Human is Human is Human is Human

Proper 25C-25

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

The author of Second Timothy writes, ‘I have fought the good fight; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith…there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which…belongs to all who long for Christ’s appearing’ (2 Timothy 4:7&8). It’s a memorable statement of a life well lived. In contrast, today’s gospel is like a cartoon—but not a very funny one. As Mark Twain might have described him, the Pharisee in our gospel was, “a good man in the very worst sense of the word.”  He claimed a crown of self-righteousness to elevate himself above others. I wish I could say I don’t recognize him among certain people we encounter in the news, or worse, in myself.

The Pharisee was upstanding and religiously righteous. The tax collector was universally despised, a traitor to his people, and aid to the foreign oppressor in Rome. The religious striver was smug and confident; the outsider was anxious and insecure. The self-appointed saint paraded to the temple; the sinner “stood at a distance” from that sacred building—a nonverbal expression of his spiritual alienation. The righteous man stands up; the sinful man looked down. In an act of shocking narcissism, the Pharisee prays aloud loudly and only “about himself;” whereas the tax collector could barely pray at all.

Yet, Jesus says, the respectable, reputable believer, so competent and accomplished, who does everything right, is rejected, whereas the secular sinner — the disreputable, inadequate, and incompetent failure — “goes home justified before God” (Daniel Clendenin). It’s a story of reversal, of the first becoming last and the last becoming first. A clean heart is born of true repentance. But then Jesus’ parable gets a little weird. Notice, neither the Pharisee nor the tax collector are aware of the judgement God renders on their prayers.

Scholar, Walter Wink, comments that both men are victims of a religious system that taught them God would love them only if they were successful in playing by the rules laid out by authorities in the temple. Both need deliverance. Both men are loved by God. Jesus is not teaching us to stand at the margins and beat our breasts as a way of gaining religious favor. He is shattering the whole idea that God’s grace is scarce, or withheld, or dispensed like a commodity controlled by pastors, priests, or bishops. Jesus is overthrowing the unholy idea that your worth in the eyes of God is determined by anything you do. He is declaring a new economy, one that neither character in our gospel recognized.

Jesus told stories called parables. The word, “parable” comes from two Greek terms, para, meaning “to come alongside,” and ballein, meaning “to throw.” A parable is intended to be a story that comes alongside our regular understanding and, frankly, upsets it. The parables of Jesus do not offer any rules, commands, or doctrines. Instead, they are open-ended tales that invite us to struggle with their meaning, to wonder, to see the world from unexpected angles. Parables “challenge us to look into the hidden aspects of our own values, our own lives. They bring to the surface unasked questions, and they reveal the answers we have always known, but refuse to acknowledge.” (Amy-Jill Levine )

In the kingdom of heaven ruled by our Lord Jesus Christ, the winner loses, and the loser wins. Both the winners and the losers are loved equally by God. There is nothing you can do to earn this love, or to increase it, or to decrease it. There is nothing we can do but to accept this gift, embrace it, trust it, believe it, and live it.

This is Lutheranism 101. On this Reformation Sunday, we tip our hat to Luther’s famous teaching that we are sanctified by grace alone. Yet somehow, we keep trying to make religion a ladder we use to climb up to God or at least takes us one step higher than our neighbors. But self-justification doesn’t work, and neither is it necessary. God accepts you “just as you are.”  Full stop. Why do we have such a hard time accepting that God comes down to us, which, after all, is the meaning of the Incarnation (see Philippians 2:5-8). Stop running up the down escalator!  We will miss Jesus on the way—as he descends into our so very ordinary world.

Christians have named this paschal mystery, this path of descent, the Way of the Cross. Jesus brings it front and center. A “crucified God” became the logo and central image of our Christian religion: a vulnerable, dying, bleeding, losing, brown, Palestinian Jewish man. How often do we look upon the Crucified and miss the point?

Katherine of Genoa, a 15^th century Italian mystic saint, once said, “My deepest me is God.” Each of us find our fullest and best self by trusting in the inescapable and abundant love of God. To become a follower of Christ is to realize God makes no distinction between races, colors, clans, or religions. Human is human is human is human. It is a violation against God to say that to make America great it must remain white.  It is a transgression against Christ to be indifferent to the suffering of our neighbors who must look over their shoulders every day as they go to work or walk down the street, who live in terror of being abducted, their families torn apart, treated unfairly without due process of the law.  It is an abomination to blow up boats in the Caribbean, or bomb and destroy entire cities on the West Bank and in Gaza as if some people are less than human.  Doing so only makes us less human.

We are called to walk a different path. Follow Jesus on the path of descent. Walk the way of his cross. Learn the wisdom of winning by losing so that you may become more human, more kind, a better listener, grow thicker skin, be more compassionate, more ready to cry foul when others suffer injustice, be more generous, more welcoming, more hospitable, be a better lover, friend, parent, spouse, sibling, and neighbor. Let God’s kin-dom come in us, through us, and among us.

Remember how Luke’s gospel begins.  In the wonderful, famous prayers Zechariah and Mary from the first chapter of Luke, each of them gives thanks to God.  God has sent the rich away empty and filled the hungry with good things (Luke 1:53). God’s grace is paradoxical: only the merciful may receive mercy, and only those who forgive are forgiven (Luke 6:36-38).  The Pharisee had enough religion to be virtuous, but not enough to be humble. Sadly, the tax collector had too much religion to realize his prayers were answered by God. Let our religion be so filled with grace that our faith neither puffs us up, nor holds us (or others) down but lifts all people into God’s embrace. One holy human family in solidarity, justice, and peace.