Living Our Faith

"And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all He has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice -- the kind He will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship Him." Romans 12:1

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Comparing and Grace

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The Scripture reading for this Sunday is Luke 18:9-14 – The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector.

Whenever a Pharisee is mentioned in the Gospels, most of us have this stereotypical picture of one in our minds. This Pharisee is a self-righteous, finger-wagging, rule-abiding-to-a-fault, works righteousness kind of person who judges others based on how good they, themselves, are. However, whenever the crowds that surrounded Jesus heard him talk about a Pharisee, most of them had pictures in their minds of someone who strived to live a holy life – Pharisees were looked up to as model citizens. They were “good” people. But as is so common in Jesus’ parables, he challenges the most basic assumptions people make.

Pharisees, in our minds, are the villains. But, what if it was your grandmother praying a prayer very similar to this? What if this prayer sounds awfully similar to the ones you and I pray each day? “God, I thank you for the faith you have given to me. I rejoice that on Sunday I can go to church and, as I should, give you thanks as the giver of all good things. I thank you Lord that I am not like my neighbours, and that my family is not like other families who have no hope because they don’t know you. I praise you for all your blessings. Amen.”

Maybe our prayers don’t sound like that. Maybe we don’t compare ourselves to others so blatantly, but maybe we do. However, what is more common, I think, is that whenever we see someone who isn’t like us – a drug addict, an alcoholic, someone with a mental or physical disability, or someone who thinks they are too important for God – we often think to ourselves, “I’m glad I am not like them.” Maybe we even pray, “Thank you God for not making me like them.”

The intent of this parable, as explained by Luke, is pretty clear. “To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable.” It’s easy for us to see that self-righteousness in the Pharisee, but can we see it in us?

In the Christian life, everything grows out of God’s gracious love for us. However, it doesn’t take us long to look around at other people and think that we are just a little bit better than they are. It’s so easy for us to think that we are a little bit better than our neighbours because we go to church; that we are better than that drug addict or alcoholic that we passed on the way to church because we aren’t addicted to those things; that we are better than all those people golfing at 10:00 AM on Sunday morning because we know that it is more important to worship God; or that we are better than even some Christians because we give God a full 10% of all we earn, rather than the 4% that the family two pews over gives. However, in thinking these things we make the same mistake that the Pharisee made: we begin to think that God’s love comes to us because we are better than others. Rather than receiving God’s love graciously, we feel that in even the smallest way, our goodness attracts God’s gracious love. But the Bible constantly reminds us: because He loves us … because Jesus died for us … because God does not give up on us, our lives are able to produce spiritual fruit. Not the other way around.

The tax collector left the temple after his prayer justified, Jesus tells us. And he did so because he didn’t go to the temple to pray with the wrong assumption that all of his good deeds attracted God’s love. The tax collector knew that if he were to receive forgiveness it was all by the mercy of God and so he humbly approached God seeking His mercy.

In this parable Jesus teaches us that even the holiest of people must rely wholly on God’s grace. Even the Pharisees (who were model citizens) needed to lean hard on God’s grace. Out of God’s gracious love for us we are given the opportunity to use our gifts, talents, and abilities to live lives of praise and thanksgiving to God. But we must not forget it starts with grace, and we always rely solely on God’s grace.

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