✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠
The Word of the Lord Endures Forever
se cwide þæs béaggiefan ábireþ ferhþ
Luke 18,9-14 4115
11. Sonntag nach Trinitatis 056
Isaac, Patriarch.
Rochus of Montpellier, Confessor, ✠ end of the 14th c.
16. August 2015
1. O Lord Jesus Christ, Savior of the downtrodden, like the tax collector, our sinfulness makes us the stranger before You, nevertheless, we draw near to You, convicted of our sins and seeking Your mercy. Look upon us with grace and transform us through Your Spirit so that we receive Your mercy. Amen. (VELKD, Prayer for 11. Sn. n. Trinitatis § 1 2014)
2. Jesus also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: „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: ‘O 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: ‘O God, be propitiated toward me, the sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.“
3. Jesus presents us with two types of spiritual people in today’s parable: 1. A super-pious Pharisee, and 2. a humiliated tax collector. You could not find two polar opposites in Judaism. The Pharisees took the Torah extremely seriously, so seriously that they elevated the traditions of the elders to mandatory performance and furthermore did more than the Torah required in order to cover the omissions of keeping the Torah that sinners, like the tax collectors, were guilty of. The Torah exhorted fasting one day a week, so the Pharisees fasted two days a week. The Torah exhorted a 10% tithe as an offering, so the Pharisees gave 20% as an offering. In many ways the Medieval Catholic treasury of merits found common ground with 1. century ad Pharisaic Judaism. Tax collectors were renowned for their lavish banquets and not their fasting. They were often unable to tithe because the priests and rabbis considered the method by which tax collectors were paid to be usury and stealing; tax collectors were allowed to keep whatever extra money they could tax from their neighbors. If Rome only sought a 10% tax from its citizens and the tax collector could force their clients to pay a 20% tax, then the tax collector was allowed to keep that extra 10% as their salary. Many tax collectors made themselves wealthy this way. Consider Zacchaeus the rich chief tax collector who told Jesus: »Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. If I have defrauded anyone of anything, then I restore it fourfold« (Luke 19,2.8). »And when the Pharisees saw it, they all grumbled: „He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.“ And Jesus said to Zacchaeus: „Today salvation has entered this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost“« (Luke 19,7.9-10).
4. The Pharisees condemned Jewish tax collectors as the worst of sinners. Their very occupation forced them to violate several important commandments and hindered them from upholding such key tenets as tithing. On the great scale of justification the Pharisees were most certainly righteous and the tax collectors were most certainly damned. The Pharisees believed that the only way for a tax collector to be saved was to renounce his profession and pay back all the people he had defrauded over the years.
5. In His parable, Jesus presents a shocking reversal. The Pharisee who is considered righteous leaves the temple unjustified, and the tax collector who is considered unrighteous leaves the temple justified. The reason this occurred is revealed when Jesus called Levi, another tax collector, to be His disciple and apostle. St. Luke tells us: »After this Jesus went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth. And He said to him: „Follow Me.“ And leaving everything, Levi rose and followed Him. Then Levi made Him a great feast in his house, and there was a large company of tax collectors and others reclining at table with them. And the Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at Jesus’ disciples, saying: „Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?“ So Jesus answered them: „Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not arrived to call the righteous but sinners to repentance“« (Luke 5,27-32).
6. The tax collector in today’s parable leaves justified because Jesus arrived to call sinners to repentance and to justify them. People who merit righteousness based on their keeping of God’s commandments are self-righteous people who have a difficult time believing that God saves by grace and not by works of the law. Sinners, however, who are burdened with the guilt of their sins and weighed down with the realization that they can never keep the commandments find the declaration that God saves us by grace to be a liberating proclamation of love and mercy.
7. Jesus proclaims: »For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.« Jesus Himself lives what He proclaims. The Apostle Paul tells us: »Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the Name that is above every name, so that at the Name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven, on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father« (Philippians 2,5-11).
8. The crucified and risen Jesus is how He redeemed the world back to His Father and how He justified all people, both the righteous and sinners. For the self-righteous, they must repent of their striving to earn God’s favor and mercy by their obedience to the commandments. For the sinners, they must repent of their view that God could never forgive them merely by grace. God’s mercy is foreign to our fallen reason and is contrary to every religion known to man. This is why Christianity is unique among all the world. Christianity is not another religion where you earn justification and favor by doing works that are pleasing to God. Christianity is the realization of the reign of God in our midst manifested by Christ Jesus. Christianity is based on faith that receives God’s justification by grace. Christianity shows us that God the Father loves us and redeems us through the vicarious merit of His Son Jesus Christ who was crucified and risen from the dead.
9. The Apostle Paul tells the Corinthian Christians: »And when I arrived, brothers and sisters, I did not arrive proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Holy Scriptures, that He was buried and that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Holy Scriptures. Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man entered death, by a Man has entered also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at His parousia (advent) those who belong to Christ. Then the end occurs, when He delivers the reign to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For He must reign until He has put all his enemies under His feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For God has put all things in subjection under his feet. [Psalm 8,6] But when it says: all things are put in subjection, it is plain that He is excepted who put all things in subjection under Him. When all things are subjected to Him, then the Son Himself will also be subjected to Him who put all things in subjection under Him, so that God may be all in all« (1. Corinthians 2,1-2; 15,3-4.12-28).
10. Jesus was humbled in order to justify you. He has paid for your sin on the cross, died, unlocked hades’ gate and risen from the grave. In your Baptism you have died with Christ and you have risen with Him. You leave church today justified by grace through faith in Christ Jesus. Amen.
11. Let us pray. O Lord Jesus Christ, the Righteous One, we give thanks to You and proclaim Your deeds among the peoples, so that they may hear of Your mercy and be certain that even their sins are forgiven. Amen.
To God alone be the Glory
Gode ealdore sy se cyneþrymm
✠
All Scriptural quotations are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 4. Edition © 1990 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, and the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 27. Edition © 1993 by Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.
ELKB. Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern. www.bayern-evangelisch.de/www/index.php. Copyright © 2013 Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern.
VELKD. Vereinigte Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche Deutschlands. www.velkd.de. Copyright © 2013 Vereinigte Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche Deutschlands.
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