Resurrection Lutheran Church, St Catharines

Let’s pick teams. You know how it goes when you want to pick up a game of soccer or baseball or road hockey. First you have to pick teams. So look around. Who do you want on your volleyball team? Who do you want on your chess team? Who do you want on your tug of war team? It was the same way for picking players for Canada’s Olympic Team. Athletes were evaluated on their skills and their fitness and their ability to win. When it comes to picking teams we look for the people who can perform and deliver a win. So, let’s pick the team for our church. What kind of people do we want to have on our church team?

We want people who will come to church, obviously, but beyond that what kind of church members do we want to have? They should believe in God and join us in worship. If they are a good singer or play the organ, all the better. We want someone who lives by the Ten Commandments, just like a team player who plays by the rules, someone everyone can look up to. We would pick someone who is willing to volunteer their time not just to attend a meeting but to actually do the things that need to be done (run the live stream, take care of the communion vessels and the baptismal font, lead a children’s program, and evangelize here at Brock University and into the surrounding neighbourhoods). And although we might not say it out loud, it would be nice to pick some church members who will give a decent amount of money in their offering.

So let’s pick for our team. “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’” (Luke 18:10-13).

These two men show up at our church on Sunday morning. Neither of them melt into the congregation, but they both take their places apart from everyone else. They don’t fit in. They are not yet on the team. One of them clearly knows all of the proper postures and liturgical movements; the other just kind of slinks down not knowing what he is expected to do. One of them is well-respected in the community; the other hated. Everyone knows about his shady business. One of them is very generous in his charitable giving; the other is rather stingy and greedy. You are here at church when they show up. Who are you going to talk to after the service? Who are you hoping will join our congregation?

Now, you know the rest of the story, and who Jesus picked, so you are going to say that you would pick the same one He picked. But that’s because you are a liar. It’s no contest. We don’t want any more thieves and adulterers for church members. We already have too many of those. We could use someone who doesn’t just think fasting is an interesting idea, but who actually does it regularly. We need more people who put ten percent in their offering envelope, and this guy doesn’t just give ten percent of his pay cheque, but ten percent of everything.

More guys like this in our congregation would make things a lot easier. We know that we should be more like him. Perhaps if he became a member we would be encouraged to do the things we know we should be doing, and stop doing the things we know we shouldn’t. When we do the things this guy does we feel good about it. We say to ourselves, “I was able to fast for a couple of days during Lent without giving in to cravings. I think I might be able to put in ten percent this week.” That’s good, isn’t it?

Do we really need any more members like the other guy? He’s got nothing to contribute. In fact, he’s a taker. He will be really high maintenance (lots of visits from the pastor and the elders). Can we afford to carry him along? When we do the kind of things he does it makes us feel ashamed. He’s going to drag us down. He’ll be an embarrassment and a deterrent to other people coming. He is going to offend people. Let’s be honest, if we are fortunate, he won’t come back next Sunday.

The only reason we would pick this second guy, is because we know that Jesus picked him, and we won’t risk going against Jesus, not at church. At least we know that much. But it reveals to us that of ourselves we are the very people who need to hear this parable. Jesus cares so much about us that “He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt” (Luke 18:9). That’s us.

If we know we should go along with Jesus, who picks the one who has nothing to offer and yet looks to Him for mercy, then we are on our way to being that one ourselves. And that is where we need to be, for the tax collector is the one who left the service having been justified, forgiven, made righteous, saved. Our pick left the service justified before men, but not before God. He was not forgiven. He left in his sins of self-righteousness and contempt for others. He went on his way destined for hell and you can be sure that he’s coming back to church again so we can all admire him and again be tempted to follow in his self-righteous way.

We see much to credit in this man. I have deliberately tried to avoid calling him “the Pharisee” because it is a trigger word for us, knowing that he was one of the group that plotted to kill Jesus. But just look at what this guy does. There is so much to commend him. He is well respected in society for a reason. He lives a good, clean life. He has nothing to do with cheating, stealing, or sexual immorality. He is a fine upstanding citizen and an example to us all. In addition to that, people were only required to fast one day of the year and he fasted twice a week. People were only required to give ten percent of certain kinds of income and he gave ten percent of everything that came his way.

These things are not bad. They are things that we should all be doing. We should live such a clean life. We should gladly fast and give generously and cheerfully beyond the minimum. But we should not hold these things up before God as a reason for Him to hear and answer our prayers. To tell God how good we are is not prayer at all. It is not why we come to church, or it shouldn’t be. This is not a place to display our godliness. This is where we come to be made godly.

And so we join with the tax collector in praying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” Our liturgy helps us to keep that focus, because it is so easy to get carried away in self-righteousness. But neither do we want a false piety that shows off how humble and miserable we can be, as if God were just giving points on a different kind of scale. We don’t earn anything before Him by being super holy, nor do we earn anything from Him by displaying a super humiliation. There is no gold medal for being a poor, miserable sinner. You just are.

What moves God’s heart is the humble confession that we have sinned. We are guilty of being extortioners, unjust, and adulterers, like the tax collector. We are also guilty of a self-righteousness that despises other people. And when Jesus’ stinging parable reveals such things to us, then we can do nothing but take the place of that sinful tax collector, humbly bowing our heads and saying along with him, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”

Those words come up in the Kyrie, “Lord, have mercy.” We sing them in the Gloria in Excelsis and the Agnus Dei, “have mercy on us.” And we celebrate the answer to that prayer in the Nunc Dimittis “My own eyes have seen the salvation You have prepared in the sight of every people.” These prayers, taken from the lips of the people who encountered Jesus, direct us away from our self-righteous list of what we have done and throw us on our knees before the merciful One.

“God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” It was the tax collector’s prayer when he went to the temple at the time of the evening sacrifice. He was imploring God to impart the benefits of that sacrifice to him. Let the life of the beast slaughtered and the atoning blood poured out at the altar be the price for his prayer to come to the throne of God in heaven, that the King Eternal might answer and be merciful and forgive his many transgressions.

“God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” It is our prayer as we gather in this place at this time. We are imploring God to impart the benefits of the sacrifice to us—not any sacrifice that we are making today or that is happening in our presence, but that the life of the holy Son of God and the precious blood shed upon the cross of Christ be the price not just for our prayer, but for us to come with Jesus into the heavenly throne room of the King Eternal, that in His presence and by His mercy our many transgressions may be forgiven, we be made holy, and that we might go down to our homes, justified, made righteous through the body and blood of Christ given and shed for the forgiveness of sins.

What this means is that Jesus has picked you. He has chosen you to be a member of His Church. He told this parable because He had chosen you. The word ‘church’ comes from the word for ‘chosen, called out’ of the sinful world to be a holy child of God. And today, we witnessed another choosing, another calling. Who would choose Hanna to be on their volleyball team, chess team, or tug-of-war team? What can she do outside of the cuteness factor? What can she offer to the church team? Nothing more than you, and nothing less. She comes only with the sin that has infected all of humanity.

But because God does not choose those who come with something to offer, but those who are entirely in need of His grace and mercy, He has chosen her. In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector moves right into the account of the disciples and the infants. Jesus said, “Let the children come to Me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to You, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it” (Luke 18:16-17). We remind ourselves of this by reading this at every baptism, whether it is for an adult or a child. We are all chosen by Jesus.

Hanna doesn’t fast. She tells you when she wants to eat. She doesn’t give back ten percent of what she receives unless it comes to you in a diaper. I am not trying to be cruel to her. It is the same way with all of us, and we don’t have all the cuteness that she’s got. There is nothing we can give to God but our sins which have been so graciously taken by Jesus Christ. Our prayer: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” has been heard and answered. Jesus upon the cross is the one fitting sacrifice to atone for all of our sins. We can be assured that God has heard us and He will answer, because of what Christ has done, because He has chosen us to be His Church.