It's a Trap!

 It would seem that today's Gospel is rather straightforward.

Don't be a self-righteous religious person.

That could be the whole sermon.

(Maybe some of you want that to be the whole sermon.)

However, as I have lived with this text this past week I see it is as more complicated.

Jesus' story is a trap.

It is a trap because no matter what position you take you end up being a self-righteous religious person.

 

Many texts in the Bible contain both law and Gospel in them.

They speak to us about something that we should do but don't.

And they tell us about the forgiveness and mercy of God.

Today's Gospel is such a text.

Depending on who you identify with you get both law and Gospel.

 

Let me explain by telling you a story about something that happened to me this week.

I had lunch with someone from our congregation.

We had a very nice lunch.

This person told me a story about someone else in their profession who was cocky.

This person never admitted that they made mistakes.

And in the story, the fact that they would never admit to making mistakes made things worse.

I was thinking about pastors I know who do the same thing.

I was telling stories about other pastors who could have saved themselves a lot of trouble by simply admitting that they had made a mistake.

I then said something like, "I don't understand. I just admit the mistake and things go much better."

 

After I left the lunch I thought I was going to use those stories we shared as an example today of what not to do.

I was going to tell you don't be like those cocky people.

You know those people who think that everything they do is great and think that they know everything in the world.

You know those people who are so cocky they try and tell you what you should and shouldn't do.

You know those people….

And suddenly I realized what I had done.

Do you hear it?

I became self-righteous.

I was judging someone else based on what I would do.

 

And that is the trap of our Gospel this morning.

It is turning being humble before God and others into the law.

It is saying that a true person of faith would be humble.

A true person of faith would never act like the religious person in our text this morning.

True Christians don't brag about themselves.

I better go out and be more humble.

And let me tell you that once you try to be humble you are not humble any longer.

 

Not only that but that is part of the history of the interpretation of this text.

It has been used over the years to be anti-Semitic.

To say that Christians are better people.

Christians don't have the law, and Jews only have the law.

See what happens to Judaism, you end up with the Pharisees.

You see how easily we fall into the trap.

Now we are better people, or more faithful people because of this.

Let us never forget that all the disciples are Jewish, Jesus is Jewish.

There is plenty of Gospel in Judaism.

And there is plenty of law in Christianity.

We cannot self-justify ourselves by being against other people.

 

So you see how easily we fall into the law trap.

We humans are really good at this.

We are good at taking what Jesus means to be a parable about grace and turning it into, "you better be humble or you will turn out like that guy."

 

So how do we avoid the trap?

This is what my mind could not figure out this week.

I got it twisted up so many times, and every time no matter what I say it all sounds like the law.

And maybe that is the point.

 

When we can't outthink, outwork, out scheme God.

When we come to the end of it all.

When we are left with no more self-righteous propositions.

When we can't see the fault in our neighbors, because our own faults are too much.

When there is nothing more to say or do.

When we tried all the options, none of them work.

Then we are ready to say, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!"

 

God take away my pride.

God takes away my judgment of others.

God take away my foolish belief in my own ability to be humble.

Maybe, even then we can see grace for the religiously self-righteous.

Maybe, we can see that fasting and almsgiving and even self righteousness are simply an attempt to make them feel better about themselves.

And it is the same impulse that I have.

 

I like to tell stories about what a great pastor I am.

I like to believe that I know what I am doing.

I like to think that my success is somehow my own making.

I like to think well of myself.

And I am happy to tell a story about someone else who, "doesn't get it."

 

But maybe there is no use for that before God.

There is no use before God for our bragging and our self-important speeches.

Instead, there is only grace.

Grace for you and me.

Grace from our love of laws, and easy answers.

Grace for our love of judgment of one another.

 

I don't know where the tax collector found that grace to pray that prayer.

I don't know how he got to the temple that day.

I don't know the disappointments he faced or the struggle of his life.

I also don't know how the religious person got there.

I don't know the struggles he faced either.

 

What I know, and what you know, is that Jesus in Luke's Gospel comes for both of them.

Luke's Gospel is one of universal salvation.

Jesus in Luke's Gospel saves tax collectors, soldiers, religious people, non-religious people, deaf, lame, rich, poor, and everyone in between.

Jesus in Luke makes it known that God is there for all people.

And that God extends grace to them all.

 

I take solace in that today.

Because I can't seem to get out of the trap.

Try as I might I end up back in the law, and I forget the Gospel.

I end up trying too hard to be the person God wants me to be.

I forget that it is only when we have tried everything, and everything we have attempted fails us, that we come to the moment where we surrender to God's beautiful and terrifying grace.

 

May God lead you out of that trap too.

May you be able to pray ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ 

And in that letting go may you see God's grace.

Amen