Am I one of the poor who can look forward to seeing the kingdom of God, or am I one of the rich who has already received my consolation? Am I one of the hungry who will, someday, be filled, or am I one of the full who will be hungry? The crying or the laughing? The reviled or the respected? 

And I have to say, in these forced-choice questions I don’t know if any of them are all that appealing. You know? 

Would you like your reward now or later? Yes, please. Thank you.

But perhaps the reality of this scene is that you can’t sort the people into these groups – the blessed on the right, the woeful on the left. Because they are all together there in their need, their urgent need for Jesus. 

Picture this scene. A great multitude gathered on a level place, a plain. All of them after the same thing, all of them pressing against one another. There is no way of sorting them into categories, they are all one – one mass of humanity. And Jesus steps down into the middle of it. To be among the blessed and the woeful.

All of them, no matter how blessed are how woeful they feel, need something. Comfort, healing, wholeness, peace.

Perhaps Jesus wasn’t really contrasting two categories of people. Perhaps he was speaking to the truths that co-exist in every human life. Poverty and riches, tears and laughter, fullness and hunger, fellowship and loneliness.

In Ordinary Grace Frank looks back on that summer of 1961 from the vantage point of his years. In the beginning he tells us that, even though you might think that he would look back on that summer as tragedy, this was not the case. Yes, it was tragic in some ways. But there were also blessings, there were lessons, there were miracles.

The story he tells includes the stories of the deaths, but also the stories of love and unfolding glories; the stories of small triumphs, like when Frank gets the better of the town bully – but then also the fear of how the bully might get his vengeance. The story leaves sparks of light throughout, giving the boys glimpses of goodness where they had previously only seen ugliness; of weakness where they had only seen strength; of vulnerability where they had only seen toughness. All falling on Frank and Jake like little drops of grace. 

It is a story of growing up to learn that the world doesn’t allow the sorting of lives into categories of the blessed and the woeful, for each life is touched by both blessing and woe. And the miracle is that in the sorrows we sometimes even receive some blessing.

At the end of the story we catch up with Frank as a mature man, as he describes the Memorial Day ritual he, Jake, and their father carry out each year. They all gather at the cemetery in that small town where they lived in the summer of 1961. They carry with them lavish amounts of flowers, for all the graves they will decorate – a multitude of lives they will remember. The dearly beloved, those whom they were close to; the man whose name they didn’t even know – an itinerant whose body was found near the river where the boys liked to play; the ones whom they might have felt some responsibility for; and the town bully – the one who tormented them throughout their childhood, about whom they discovered only at his death just how alone he was in his life.

We are all, every one of us, among the blessed and the woeful. As the writer of Ecclesiastes says, there is a time for every purpose under heaven – a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance. We will all walk through all these things, and we are all in this together.

There is no better place to discover this than in church, where we gather together to celebrate our joys and hold one another up in our grief. We share tears and we help each other see the glimpses of blessing to be found everywhere. We sing and laugh together – and sometimes even dance – all of this in some melding together of delight and wistfulness.

We are all together in this, and Jesus is right here with us too. On that day when a great multitude clamored to reach him, he stepped down onto the plain to be right in there with them. 

He is always right here with us too.

Four Prayers that Don’t Work, Part 4: The Prayer of Comparison

Luke 18:9-14     

It occurred to me this week that we are living in an age of self-service. When I go to the grocery store I usually head to the self-check line where I scan and bag my own groceries, pay my bill, and then I tell myself, “Thank you for shopping at Acme! Have a good day.”

When I pay my bills I don’t receive a letter in the mail, with a return envelope. I keep a note on my calendar to remember when the bill is due, then I go onto the company’s website, login, and submit my payment electronically. I go to the ATM machine to make deposits and to withdraw cash. And the list goes on.

And so, in that spirit, it occurred to me that this is a pretty straightforward parable we have today. So obvious that I imagine you can interpret it yourself. Let this be a self-service sermon.

Because it is obvious that the parable is demonstrating for us here that the arrogance of the Pharisee is both distasteful and wrong. His prayer is little more than a pat on his own back. “Thank you, God, for making me a great guy. Amen.”

It’s an embarrassment to all of us who believe in prayer.

Then on the other side, we have the tax collector who hangs his head and cries out to God, “Have mercy on me, for I am a sinner.” He humbly confesses his sinfulness, as one should.

You don’t even need me to say it: Be more like the tax collector and less like the Pharisee. It’s a good message, important message. And if I left you to it, I am sure you could gather into small groups and have some very fruitful discussions about the matter. On reflection, you might be able to recall times you have been a bit like that Pharisee when you probably should have been more like the tax collector in your prayers. You could find encouragement to be more forthright in confessing your sins to God, knowing that you will be forgiven. Thanks be to God.

This sermon delivers itself, doesn’t it? I could end it right there.

But since there is time, I'll mention a couple of things that may be worth considering.

The Pharisee does seem self-satisfied. But that is because he is doing all the things he knows he is supposed to be doing. According to the Jewish understanding of righteousness, he is blameless – and then some. He is expected to fast once a week, but he fasts twice a week. The law requires him to tithe on his harvest, but he is tithing on all his income. This man is doing what is required of him. He may be doing above and beyond what is required of him.

What I can tell you about Pharisees, from what I have read, is that they were extremely concerned about righteousness before God, and the law of God was the means by which it would be measured. So, therefore, it was better to set a higher standard. Don’t just do the minimum. Do more than what is demanded.

This Pharisee was in a really good mood on this day, maybe because he had a really good week – a week in which he succeeded in doing all the good he had set out to do. He gives himself a high five. And he says, “Thank you God for allowing me to do it. Thank you for not making me like this tax collector.”

This tax collector – we know that he was a despised man among his people. He was working for the occupation forces, enriching them. Furthermore, he was enriching himself off the backs of his brothers and sisters. He was dealing in dirty money – unrighteous mammon, as the King James Bible would say.

Yet this tax collector had as much right to be in the temple praying as the Pharisee did. He also observed the law of God. He is truly sorry for his sins, as we can see from his prayer begging for mercy.

But, still, it would be fair to ask the tax collector: And now what? Now that you have acknowledged your sin, what will you do next?

To us, perhaps, the Pharisee looks like a hypocrite. He spouts off pious language all day long, but then in his prayer he makes snide remarks about tax collectors and others he deems lesser creatures. For shame!

And equally, to us, the tax collector looks honestly repentant. Look at his posture, listen to his words. He knows he is nothing more than a worm. God bless him for his humility!

But do we forget that the Pharisee is doing his best every day to live a life obedient to God’s law? And do we ever wonder whether there is any substance behind the tax collector’s prayer of confession? Is it only words, or is there more?

There is, perhaps, much more than first met the eye with this parable.

Jesus told this parable to “some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.” That might have included some Pharisees. It probably included some Pharisees. But it wasn’t exclusive to Pharisees.

The truth of the matter is we are all, every one of us, susceptible to that sin of trusting in ourselves. We are all guilty, as well, of regarding others with contempt.

And it is just as true that we are all susceptible to the sin of lamenting our shortcomings without ever intending to change a thing.

The message of this parable is about judging others. It’s about the sin of comparing ourselves to others for the purpose of somehow inflating our self-image, our self-confidence. We see it clearly in the Pharisee’s prayer. Of the Four Prayers that Don’t Work, as I have called this series, the prayer of comparison is definitely one of them. Comparing ourselves to others will not serve us or God or the world in any way at all. It will only serve our egos.

And this also means that we must guard against praying the prayer, “Thank you God that I am not like this Pharisee!” Because we are. Let’s not treat the Pharisee like the sinner and the tax collector like the saint. Both are sinners. Both are subject to the same law. And both are beloved children of God.

Let us not stand in judgment of either man – the Pharisee or the tax collector. Because in truth we are both of these men. We, too, judge others we think we are superior to. And we, too, often confess our sins and then utterly neglect to practice real repentance.

These two men, the Pharisee and the tax collector, are offering different kinds of prayers:

The Pharisee prays a prayer of thanksgiving – thanks for all that he has been given that allows him to live in obedience to God’s law. We, too, should offer prayers of thanksgiving for every single way God has enabled us to live our lives well.

The tax collector prays a prayer of confession for his sinfulness. Yes, we should also offer such prayers each day for all that is in us that falls short of the glory of God.

In the end, here is what we can say: We are sinners. We are forgiven. We do not need to measure ourselves against anyone else. We only need to surrender to God’s grace, which may then grow in us and through us more than we could ever imagine or hope for. Because nothing compares to the grace of God.