Upside Down Kingdom: Offensive

Aug 2, 2015 by: Sam Hestorff| Series: Upside Down Kingdom
Scripture: Luke 18:9–18:14

"Two men went up to the temple to pray. One of them was a Pharisee. The other was a tax collector."
Now . . . what the story neglects to mention is that when the Pharisee said his prayer, there were tears in his eyes. I mean, He feels this stuff. He is filled with religious emotion, truly moved to gratitude for the life God has blessed him to live.
The parable also neglects to point out that the tax collector, when he has wiped his eyes, blown his nose and gone home . . . won’t be quitting his job. Tomorrow he'll again take money from his neighbors, hand some of it over to the empire and put some aside for himself. It’s a nasty business, but he's stuck in it.
To see the tax collector as honorable and the Pharisee as a creep makes the story false, turns this parable into a tale about morality and sends us straight into the trap of saying, "God, we thank you that we are not like this Pharisee!"
To fully appreciate what Jesus is saying . . .
• It’s much better to see the Pharisee as he is--a thoroughly decent, generous, committed man
• And to see the tax collector as a compromised, certified . . . bad boy!
I know which character the church depends on. I know which one pays the bills; teaches the lesson, visits the sick, feeds the hungry.
To be honest, most of us would love a church full of people with his commitments because its people like this Pharisee who hold the community together and keep the faith with diligence and passion.
And is his prayer really so bad? It's very close to some classic Jewish prayers of gratitude from that time.
• "I give you thanks, O Lord my God . . . that you have not set my portion with those who sit in street corners,"
• "Praised be to God who did not make me a heathen . . . [and] who did not make me an uneducated man."
Is it so bad to gaze on the mystery of having been spared living life as a bad boy and giving thanks to God for being given this life? Is it really so bad to see all of the blessings you’ve been given and say to God, “I am so thankful for all of this”?
But there is a word in his prayer that is outside the Jewish form and that one little word gives him away. He doesn't give just thanks that God has spared him from being a thief, rogue, adulterer or tax collector; he gives thanks that he is not like them.
Here he crosses from the language of gratitude into the language of elitism. It can be a very subtle line and we almost never notice when we cross it, but we do it all the time.
It shows up every time we use us-them language . . . “those people”, “that woman”.
Listen to what he says again. “God, I thank you that I am not like other men; extortionioners, unjust, adulterers or even like this tax collector”
Can feel the distance in his use of the word "this": "this tax collector"?
He has stopped praying and instead he is measuring himself against a neighbor. He holds up his stack of good deeds against the stack of really bad deeds of this tax collector and is very pleased with the difference.
“God look how awesome I am . . . look at all of the great things I have done . . . especially compared to this tax collector.”
It’s this competitive sideward glance that distorts this prayer.
The tax collector, wrong as he is about so much has at least got his eyes right. He doesn't even notice the Pharisee, but is "standing afar off," entirely lost in his poor prayer.
Jesus says he "wouldn’t even look up into heaven." He is so ashamed of the life choices he had made.
He is abundantly aware of the stack of his bad deeds and he hates who he had become so he couldn’t even look up. His eyes are down to his heart, which he is beating with his fist—a sign of shame and humility . . . . He is a man who is at war with himself.
And he says, “God be merciful to me, a sinner”. This man knows that he’s no good at all, but he’s at least looking at his own lousy heart and humbly offering it.
Two men went up to the temple to pray . . .
• But one of them is scanning the room, measuring his stack of good deeds against a neighbor and is quite pleased with the difference.
• While the other is oblivious to everything except his own brokenness.
While thinking about this story, I really wanted to identify with the tax collector. I wanted to be the humble one who in a surprising turn of events becomes the good guy. I like being the good guy.
But the more I wanted this, the more I realized that it’s so much more natural to be like the Pharisee.
We try to assure ourselves and define ourselves by who we are not like. We move our eyes away from our own hearts and look to someone else and take comfort in claiming, “Well, at least I’m not like that”
Could there be a better indicator that we have no idea who we are?
But the more I wrestled with these two characters, I realized that I had fallen into the trap and was about to miss the point.
You see, this is a parable and like all of Jesus’ parables, they are not about you and me. They’re not cute little stories to help us live moral lives and become better people.
Parables are about God and they should probably carry a warning . . . “This could be hazardous to all your previous opinions about how God works”.
What this parable is not about . . . as it seems to say at the end . . . is the virtue of humility.
The problem with the Pharisee’s prayer isn’t that he didn’t humble himself like the tax collector but that he really believes that his stack of good deeds are good enough to save the world. And he believes that if everyone else would do what he does – that would be enough to save the entire world!
What this parable teaches us is that human goodness isn't good enough to do this trick. Human goodness cannot reconcile the world. If the world could have been reconciled by good advice from God . . . to which human goodness would respond . . . the problems of this world would have been solved 10 minutes after Moses got down to the bottom of the mountain with the commandments.
Everyone would have read the commandments and said, “Oh, yes . . . of course!” and the problem would have been over.
The laws, the commandments, our efforts at morality, spirituality, and above all . . . our efforts at religion are efforts at trying to do something that will get us right with God. But they won’t work.
When we compare our lives to the expectations laid out by God . . . we see that we fail miserably. So, God doesn’t risk trying to save the world by human good behavior.
The Pharisee's mistake is not that he is saying something that it is just proud or a little bit arrogant, but that what he is saying is dead wrong. His goodness is irrelevant to the problem that he is talking about.
The tax collector beats his chest, an expression of humility and self-accusation, looks down at his shoes and simply says, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”
And Jesus says this is the guy who goes home right with God and not the other.
That is good news . . . the tax collector as wrong as he is . . . gets a break from God. This is news that we can celebrate, right?
Well, it’s fine for this week but what about next week?
Let's say that the same two guys show up to church.
• The religious guy reminds God again of how devout he is . . . “God, I went to faith café this week and fed the homeless.” “God, I was so inspired by the announcements that I signed up for two timeslots for collecting OCC boxes.” “God, instead of eating out with my friends, I took that money and tithed a little extra this week . . . I’m up to 10.1% of my income”.
• While the tax collector shows up (again) but this time with a brand new BMW and gold ROLEX that he was able to purchase by skimming a little more off of people’s taxes, whisky-breath and two girls he had picked up at the bar the night before, one on each arm, and he prays the same "I'm a jerk/let me off the hook anyway" prayer.
Guess what? The Pharisee would (again) not be justified, and the tax collector (again) would.
Week after that, same thing. Week after that, same thing. How heartwarming is this story now?
You were thinking that this story is fine as a start, but, in the future, we expect some change of behavior on the part of the tax collector. You would think that he would begin to show up to church and be able to present before God his stack of good deeds, even if it’s just a small stack.
In other words, while the Pharisee is clearly going overboard, we want the tax collector to start acting like one anyway.
But the story is not about our piddly attempts at self-improvement, not about our crying our eyes out or feeling suitably bad about ourselves. . . . week after week after week.
Quite the contrary . . . Our situation is always hopeless. But this story is the very heart of the good news . . . which at times can be offensive.
You see, God doesn't care a whit about the Pharisee’s spiritual "accomplishments" or whether or not the tax collector has one BMW or two.
God is not impressed with you
• Because if God is impressed with you, you need to keep performing.
• You had better step up your game.
• But God loves you, and he loves you no matter what.
• He loves you so much that he was willing to send his son into this world to dwell among us, to live a sinless life. To die and rise again so that we might be made right with God.
So when you come before God, don’t say “Here’s my resume and the big stack of all the good things I have done.” Instead, look at Jesus and say, “I’m with him. I’m with him. He has a large reservation. I’m with him.

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