It was 1941, and one of the darkest moments in the Second World War for the people of Great Britain. Realizing that something had to be done to lift people’s spirits, Winston Churchill made a great deal of the Victoria Cross presentation at 10 Downing Street. There was one recipient that was particularly poignant. His name was James Allen Ward, a New Zealander, a pilot with the Royal Air Force. He flew a Wellington aircraft, and at 13,000 feet, realized that the plane’s wing was on fire. Knowing that if the fire was not extinguished, all of them would be killed, he got a rope, tied it around his waist, and went out on the wing to put out the fire. Over Zider Zee, this New Zealander saved the lives of everyone on that plane. As Winston Churchill and others who were in awe of what he had done, tried to speak to him, he was very shy. He didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t enter into a conversation. Churchill went over to him and said, “Do you feel humble and awkward in my presence?”
The man said, “Yes, sir. I do.”
Churchill said, “Then you know how I feel, both humble and awkward, in your presence.”
Then, the award was given.
You see, true humility it is often an elusive thing, and it is only when it is compared to something or someone greater than yourself that it really comes to light. Churchill, for all the wonder and awe of his position as Prime Minister in 1941, compared to what this man had done, felt humbled, and that incredible word “awkward”, unsure quite what to do in the presence of someone great! That humility, which is often elusive and difficult to understand, can only be realized in the presence of something greater. It is that very truth that underlies this incredible parable today from the Gospel of Luke. This story, which was told by Jesus to address a situation that was occurring in society, where certain people were looking down on others, where people were justifying themselves and their own righteousness by the things that they had accomplished. Jesus addresses this straightforwardly with a simple parable. Remember, it is a parable that he had made up to reflect, clearly, a reality that people would understand.
There are two characters in this parable. Yet, while they are both flawed; only one of them knows it. While both of the characters prayed, only one of them actually prayed to God. And, while both of them were in the Temple, only one of them went home justified. As most of us read this parable we feel like we are standing in the bleachers and we want to boo and cheer. We want to boo the Pharisee, who thinks so highly of himself, we look down on him, knowing that the Pharisee in this story is clearly the evil one in it. And then we cheer the tax collector. We think the tax collector is honest, and therefore, we have decided who we like and who we don’t, who we elevate and who we denigrate, who we praise and who we admonish. It is all nice and clear.
As my friend, Dennis Ngien, a Professor of Reformation Studies at Tyndale and at Wycliffe Colleges, a wonderful, well-known, world-renowned Lutheran scholar suggests, this parable is a mirror. As we read it, we see our own reflection in it. It is as if Jesus is holding up a mirror for all of us to see something of ourselves. It is not some passive story that is of intellectual curiosity; it is a mirror that gets right to the heart of those who read it. It is a living parable. It is not a parable of the ages; it is a parable for the ages. It lives! It is Reformation Sunday, so I must quote Martin Luther at some point, mustn’t I? “The Bible is alive; it speaks to me. It has feet; it runs after me. It has hands; it lays on me.” The parable comes to life when we see ourselves within it in order that we might see God.
Let’s look at these two characters, and peel away the mystique around them, to see precisely what we ourselves think of them. Look at the Pharisee. The Pharisee is a devout person. He goes into the Temple, probably one of the outer courts to pray. As was the Jewish custom followed rigorously by the Pharisees, they would pray three times a day: at 9 am, at 12 noon, and at 3 pm. So clearly, he is a man of prayer, and he is going into the Temple to pray. The problem is that when he arrives in the Temple, he gives not a prayer, but a testimonial defining all the great things that he is doing in this life. He is reading his resume out loud to everyone from a religious point of view. He is going on about all the things that he does, all that he accomplishes, all the laws that he fulfills. It is a testimonial! In fact, so-much-so that there is no need for God in this prayer at all! God is a silent partner! God is an ineffective being! God is an unnecessary appendage to this prayer, because the testimonial, the bragging has already been done, and in his own eyes, he’s good, and is telling God how good.
It is also comparative. He looks around at some other people who have come to pray in the Temple, in that outer court, and says, “I am not unjust. I am not an adulterer, I am not unrighteous, I don’t lie, I am not a thief, I am not even – and then he points to someone in the distance – I am not even a tax collector, the lowest of the low!” Not only does he give a testimonial about his own goodness and greatness, but he does it in a comparative way by putting down everyone else to make himself look better. Yet, there is a part of us when we read this that thinks, “You know, really, he was a remarkable man, this Pharisee!” You have to admire him for his piety, don’t you? After all, he says that tithes, not one-tenth of what he produces, like the Levite, but one-tenth of everything. This is the sort of person that a minister wants to join his or her church! If we had someone who gave one-tenth of everything, I’m a happy man! So, I am not going to make fun of this Pharisee – he’s a good guy!
He is also somebody who fasts twice a week. Now, by fasting twice a week, he probably went to the town where the Temple was, and would show that he was fasting: he would be whitewashed, wear white, and be sort of dishevelled, and unwashed. He presented himself as someone who was earnestly fasting to get the approval of God, and he made a show of it. Now, part of the reason that they made a show of it, according to a rabbi friend of mine, is that they didn’t want people to be tempting then with food, so they let it be known that they fasting. Nevertheless, he is showing off! The law states that you should only fast or only need to fast once a year on the Day of Atonement. There is no other day. But he is doing it twice a week! My goodness, you want to bottle this guy! He is so religious! And don’t you, deep down in your heart, sort of feel for him? He is doing all the things he is supposed to be doing. And isn’t there just, come on now, be honest, a vestige of that Pharisee in every single one of us? We want to have a testimonial of all the great things that we have done. We want recognition for them and praise.
I am sure that if you are anything like me, there are moments where you just enjoy the fact that people see that you are being good in your faith. Maybe even there is this dark vestige though of being comparative, of looking around and thinking, “You know, they are less than I am” and “I am not a robber” and “I am not a thief” and “I am not unjust” therefore I can now point a finger, I can look better by putting someone else down. I think the whole U.S. election is predicated on that at the moment –– make yourself look better by putting the other person down. It is classic! And we all do it! What is racism if not the thought that somehow the other is not as good as we are? We look in the mirror at this Pharisee, and on the one hand we think, “You know, we kind of appreciate his religiosity” but on the other hand, we enter into his comparative analysis, and it becomes dark. “Was the Pharisee sinless?” I ask you. The answer is “No”. His sin was pride and arrogance.
This brings me to the tax collector. Unlike the Pharisee, who stands for everyone to see, he slides off into a corner so he is not noticed. The only one who brought attention to him was the Pharisee, so he had nowhere to hide. He turned his eyes downward, because to turn your eyes downward is a sign of guilt. I only look at my wonderful cocker spaniel, Humphrey, and if Humphrey has done something wrong, which by the way is very rare, what does he do? He turns his eyes to the floor! He thinks we don’t see him if he doesn’t see us! He covers up his shame by looking somewhere else. This is a human trait, not just a canine one! The sense in which this man couldn’t look upwards to heaven because of his shame was overwhelming, and so he said, now praying to God – now notice that is not what is happening with the Pharisee – “God be merciful to me” and then in the Greek it is interesting, the translation they decided to use is wrong, they say “a sinner.” Actually, in the original Greek it is “the sinner” the epitome of a sinner. “God be merciful to me, the sinner.” He knows who he is. He appreciates who he is. But this is not in a comparative sense. It is only when he looks beyond himself that his own introspection means anything.
I mentioned a few months ago that I have enjoyed David Brooks book The Road to Character. In a section of the book, he deals with St. Augustine. If anyone was influential on The Reformation it was St. Augustine! But, Brooks concluded this after looking at Augustine, and I want to quote him, because this is rich!
We are all formed within the eternal objective order. Our lives cannot be understood individually abstracted from it. Sin, the desire to steal the pears, seems to flow from the past through human nature and each individual. At the same time, the longing for holiness, the striving upward, the desire to live a life of goodness and meaning are also universal. The result is that people can understand themselves only by looking at forces that transcend themselves. Human life points beyond itself. Augustine looks inside himself, and makes contact with certain universal moral sentiments. He is simultaneously aware that he can conceive of perfection, but it is also far beyond his powers to attain. There must be a higher power, an eternal moral order.
In other words, the real comparison that should take place is not the comparison between ourselves and others, for we will always find something to make ourselves feel either better than the other or worse than the other, or else we compare ourselves to God. The wonderful thing about this tax collector is that he says, “Oh, God, be merciful to me, the sinner.”
We are living in a day and age where we just think that all we need to do is to plaster over the cracks of our lives. We try to pretend we have a better self, lift ourselves highly, and think that somehow this will suffice, that a little improvement here, a little moral improvement there, incremental change, just like going on a diet, gets us better as we go along. Yet, we know in our souls that we are more like the tax collector. I was watching the World Series last night, and I thought, “Boy, this is playing right into my hands!” This is because, at the opening of the match, they had pitching, the great Greg Maddux, a famous pitcher with the Philadelphia Phillies and others, but it was while he was with the Phillies that Harry Kalas, the great commentator, said, “Look at Greg Maddux! He has reformed his life and turned it around. Once he was miserable and depressed, and now he is depressed and miserable!” That is what it is like to paper over the cracks, to do the comparative analysis, to make ourselves feel just that little better than everybody else, or even a little worse than everybody else, but not in any way, shape or form thinking about God.
Jesus brings us back to God at the end of the parable. He says, “Which one of these two goes home justified?” By “justified” we aren’t using a legal term, but in this case being in a right and in a just relationship with God. No one knew this and its importance more than the Reformers. Five hundred years ago or thereabouts, when Christianity had turned into an almost series of legalisms and moralisms, of comparative righteousness, when it was stressing the holiness only of the holy and rejecting those who were not, when it was separating people along religious lines by virtue of what they did for God or didn’t do for God, along comes Martin Luther, and says, “We need to reclaim a biblical principal.” It is right here in this parable that in fact it was the man who was not seeking to be justified, who was justified, that the one who had fallen short was the one who went home in a right relationship with God. Why? It was because of God, not because of anything that particular person had done.
There wasn’t a semblance of righteousness, not a semblance of self-justification in the tax collector. The tax collector purely throws himself on the mercy of God. Luther says, “This has to be reclaimed, and if we don’t reclaim this, we are losing Christianity, we are losing our faith.” Paul put it this way in the Book of Ephesians, Chapter 2: “For by grace you are saved through faith, a gift of God, and that not of ourselves, not of works, lest anyone should boast.” What does Paul have in mind? Exactly the Pharisee who was in this parable: boasting, giving a self-testimonial, lifting himself up saying, “I am just so much better than everyone else!” It is not that person who is justified in the eyes of God, but rather it is the one who casts himself solely on the mercy of God. In Latin, we call this sola gratia, by grace alone. Christianity rises and falls on grace alone. That is the heart of what we believe. If it is not so, then it crumbles and falls and turns either into self-glory or self-punishment and depression.
When James Allen Ward saw Winston Churchill he felt humble and awkward; when Churchill saw James Allen Ward he felt humble and awkward. When we stand before God, we feel humble and awkward. We know that the Pharisee won’t get us there. All our good works will not impress Him. We know that just like the tax collector, all our sins can mount up against us to the point that we have nothing good to say about ourselves. But thank God, we are saved by neither! We are redeemed by grace alone – the greatest freedom, the greatest joy, the greatest hope for us all! Amen.