View From the Pulpit     March 2010
 "But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven,
   but beat his breast and said, "God, have mercy on me, a sinner.'"
    Luke 18:13 (NIV)

God's grace and peace to you, sisters and brothers in Christ!

We are well into the season of Lent. Beginning on Ash Wednesday, we spend the next forty days (not including Sundays) following Christ on His final journey to Jerusalem. For Jesus' followers, it is a time for somber reflection. We prayerfully recall our Lord's suffering, crucifixion, and death. We look hopefully to resurrection, but we know that Good Friday always comes before Easter Sunday. Jesus must wear the crown of thorns before He puts on His crown of glory.

The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector (Luke 8: 9-14) is a poignant, disturbing reminder of how we are all tempted to climb high up onto the throne of self-righteousness. From the vantage point of smugness, we "look down" on those people whom we have judged as being less spiritual, or holy, or as committed to God as we are. Lent is God's appointed time for us to identify this way of thinking as sinful and dangerous.

 I know about that which I write. I first preached on this text thirty-plus years ago while serving as a student Pastor during my first year of seminary at Andover Newton. It was Father's Day. I was convinced that I was the tax collector in the parable, and that my congregation north of Boston was the Pharisee who prayed: "God, I thank you that I am not like other men?robbers, evildoers, adulterers?or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get."  I won't tell you exactly how the congregants responded to my arrogance. Let's just say they were unpleased with my haughty attitude and let me know about it in no uncertain terms. I deserved their rebuke.

Since then, I have been very careful when reading or preaching this parable to see myself as the Pharisee who had much to learn about what it truly means to believe in God. I wish that I was more like the tax collector. But to do so means that I would have to stand "at a distance" and not dare to "even look up to heaven."  To be the tax collector means that I would have to get off that diabolical throne of pride, beat my breast, and earnestly confess, "God, have mercy on me, a sinner."

Jesus ends the parable by instructing us that it was the tax collector, not the Pharisee, who went home justified before God. Christ's words are true: "For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted."

I'm much older now, and maybe I've learned a few things along the way. I now know that there is no shame in saying to the Lord, "God, have mercy on me a sinner." After all, it was for sinners like me that Jesus suffered, and bled, and died on the cross. To God be the glory!

Your Interim Pastor, Brother Jim