2-17-21 Grace-Benson Ash Wednesday Sermon

Luke 18:9-14 Sermon. February 17, 2021, Ash Wednesday. Grace-Benson.

How can anyone get close to God? People have always been interested in this question. But not everyone is qualified to answer the question. Jesus observed the way people tried to answer as he interacted with them. He knew of a dangerous way to try to get close to God, and wanted to lead people to a better way. So, on one occasion, he told a parable to compare and contrast 2 ways of trying to get to God. As we consider this parable, it’s useful to ask: Who was Jesus speaking to? Who was Jesus speaking about?

He was speaking to people who trusted in themselves, that they were righteous; and who looked down on others. Literally the language says, these people persuaded themselves that they were righteous. Self persuasion is a dangerous way to come to a conclusion about who you are and how you can get close to God. We all see distortions of the truth, we all have personal blind spots. The lens we see ourselves through is broken. But it’s easy to forget, and to think we know ourselves accurately.

Jesus knew how common this attitude was, how dangerous to human souls. He knew how and why that kind of self inflated attitude happens. He wanted to teach a way to avoid it. So he told a story about 2 people, one a Pharisee, another a tax collector. First impressions are important. The first impressions of the people who first heard Jesus would have been almost totally opposite of the first impressions we have today. We think, a Pharisee, that’s the bad guys. They were prideful. Many of them carried out the plot to kill Jesus. They’re the enemies, the hypocrites. While tax collectors for us, are not terrible people. Maybe not our favorite, but I think we understand, they’re just doing their job. Today we usually don’t have anything personal against tax collectors.

When Jesus told this story, the first impressions would have been almost the opposite. Pharisees, they were the people who tried really hard to be moral and religious and good. They were the respected citizens; kind of like a Pastor or priest is often viewed today. They fasted, they tithed. If anyone would know how to get close with God, a Pharisees might be the person to ask. But a tax collector. They were viewed as traitors to their nation. Jews who had accepted jobs working for the hated oppressive Romans, collaborators with the enemy. They cared more about money than loyalty. If anything, they were examples of people you’d never expect to be close to God. In this story, both the Pharisee and the tax collector were in the temple so they could pray. Both were interested in being close to God. This isn’t one outright pagan, godless heathen, and one good person. It’s two people in the place of worship to pray. But they took totally different approaches.

First, the Pharisee. He stood and prayed about himself. What was the purpose of his prayer?

Was it primarily about meeting the true God? Or primarily about himself? Was it a chance to ask God to help him integrate God’s Word into his life? Or a chance to further convince himself of how good he already was on his own? He prayed to God, but which God was he praying to? The God as he reveals

himself to us in his Word, or a God of his own making? A God who reflected the way he would prefer to think of him?

He said, “I thank you that I am not like other people.” He wasn’t just saying, “everyone is different, and I thank you that we’re all unique.” He was saying, “I’m so thankful that I’m better than others.” Better morally, better religiously, more presentable to God. Then he listed some people that he considered himself better than: robbers, evildoers, people who commit adultery, and even like this tax collector. How selective was he being in the thoughts, words, and actions he chose to screen out when he considered himself, and which he chose to focus on? How skilled had he gotten at focusing on his fasting and tithing, his religious performances, while ignoring any defects in his own character? And how fast could he figure someone else out: those robbers, adulterers, tax collectors? He made no excuses for them, while having all kinds of excuses for himself.

Comparing yourself to others to try to figure out how right you are before God is a trap. One reason, it’s so easy to compare yourself to people you think you are better than. It’s much harder to compare yourself to people you think are better than yourself. Or to compare yourself to God’s standard for human life. You will end up with a warped view of who you are if you only look inward, only rely on your perceptions and conclusions.

What was his motivation as he prayed, as he fasted, as he tithed? Not God’s glory, but his own.

As a result he ended up looking down on others. He not only had a warped relationship with God, he also ended up failing to love his neighbor as himself, clearly. Despising others, this is not how God wants us interacting with others.

What’s the result of this kind of attitude about self, others, and God? Jesus said, “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled.” Why is this so? What does this mean? A person like this gets what they ask for. Ask God to remember your righteousness and he will, and it will not help on the day when all people stand before God for judgment. Hell is a place where God finally says, “you want to do life your way, without me, you want to be your own god; go ahead. Your will be done.” Self focus and self righteousness will develop into a self made hell.

What is the lesson for us? Beware this kind of attitude. When you do your religious actions, when you come to a place to worship God and be close to him, watch your heart. Watch your motivation. Is your religious doing more about you than God? How do you try to make yourself righteous before God? Do you look down on others and consider yourself better than individuals or groups of people?

This is a danger we must all recognize, or fall into. Realize how disturbing it is to God when you look down on another person. As if you were qualified to despise and condemn others while justifying yourself in your own mind. Realize how offensive it is to God. Basically, you are putting yourself in the position of God, acting like you are qualified to determine who has lived rightly and who hasn’t.

Now Jesus tells us this story so that we can avoid the attitude and outcome of the self righteous.

He also tells us about the tax collector. The tax collector had a shady job. But when he came close to God to worship him; he stood at a distance, would not lift his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast. There was no presumption, no assumption of rights or of rightness before God. Why? Because as he said, “I am a sinner.” I have missed the mark of God’s desire and design for my life.

Because he knew himself a sinner, he only asked one thing of God, “Have mercy on me.” Mercy, pity, undeserved treatment, charity. That’s all I can ask for. I’ve earned no rights before God, I put him under no obligation. I only ask for mercy.

Imagine there is a chasm 30 feet across with a sheer drop off a cliff. Let’s say you can jump 6 feet and someone else can only jump 3. There’s no point in saying you’re a better jumper. You’ll both fall. It makes much better sense to ask for help, to call out for mercy. That’s what the tax collector did.

What did he receive? Jesus said, “He went home justified.” That means, considered right with God. He received the mercy he asked for. He, being humble when he came to God, went home exalted.

Why is this so? How could this be?

Jesus had to not just say the words, the humble will be exalted, he had to live those words. He is the ultimate example of someone who could have compared himself to others and despised the evildoers, the robbers and adulterers; but he didn’t. Instead, he ate with sinners, tax collectors, prostitutes. He got close to them, didn’t keep them far away. He did not demand that his Father exalt him and recognize him, instead he accepted the treatment that greedy tax collectors, that adulterous, that robbers deserved.

He was humbled lower than anyone else, so that a sinner like you could be exalted. He who made all humans out of dust and ashes, became human flesh, became made of dust, so that he could die and be laid in a grave; only to rise again. And in rising, he takes you who are but dust and makes you so much more.

He exalts you to the status of a sinner who has been shown powerful transformative mercy by him.

He is the reason that tax collector could go home justified, because Jesus was beaten down for him. He is the reason why a sinner like you can lift your eyes to heaven with confidence, he was laid in a tomb; he experienced hell itself to exalt you. He gives you the status of right with God, as a gift.

How did people react when Jesus went to the cross? On one side there was the pride of the Pharisees and other religious elite. Riding donkeys, wearing religious robes. Convinced that as they murdered the son of God, they were doing right. They’d deceived themselves so completely. But there were some, we’re told, that as Jesus hung on the cross dying, they beat their breasts in sorrow and anguish. Sorrow that this is what the world does to God’s very best. Jesus says to them, you will be exalted with me. But to the prideful, he only has words of warning of the great fall to come.

How should we apply this story to ourselves? What remembrance of your sin makes you beat your chest? What personal regrets make you unable to lift your eyes to heaven? What humbles you and causes you to stand at a distance from God, knowing you have no reason to expect to be allowed near

him? Let the burden of your sin be allowed to have it’s full weight. Don’t give in to the temptation to lighten the load, to make your sin out to be less than the hell deserving burden than it is. It’s a blessing to see yourself rightly. Better to know yourself a damned sinner than to think you’re righteous on your own, but be wrong. Accept as accurate the opinion of yourself that says, “I am but dust and ashes, and because of my sinfulness, to dust and ashes I will return.”

But then also allow the full weight of your sin not to remain on you, but see it put on Jesus. After you beat your chest in sorrow, see him beaten and crucified for you out of love. After you can’t lift your eyes to heaven, see him lift his eyes to the cross and say, “Yes father, I will go there for them. To lift up the humble.” See him, the one person who could have trusted in his own righteousness, who could rightly have exalted himself, see him made low for you. See him made ashes and dust for you so that you could stand up straight in God’s presence, lift up your eyes without fear, and come close to God again.

Not because of a rightness you have accomplished, but because of the righteousness that Jesus has given you freely. Not because you’re better than others, but because he was made low for you. Realize the great mercy you have been shown, that in Jesus dying and rising, you have been exalted; you have been justified, made right with God because of who Jesus is, and what he has done.

He is your certainty that you are right with God now. Then knowing Jesus, look around at other people, and you won’t see them as less than you; but as sinners on the same level who need the same merciful, righteous Jesus to bring them near to God. Help others when they beat their breasts, lift up their eyes to see Jesus as you have. Go home from here justified, with care and compassion for others.

This Lent season as you let the remembrance of Jesus’ suffering humble the pride in you, also let the love and mercy of Jesus lift you up and place you on solid ground and show you that through Jesus you’ve been brought closer to God than you could ever be on your own. Amen.