Mercy for Tax Collectors and You - Luke 18:9-14

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The text is Luke 18.

"The Emperor's New Clothes" is a short tale written by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen, about two weavers who promise an emperor a new suit of clothes that they say is invisible to those who are unfit for their positions, stupid, or incompetent. The trick is that, in reality, they make no clothes at all, but make a big deal about about the quality of their garments and the beauty of their handiwork that don’t exist. Of course, no one wants to be the one to admit they can’t see the clothes – that would prove them to be the fool.  When the emperor parades before his subjects in his new "clothes", no one dares to say that they do not see any suit of clothes on him for fear that they will be seen as stupid. Finally a child cries out, "But he isn't wearing anything at all!"[1]

The Pharisee in Jesus parable is such a fool. Arrogantly standing in center stage of the temple courtyard, you can imagine him with his hands raised up, his head held high, and his voice echoing across the stone walls and into the ears of gathering worshippers. The fool boasts: “I thank you, God, that I am not like these other sinners.” He slowly turns around, looking at the crowds who are before him, and he starts to identify and call out one by one – “the loan sharks, the hustlers, the shysters, the hookers,” and then he lowers his voice a half-octave to demonstrate his disgust and sheer repulsion while staring, and then gesturing, into the corner at one man in particular, “and tax collectors.” No one stood near him: perhaps no one feeling worthy of being in the presence of such a perceived holy man; others, perhaps afraid of what he might say about them. Taking a deep breath, he continues, “The Law says we are to fast weekly, I fast two days. And tithing – why I even tithe the herbs my wife grows in the patio.” He looks around, as if daring anyone to be as worthy of Law-centered perfection. Seeing no challengers, he again holds his arms out at his sides as if to say, “I am worthy,” and strides from the Temple.

But that’s all that he has: himself and his self-worth. Jesus specifically notes that he stands alone and by himself as he presents himself to God. That is a perilous place to stand: alone, before God. When one stands before God, dressed in only his own self-righteousness and self-worth and self-merit, standing alone, by himself, with no one else to serve as an intercessor or intermediary, he stands as naked before God as the emperor. There is no confession; just bragging at how well he keeps the law, compared to his fellow Israelites.

The Pharisee doesn’t realize it, but in that bragging, and in his lack of repentance and confession, his sins are uncovered and put on full display: his foolish consideration of himself as holier-than-all; his arrogant thinking that he is not a sinful man; his boastful comparison that, ok – possibly he sinned somewhere in his life, but at least he isn’t as bad as those scum-of-the-earth so-called “worshippers” who dare to enter the Temple; his sad naiveté in thinking God is more pleased with him skipping a meal rather than sharing a meal with the poor and hungry; his shameful score-keeping of who keeps the Law better when, in fact, no one keeps the Law perfectly. He has forgotten what the Psalms declare, “There is no one who is righteous, not even one.” This fool is not the exception to the rule. He has forgotten the words of Isaiah that their goodness is no where near as fine as the clothes on their back; instead, they are like dirty, filthy, bloody rags. In a word, he is a fool – literally, a damned fool for trusting his nothingness before God.

In the corner, trying to hide after being exposed, pressing himself against the wall as if wishing he could crawl into the cracks and crevices between the stones of the massive wall, hunched over, is the tax collector. He, too, stands alone – his profession keeping fellow Israelites at arms-length. No one feels sorry for this man and his misery. They pass him by as if he is part of the furnishings. As such, no one could hear his simple, broken-hearted and humble prayer.

But, if you did stop, if you did listen, and if you did hear his mumbles and murmurs, you would note the contrast from the previous display. There was no boasting, no litany of good deeds done and laws kept, no self-justifying comparison to make himself feel better. The tax collector pounded his chest, unable to look up, his body reflecting the burden of each and every one of his sins weighing on his conscience. He recognized his nakedness with nothing to hide his unworthiness from God. There was only simple, repentant confession: Lord, have mercy on me a sinner. He identifies his condition as sinner and trusts that the Lord will have mercy because God has promised that a smoldering wick will not be snuffed out and a bruised reed will not be crushed. He prays, in faith, that a broken and contrite heart God will not despise.

To ask for mercy is to ask to not receive the deserved punishment. It’s a courtroom word, where the accused is found guilty yet begs for his sentence to be reduced or cancelled. Mercy is found in the compassion of the judge, given to whom he feels worthy of a second chance, of forgiveness of their guilt.

How does one ask for mercy when he or she knows they are guilty as charged? To be more specific, how can a sinner, the likes of a tax collector who is as much as a publicly acknowledged, yet legally protected thief who steals from his own people, how can a tax collector ask God for mercy?

The tax collector begs for mercy in a unique way. He’s not asking for God to be arbitrarily lenient to him. He doesn’t argue that he deserves mercy. He doesn’t offer a justifying comparison saying that, yes, he is a tax collector, but that not as bad as murders or insurrectionists who get crucified. He doesn’t try to defend himself as a son of Abraham. He doesn’t try to hide behind the law allowing him to effectively steal from his fellow Israelites. No arguments, no excuses, no justification.

Where the pharisee stood spiritually naked and alone with nothing separating him from God’s wrath and displeasure, the tax collector, in asking for God’s mercy, places himself at the mercy-seat of God.  

In the Old Testament, the lid to the Ark of the Covenant was described as the mercy seat. It was the place, the locatedness, where God would meet His people. On the Day of Atonement, the High Priest would sprinkle a portion of the blood of the sacrificial animals on the mercy seat and the rest of the blood would be sprinkled on the people Mercy was given to the worshipping Israelite in exchange for the blood of the sacrifice. To be mercied is to be blood covered. They were shown by God because of the blood.

But the Ark disappears from history several centuries before Jesus’ birth. To this day, no one knows where it is. Historians call this a mystery. Christians call this God redirecting the eyes of the faithful from a gold-covered box hidden in the center of the temple to it's fulfillment: two, wooden beams planted for all to see outside Jerusalem. The mercy seat is the cross of Jesus – the same cross where murderers and insurrectionists are crucified. There, Jesus dies as the once-for-all sacrifice for the sins of the world. Innocent blood shed for guilty sinners. God puts forth Christ as a propitiation – a mercy covering of blood – and He accepts Jesus sacrifice in our place.  

The repentant sinner - the extortioners, the unjust, the adulterers, the tax collectors, the farmers, the ranchers, the teachers, the stay-at-home parent, the retiree, the student, and, yes, even the pastor - in asking for mercy, is literally asking to be covered up in blood, to be covered in the blood of Jesus, so that God does not see him as a sinful fool, but as redeemed and beloved in Jesus.

Mercy is a gift that you receive by grace, through faith, in Christ. Christ’s once-for-all substitutionary, propitiatory sacrifice covers you in His blood and God sees you – not your sins; He sees you clothed in Christ’s holiness – not naked; He declares you justified – not condemned; and He sees you as His beloved and exalted child – not the one to be cast out.

Today is the 502^nd anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation. On October 31, 1517 Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses, or points of discussion, to the castle church door at Wittenberg, Germany. Chief among his concerns was whether a sinner approached God naked, with only his own self-justification to clothe him, or whether he approached God wrapped up in the blood of Jesus, asking to be mercied because of Christ’s sacrificial death. Luther may have re-discovered this powerful truth of salvation, the mercy of God in Christ, that had gotten buried and lost, but he would be the first to say the Reformation was never about him. It was about Jesus. It still is.

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[1] Wikipedia

The Lord Mercies the Broken: Luke 17:11-19

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The text is the Gospel reading, Luke 17:11-19.

What do you do when everything you have, everything you are, everything you had hoped to be or become has been stripped from you?

What do you do when you are an outcast, literally pushed outside of town to a dump of a tent community where others as pathetic as you live off of the scraps of food, clothing and money that are tossed to you as you beg. But, you must beg from a distance; if anyone draws too close, if someone ventures too near your place of ill respite you must stand – or try to stand – and wave your arms – or try to wave your arms – and shout – or manage as loudly as you can – “Unclean, unclean!” so that the unwary and unobservant traveler doesn’t become contaminated and have to join you in your public isolation and shame. You have lost your business, your home, family and friends. Ostracized, you’ve lost your ability to be touched by the ones you love and, even if a fellow outcast does touch you, you might not be able to feel it anyway because your nerves, your muscles no longer register a sense of touch.

In Deuteronomy, Moses was given instructions for careful and deliberate restrictions on the one who is contaminated by leprosy. Over the years, a sense of superstition evolved around illnesses such as blindness, or being lame, or leprosy, the idea becoming that one who developed this disease must have done something to deserve it – or perhaps the parents or even grandparents were guilty of some great and magnificent sin against God that, in His wrath, He levied this terrible punishment against you. You’ve lost everything to the point that even God is against you. You are separated from the worshipping community: no priestly care, no pastoral presence, no presence of God. Just you and a burdened conscience wondering what God has against you to levy this terrible disease on your body that is slowly dying.

There is a word for this: excommunicated. Take this word apart, ex/communicated and you discover what it means: to be separated from the community. But, excommunicated sounds too academic, too theological. It’s something we talk about only in our constitution and bylaws, perhaps in our Catechism, a desperately severe move made by the church to lead a sinner to repentance. But, in this case, the word is too clean. We need a harsher word, a sharper word to help us understand the suffering of this separation that is caused by something you didn’t do. Your sin didn’t cause this; it’s the fallenness of the world, the fallenness of our bodies. Let’s use the word amputate – traumatic amputation. In the ancient world, when you are the one cut off from the body of believers is as dreadful to you as it would be to your leg if it were severed from your body. In the ancient world lepers were amputated, you were excommunicated, from the worshipping and living body of believers. You were cut off from the land of the living. You were condemned to be part of the pile of detritus, the living dead and the dying living.

Jesus was traveling through the no-man’s-land between Galilee and Samaria. In the Gahenna of lepertown, there were ten men. “Jesus, master, have mercy.” They’re at a distance, remember, and their voices probably aren’t much more than a whisper, but that mustard-seed prayer of faith is directed to the Great Physician. Not “heal us,” not make us whole so we can return to the community, to our families, to the worship life of Israel – no, simply “Have mercy.” Mercy is all there is to rely upon: the loving God in the person of Jesus Christ, and His inclination to show mercy.

Mercy is not getting the punishment that you deserve. It’s the accused’s plea to a judge in court. It’s not an argument from strength; you have nothing with which to argue. It’s a prayer made from weakness; you have no position from which to plead. Yet the prayer, itself, is grounded in the strength of the one to whom the prayer is addressed. There is only Christ and His inclination to be merciful to unclean ones, those struggling under and in the fallenness of the world.

This is the simple, mustard-seed sized and faith-laden prayer of God’s faithful people of all ages. It is prayed in boldness and confidence; it’s whispered in moments of fear and dread; it’s cried in moments of despair and loneliness. In the hallways of hospitals, in the solitude of nursing home beds, in the fearful closeness of a prison, in the silence of the widower’s kitchen, in the coldness of family court, in the silence of the empty nest, in the blinding lights of the emergency room, in the stone-laden cemetery, the prayer, “Jesus, have mercy,” joins in the ancient echoes of the lepers.

The prayer of the faithful isn’t merely prayed into the empty voids of nothingness. The prayer for mercy is prayed through faith in Christ.

Remember, Jesus is going toward Jerusalem. He is going towards the cross. The cross is the place from whence mercy flows – mercy finds its source in the throne of Jesus that stands on Golgatha and flows from nail-pierced hands and feet. It’s ironic: mercy is not getting what you deserve. But Jesus gets what He doesn’t deserve. He doesn’t deserve to be beaten, or whipped, or crucified, or abandoned or die.  

He comes to restore that which was broken in man’s fall into sin. He comes to make right what has been wrong since the world was cursed by Eve and Adam’s action. He comes to heal the broken, diseased bodies of the world and to make them whole. He comes to re-establish the relationship between man and God. He comes to bind up the broken.

He takes the brokenness of the world into Himself and in His flesh and in His blood, carries it to the cross. With your cries of Lord have mercy, your kyrie eleisons confess your hope and trust, in faith, in the power of Christ to restore.  Christ mercies you until your beggar’s sack overflows. In the empty cross is a picture of the restoration that will take place in the resurrection of all flesh. Love, without end; forgiveness, without limit; hope, without fear; joy, without tears; peace, beyond understanding.

The He, who enters into humanity, answers. His answer is simple and direct: Go. Show yourself - to the priest, to the family, to the world! Show them what it is to have been mercied. Show them what is to receive pardon, to have a life sentence commuted, to have a death penalty absolved. Show them what it is that faith, in Christ, saves.

There is an interesting play on words, here: our translation says, “your faith has made you well.” It is better, more accurate, to say “Your faith has sanctified you,” that is, “Your faith has made you holy.” Here is why this is important.

In today’s world, it is popular and easy for a preacher to conclude a sermon on this text by saying, “So, if you have faith like this Samaritan leper, you too will be made well of all of your illnesses.” It’s a glory answer; more than that, it’s a chicken answer because it’s unfair. If you are made well from your illness, then obviously you have great faith, right? But what if you’re not healed? Does that mean you lack faith? It places the burden on you, the repentant child of God, that it’s somehow your fault you weren’t healed.

This isn’t what the text is saying. It’s a narrative; part of the story – part of the story that leads to the cross. That’s where Jesus is going: to Jerusalem, to the cross, to die. This side of heaven, we still live under that cross. Yes, it is an empty cross – to be sure, Christ has died; He is risen, risen, indeed! Alleluia! – but it is still a cross. This narrative does not promise you will be made well temporally, in the now. It does not promise, to use a very specific example, that an accident victim will be made whole and well again because of her faith or the mustard-seed prayers of this body of Christ interceding for her. That is the “Thy will be done,” remember – holding on with both hands to the promises of God, but doing so loosely so that whatever the answer, we are content with what the Lord gives. This narrative does promise that, regardless of the wholeness of the body, one is made holy now by the mercy of God given abundantly in Christ Jesus. And, in that last and great day, there will full and complete restoration and all sorrow and sighing, all cries of “Lord, have mercy” will disappear.

That is to come. Now, this is life under the cross. It is not easy, but it is light. It is not comfortable, but it is a comfort that we follow the one who showers mercy on us.  When life narrows down, there in the middle is Jesus.

So, go – show yourself to friends and family, to coworkers and neighbors. Let them see you have been mercied by Jesus. In your living, wherever that might be, give thanks to God for all He has done for you.

Forgiving the Unforgivable - Luke 17:1-7

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Forgiveness may be the most difficult aspect of the Christian’s life of sanctification. St. Paul gives us a good definition in 1 Corinthians 4 of what forgiveness looks like: “it does not keep account of the sin and bears no harm.”  Author Lewis Smedes simplifies this and says to forgive is to surrender the right to get even[1].  Easy to say; hard to do. In large part, this is because we are human beings, people who are hurt, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually by what others do to us when they sin against us. We remember these things. Some hurts, some sins, are bigger than others and those are even harder, yet, to forgive.

If we are honest, at times we don’t want to forgive. We would rather hold on to those memories, those sins committed against us as a way of keeping score, a way of holding someone else in their place while elevating ourselves as “better than.” Even our language – carefully crafted and phrased – helps us attain this goal. Meanwhile, we keep the catalogue of sins committed against us neatly arranged so that when asked – and sometimes without invitation – we can pull the list from our memories and by date, size and location, we can drag out into the open each sin committed against us. We keep the list polished and prepared so that our friends, family members, and co-workers give their assurances that we have every reason to keep and add to that list of sins committed against us. “Oh, I’m no saint,” we gladly admit, “but at least I didn’t do such and such like so and so. Remember when she, remember how he did that?” And, thusly fortified by the devil, the world, and our own sinful flesh, we cling to our self-justification that convinces us its OK to not forgive him, it’s OK to hold that grudge against her.

Part of us feels that way, but there’s part of us that also knows we are called by Christ to forgive. Our Christian conscience, which is also redeemed in Baptismal waters by the way, hears the words of Jesus saying we are to forgive the repentant sinner even if he or she has sinned against us seven times – the point being, of course, not to cap forgiveness off at seven times, but rather that seven, a number of wholeness and holiness, indicates we are to forgive wholly and without end. A baptized child of God, we want to fulfill this sanctified act of showing mercy and love to our neighbor.

That’s relatively easy, of course, if sins are so minor that they can be forgiven with hardly a thought – someone borrows a pen and forgets to return it, effectively stealing it from you. Ten Bics for a buck – no major loss; it’s not hard to forgive the theft of that pen. In fact, most wouldn’t even register that as sin, let alone forgiveness.  But, what if your roommate stole next month’s rent money out of your sock drawer, or kid at school – who you thought was your friend - writes your name and number with sexual inuendo on the bathroom stall door at school? What if your next-door neighbor pot-shots your best show animal, or your spouse commits adultery, or your child swears at you and tells you to go to hell? How do you forgive those sins? Those are much harder to forgive.

Now, what if it happens again, and again, and again – the same person doing the same thing to you, and each time repenting, contritely acknowledging their sin against you, asking for grace, offering amends, and promising not to do it again --- only to do the exact same thing again, and again and again.   Now what? How do you forgive that? How do you forgive someone who, based on their continued and repetitive actions, obviously does not deserve your forgiveness even when they ask for the umpteenth time to be forgiven for the umpteenth time they have sinned against you?

To forgive begins with your own repentance. Repent for your selfish desire to get even. Repent for the attitude that says they do not deserve to be forgiven. Repent for the attitude that you are less of a sinner than they are and they are going to get what they deserve. Repent for the desire to act as judge and jury for those who have sinned against you. Repent of your heart that has grown hard and unwilling to forgive. Repent for an idea that you no longer need to forgive someone who has sinned against you for the eighth time.

Repentance may seem like a strange place to begin to forgive when someone has sinned repeatedly against you. But in confessing your own sins and standing in humility before God the Father as a sinner, you see yourself as a sinner and under the same condemnation for your own sins as the one who sinned against you. You see yourself as one for whom Jesus died. And, more than that, you are able to see the one who sinned against you through their reflection of the cross of Jesus.

The second part of forgiveness is prayer, specifically prayer for faith. Again, this seems strange – to pray for faith in order to forgive. But we are only able to forgive when we first understand that forgiveness flows from Jesus and can only be received through faith in Him as Lord and Savior. Forgiveness, like faith, is a gift of God given through the death and resurrection of Christ. In Christ, God reconciled the world to Himself, Christ’s perfect life fulfilling God’s commands for holiness; Christ’s innocent death fulfilling God’s demands for atonement. Sins wages are fulfilled in Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, the payment made in full by the blood of Jesus. We obviously do not deserve forgiveness because, among other things, we daily sin much and indeed deserve nothing but punishment. And, we commit the same sins over and over and over. How many times have you stood at this very altar confessing the same sin, knowing you deserve nothing but God’s wrath for your repetitive sin?

Thanks be to God, We are forgiven, not because deserve it, but by the merits of Jesus.  Faith receives this gift of God and enables the child of God to trust that Christ came into the world to save the sinner. Faith believes that repentant sinners are forgiven solely and completely in Christ.

Forgiveness is a gift that is meant to be shared. We become channels, conduits, of forgiveness. Having been forgiven, Christ’s forgiveness flows through us to those around us.  Faith, then, enables me to receive that forgiveness from Jesus and share it with those who have sinned against me. The same faith that trusts Christ’s forgiveness also trusts Christ’s forgiveness for the one who has sinned against me. And if Christ is able to forgive me for all my sins against Him, and the same is true for my brother or sister, then what else can I do bur forgive him or her, regardless the number of times I’ve been sinned against.

But, Pastor, that sounds great in theory, but you don’t know what my husband or wife, my ex or their family, mother or father, neighbor, coworker, classmate, or my used-to-be-friend did to me. It was too many times, too great of sins, too painful. It’s impossible to forgive that person. To you, my friend, Jesus tells this very short parable of faith the size of a mustard seed and a mulberry tree. People misunderstand this parable as being a demonstration of the power of our faith. It’s not. Put it in the context of this passage: Jesus is speaking of forgiveness. The disciples have prayed for an increase of faith so that they can forgive as Jesus forgives. Faith is not about making a tree jump into the Gulf of Mexico. Faith in Christ – even the smallest amount - enables you to look at that person, that brother or sister in Christ who sinned terribly against you, and say, “I forgive you.” That is an even greater miracle than successfully telling that huge Live Oak tree out front to jump in the Guadalupe River. That’s impossible. But, by God’s grace through faith in Christ, it is possible to even forgive that which seems to be unforgivable. That doesn’t mean it will be easy. It might even have to be something you practice daily, over and over, day after day. But God, in Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit will give you mustard-sized faith to be able to do this.

Earlier I said forgiveness may be the most difficult aspect of the Christian’s life of sanctification. Difficult does not equal impossible. What does this look like? In May 2015, during the trial for the murderer Dylann Roof who shot victims in a Charleston, South Carolina, church, one of the surviving family members told mass murderer Dylann Roof that they had forgiven him.  "I forgive you. You took something really precious away from me," said Nadine Collier, daughter of Ethel Lance, one of the nine church members killed. "But I forgive you and have mercy on your soul. It hurts me, it hurts a lot of people, but God forgives you, and I forgive you."

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[1] The Art of Forgiving: When You Need to Forgive and Don’t Know How, p. 5-6