Sermons

Oct 28 - The Rev. Christopher McLaren - God Colors Outside the Lines

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Today’s parable features two people who go to the temple to pray. The first, a Pharisee, was a religious type, a faithful dependable kind of guy, a good Bible-believing, church-going, morally upstanding sort. He was a tithing type, one who pays the salaries of clergy so that they can preach on the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican. He was the kind of person people tend to look up to, appreciate on committees, and come to depend on for the wellbeing of the organization. He is not a villain or a venomous sort. In one way his prayer is a perfect prayer of thanksgiving, but at the same time it has an arrogance and sense of self-exultation that is disturbing. “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.” We are glad that he is not a thief, or unfaithful in his marriage, or a corrupt public official. However, he is also under the impression that he is not like other people, vulnerable to mistakes in judgement or failures of character, immune somehow to the human condition. Somehow he has gotten the impression that he is basically better than most everyone.

In contrast, the tax collector is also present for a time of prayer. Tax collectors were not high on the social status ladder. Working for the despised occupying foreign power, collecting taxes from his own people, participating in a cruel and corrupt system, politically a traitor, religiously unclean, the tax collector was by almost all counts a reprehensible character. Trying to find a modern-day equivalent can prove difficult. We might have to think casino owner or police officer turned bad, or public official on the take, none of which is terribly difficult to imagine in our fair city. To get at how shocking this parable was in Jesus’ day we might have to push further, imagining a pimp worshipping at St. Michael’s with the very women he exploits present in the pews. That is how edgy this parable really is for the hearers. Analogous characters aside, the Tax Collector delivers a prayer of striking honesty and theological clarity. “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

The tax collector, while he may not be someone you want your daughter to date, has much to commend himself in the area of self-knowledge, humility, and perhaps most importantly knowing his need of God. His prayer is stunning and beautiful. He knows that it is God’s character to always show mercy and, what is more, he is willing to admit that he is in need of that mercy. Jesus ends his story with a line that shocked his audience a great deal more than it does us here today. “I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other: for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.” The reversal of fortunes, the upside down Kingdom of God, is once again proclaimed as the slime-ball-cannot-be-trusted tax collector finds mercy through his own deep need of it, he is made “right with God,” while those who trust in themselves like the Pharisee, struggle to put their trust in God.

The spiritual life is not so much about having our act together as it is about knowing our need of God. There is that wonderful line in the Sermon on the Mount. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Poor in spirit, poverty of spirit, what does that mean? Let me try to illustrate it in an unusual way. During my college InterVarsity days I met a man named Gene Thomas who was businessman in Colorado and later in life an incredible Christian teacher. In his younger years Gene was a energetic, smart, innovative, scrappy business man having come from a family with almost nothing. He told me a story that helped me to understand the concept of poverty of spirit. Gene owned a couple gas stations in the Boulder area and was looking to purchase another business when he made a connection to a businessman in Montreal. In short order Gene found himself on a private Lear jet on his way to Montreal for a meeting. Arriving in a style he was unaccustomed to, he was driven by chauffer to a penthouse of the businessman which overlooked the whole city. As he wandered around the room waiting for his appointment he noticed that it was full of expensive original art, Van Gogh, Monet, Klee and others. A few minutes later his appointment arrived and they sat down to talk. My friend described how he found himself staring at the man’s watch as he had never seen a timepiece like it, nor one as elegant. He later learned that it was a Patek Phillippe time piece with a price tag upwards of $20,000. Picking up a figurine on the coffee table and remarking on its weight he realized he was holding something made of pure gold. What Gene, the emerging businessman, realized in that meeting was the immense wealth of others that made his emerging business look almost like poverty. What he said to me was that you often do not realize how poor you are until you actually encounter something really rich. Gene understood this lesson spiritually as he looked at the life of Jesus.

Poor in spirit means that when we catch a glimpse of the richness of God’s mercy, of the depth of his love, of the power of his grace that welcomes us into his family, we realize that we are spiritually bankrupt without God. We realize that we cannot make it alone on our own resources, we need God’s endless resources to be the kind of forgiving, hopeful, loving, patient, gentle, self-giving, faithful, wildly alive people God intends for us to be. The First Beatitude really could be translated "Blessed are those who know their need of God, for God’s ways will become their ways.”

The parable of the Pharisee and the Publican is not one I can walk away from somehow smug and justified. It has an edge to it. It reminds me that if I think I’ve made it or got it made, I’m probably deceiving myself. If you think you’re a saint, you probably aren’t. It is not a call for humility for humility's sake. It is rather a call to humility in response to a holy God. That we do not know how to rightly praise God is all too obvious from our lives: the resentments we carry, the petty jealousies, our callousness to the real needs of human beings around us, our willingness to advance our own interests over those of others, our tendency toward violence as a solution to problems, our apathy about injustice in the world, our blindness to the way our lifestyles damage and destroy the environment upon which all life depends. Our poverty of spirit is so great we catch a glimpse of it only as often as we catch a glimpse of God’s Kingdom, and realize that God’s ways are not our ways. Our sin, our great need of God is our singing out of tune. The hope, of course, is that God’s ways become more and more our ways. that we find ourselves participating in God’s Kingdom here on earth more and more.

This parable is not ultimately about what I do, it is about what God in Christ does. It is about God’s wonderful and surprising tendency to embrace those who, by their sin, seem far off, outside the lines of God’s love. It might be a bit unsettling to those of us who are trying so hard to live our lives inside the lines. At the same time the parable is somehow deeply comforting, for there may have been times for us, when we have felt outside the lines of God’s love. I believe that this whole parable is really about a God who colors outside the lines. A God whose passion for saving and forgiving takes him into difficult territory over and over again. And if Jesus is who we believe him to be, the fullness of God’s glory, it is simply not possible to get too far outside the lines of God’s love. For Jesus is God’s coloring outside the lines, a bringing of hope to those who are far off and to those who are near. A God who is always willing to cross over a demarcation line, a border or a boundary if we in a moment of truthfulness or realization can deliver a line anything like that of the Publican, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”