Here is today’s sermon, based on Luke 18:9-14:
I do not drink beer very often, but I love the advertisements for Dos Equis beer. They feature a heavily bearded, very savvy, man, who claims that he is “the most interesting man in the world.” He is confident, but his confidence borders of arrogance. The commercial has launched numerous spoofs on the internet. Here are some of the funnier lines that I found that he might have said:
I have been known to cure narcolepsy by walking into the room.
Waiters normally tip me.
My traditional house-warming gift is a house.
I did refuse an offer from Don Corleone.
I can speak Russian in French.
Well, it does not take too much imagination to recognize that the Pharisee in our parable this morning possesses an equal or greater amount of arrogance. To fully comprehend the radical nature of this parable, you must understand that the Pharisee was a truly good man. There is no reason to doubt his own his claim of moral superiority. He was not a thief, he was not a rogue, he did not commit adultery, he did not cheat on his taxes … and conversely he did fast twice a week as a spiritual practice and gave a tenth of his all of his income to support his congregation. Those are all truly good things to be and do. He is, in some ways, a role model, worthy of imitation. I would never encourage any of you to steal or cheat on your spouse, nor would I ever discourage any of you from fasting regularly or giving a tenth of your income to the church.
To be truly good Christians we must refrain from doing those things which we are not to do – the Ten Commandments tell us not to murder, not to steal, not to commit adultery, not to skip worship on the Sabbath, and we must do those things we are supposed to do: give alms to the poor, feed the hungry, visit the sick, lift up the broken-hearted. Christians are expected to do good works: Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount: “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” “Faith without works is dead.” It takes hard work, discipline and sacrifice to be “a good Christian.”
I have occasionally made the point here that most Christians that I know are fairly good at NOT doing things they should not do, but do struggle with sins of omission: we do often fail to get done those things that they ought to do. It’s easier to stay home and watch Dancing with the Stars or Monday Night Football than go prepare and serve a meal to the homeless; it’s too tempting to go skiing on Saturday than spend a day working for Habitat for Humanity. It’s important to know that being a Christian requires us to take actions, the life of faith requires that we do things – good works, that others will see us do and give thanks to God!
The Pharisee is good and that is not bad. The problem with the Pharisee – his weakness, his sin – is that he trusted in himself, he trusted in his own goodness, his own righteousness. He was completely self-righteous, puffed up, full of himself, narcissistic and full of pride. In his mind, he did not need to be justified by grace; he did not need the mercy of God; he saw no reason for God’s forgiveness.
Augustine wrote that pride is the chief form of sin. Reinhold Niebuhr goes a bit further and suggests that there are several different forms of pride: there is the pride which causes a person to seek glory; there is the kind of pride which causes one to will for power; there is intellectual pride; there is moral pride; and then there is a pride which is most dangerous to the church — and that is spiritual pride. Niebuhr writes that moral pride makes virtue the very vehicle of sin – as I have said before, but spiritual pride is a pathetic and misguided effort to deify the self, to make ourselves our own little gods – thus cutting us off from God.
The Pharisee beams with moral pride, and, Jesus suggests, “he trusts in himself” – not his God; therefore, he is guilty of the seediest form of sin: spiritual pride.
And, therefore, he regarded others with contempt. He had the audacity to stand up front in the sanctuary, brimming with pride and thank God that he was not like other people. He considered him to be superior in every way, and he judged others with a critical eye and regarded others as inferior human beings.
In the musical Wicked, as I recall, Glinda, the good witch, finds she must room at college with the bad, ugly witch, Elphaba. Glinda thinks that she is so pretty, so smart, so good, so popular that she (like the Pharisee!) regards her new roommate with contempt. The song which punctuates this scene is popularly called, Loathing, because Glinda sings of her unadulterated loathing of one who is less than what she considers herself to be.
Of course, Elphaba doesn’t like to be looked down upon, so she mirrors Glinda’s unadulterated loathing and they sing at each other:
Let’s just say – I loathe it all!
Ev’ry little trait, however small
Makes my very flesh being to crawl
With simple utter loathing
There’s a strange exhilaration
In such total de-tes-tation.
The Pharisee looked down upon the tax collector – and everybody else – with unadulterated loathing. He despised other people, because they were not as good as he considered himself to be, and, in so doing, his goodness, his virtue, became the very vehicle for his sin and his spiritual pride killed his spirit.
There seems to me to be a whole lot of unadulterated loathing going on these days. Liberal Christians seem to consider themselves morally superior to conservative Christians – and conservative Christians generally loathe liberal Christians; most Protestants are glad they are not like the Roman Catholics – and vice versa; Republicans look down their noses at the Democrats, and, of course, the Democrats don’t seem to like the Republicans very much either; many Americans seem to despise people from other places; and many, if not most, Christians go to bed at night praying to God that they are glad that they are not like all the other people in the world – like Arabs and Hindus and Jews.
There seems to be to be a whole lot of unadulterated loathing going on. The truth is that most of us are more like this Pharisee than we care to admit: most people seem to think that they are really pretty good, in fact, most people think that they are better than others, morally superior and more spiritual than our neighbors, closer to God and closer to the truth. We tend to justify ourselves and our actions and attitudes while judging others harshly and showing no mercy.
Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, Jesus says,
But those who humble themselves will be exalted …
In contrast to the Pharisee, of course, the tax collector was a true sinner, a rotten apple, a thief, a man who had done some really bad things and had ruined a lot of lives. He was hated by all and despised by the community. Fred Craddock writes, “Working for a foreign government collecting taxes from his own people, a participant in a cruel and corrupt system, politically a traitor, religiously unclean, a [tax collector] was a reprehensible character.” The tax-collector, Jesus said, was standing far off, he would not even look up to heaven, but, filled with remorse, he beat his breast, sobbing, crying out, begging, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” Then, Jesus says to the shock and amazement of all, “I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other.” The great, late George Buttrick wrote that Jesus conclusion was “a staggering and unpardonable assault on accepted judgments [of his day].”
Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, Jesus said,
But those who humble themselves will be exalted …
Perhaps the church would be well-served if you and I and all Christians everywhere would show a little touch of humility from time to time. Perhaps instead of looking down at others or standing in judgment of others, we might actually offer a little grace and extend a little mercy to those in need. Perhaps we might, as Paul encourages us to do, think of others as better than ourselves.
There’s a great story about the boxer, Mohammed Ali – stop me if you have heard this one before. Ali was, as you know, known to be quite an arrogant, conceded man, who was completely confident of his abilities. One time he was on an airplane, which was about to take off, and the flight attendant came by noticed he didn’t have his seat belt on. She leaned down and told him to put on his seat belt, that it was required by the FAA. He looked up at her. Incredulous, he said, “Ma’am, do you know who I am? I am Mohammed Ali. I am the greatest of all time. I am SUPERMAN.” She looked down at him, rolled her eyes, and humbled the great Ali by saying, “Now, if you really are SUPERMAN, you wouldn’t need to be on this plane now, would you?”
It is tempting to think that we are greater and better and more important than we are. None of us are beyond the need for the amazing grace of God. It was the sinner – and not the Pharisee – who went home justified by God that day.
Who among us will go home justified today?
John Bunyan wrote,
He that is down needs fear no fall,
He that is low, no pride;
He that is humble ever shall
Have God to be his guide.
