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INJ
St Luke 18:9-14
Going Home Justified
Matins
11th Sunday after Trinity | 27 August 2006
Dear Saints,
This parable of of Jesus, the parable of the tax collector and the Pharisee, is beautiful in its simplicity. Two men go to the temple to pray, one brings before the Lord his own good works, the other has nothing to bring but a cry for mercy, and only one goes home justified.
But this text is perhaps so familiar that its edge is dull and it has lost in our ears the shock of God's grace and the surprise of the Gospel. Our minds think of the Pharisee and the tax collector differently than the crowd to whom Jesus first spoke this parable.
We've read the Bible enough to know that the Pharisees are the bad guys, and so when we hear that God doesn't hear his prayer and that God is not pleased with the Pharisee's self-righteousness we are not surprised. But in the mind of Jesus' hearers the Pharisee is the quintessential example of piety and holiness. They are the pastors and teachers in the church, like the seminary professors or district presidents. But even more, they are the chief good workers in a church built on good works. The Pharisees lived lives of tremendous outward piety and good works, and for that they were held in very high esteem by all the people.
And the we have the tax collectors. We still have tax collectors, but they are different now than they were. In Jesus' time being a tax collector was as low as you could go. The had abandoned their people to work for the occupying Romans, and they would abuse their position of authority to steal people's money. Being a tax collector was about the same as being a prostitute; you can't get much lower. This man is a criminal, a wretch, imagine John Carr, if all that he has claimed to do is true.
And these are the two types of people Jesus tells us about, a pastor and a criminal, a seminary professor and a prostitute, and they come into the temple to pray. And if you stop there and ask, which one of these two would you like to be, the answer is going to be, “The first.”
But Jesus is not teaching is how to be good, He is teaching us how to be justified. To be justified is to be declared righteous and holy by God. To be justified is to be declared innocent and forgiven because of Jesus' death on the cross. It has nothing at all with any doing or being or working on our part, but is completely worked by Jesus' death on the cross and shown in His resurrection on the third day.
The Pharisee had justified himself, declared himself to be righteous, praised himself and his own good works, but this is not justification. This is the pride that comes before the fall.
The tax collector, on the other hand, had nothing of which to boast. He knew of himself only as a sinner. “God be merciful to me, a sinner” is his prayer, and this it the prayer which God hears. It is the cry for mercy which rings in the ears of heaven, and it is the empty, repentant sinner whom the Lord desires to fill with every good thing. “Everyone who exalts himself will be abased, cast down, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” [18:14]
For this is how it is in the kingdom of heaven, in the Lord's Church. As the blessed Mary sang in the Magnificant:
He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He has put down the mighty from their thrones,
And exalted the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
And the rich He has sent away empty. [St Luke 1:51-53]
It is only the hungry whom the Lord fills with good things.
It is only the lowly which He exalts.
It is only the blind who are given sight,
only the sick who are healed,
only the poor who are made rich,
only the dead who are raised,
only sinners are made saints,
and only the repentant who are forgiven.
And so this is how we come before the Lord: empty, hungry, lowly, humble, blind, dead, poor, miserable sinners. This is humility, despising of ourselves and our own goodness we look to Jesus for mercy and help. This is what is is to be a Christian, to be Christ's: we daily repent of our sin and sinfulness, and cry out to the Lord for mercy. And He is merciful; He is as merciful as He was dead on the cross.
For His mercy knows no bounds or limits. It cannot be stopped by our sickness and weakness and sin and death. His mercy brings Him all the way to our sin, to our cross, to our hell, to our death, and there, on the cross, He is answering the prayer of the tax collector and our prayer, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.”
By His death on the cross Jesus has mercy on us and gives us every good thing. We throw him our death and damnation and He tosses back life and salvation. We cry, “I'm a sinner,” and the echo from the cross is, “Your sins are forgiven.”
In the parable that Jesus tells it's only the tax collector collector who goes home justified. “This man went down to his house justified rather than the other.” [18:14] May we join his company, having know our own sinfulness, and having cried out to the Lord for mercy, let us now hear His mercy in the promise of forgiveness, and go home justified...
“I, as a called and ordained servant of the word, announce the grace of God unto all of you, and I forgive you all your sins, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”
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Pastor Bryan Wolfmueller
Hope Lutheran Church | Aurora, CO
Other Scripture:
Psalm 27 | Genesis 4:1-15 | 1 Corinthians 15:1-10
Hymns for the Service:
TLH 324, 329, 528