11-28-2010 Sermon by The Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen

TIME TO REPENT

   Does anyone remember Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In?  It was a T.V. comedy show that ran from January of 1968 until May of 1973.  Thinking back on it, my parents probably shouldn’t have let me watch it.  I’m not sure I was quite old enough for that kind of humor.  In any case, there was one particular sketch where people would pop open doors on a great big wall to recite their comedic lines.  I’ve never forgotten one of those lines.  It must have been in December of 1969.  A woman opened up her door and said, “If the 1970’s are anything like the 1960’s, we may not be around for the 1980’s!”

   Perhaps we could say the same thing today.  If the two thousand tens are anything like the two thousands, we may not be around for the two thousand twenties!  Could anyone have predicted – or even imagined – the tremendous tumult our nation has endured over the last ten years?  The Bible talks about how in the end times there will be wars and rumors of wars.  There have been wars – in Iraq and Afghanistan – and now there are rumors of wars in North Korea as well. 

     Our collective sense of security was upended after the events of nine-eleven.  Small towns   all across the country are seeing their populations decline and a tremendous gap being formed between the so-called “haves” and “have-nots.”  Why it’s almost as if there is no middle class any more.  And who could have predicted the economic collapse of 2008?  People lost as much as a third of their assets.  That’s a pretty sizeable chunk of change when you’re dependent upon investment income for your retirement years, isn’t it?  And all the while, we push God farther and farther to the margins of our existence. Church attendance all across the nation is plummeting, particularly in what we call the old mainline denominations.  People will stampede a Buffalo Target store at 4:00 in the morning to get a jump on Black Friday sales, but they seem to worship God only when they’ve nothing better to do.  Ah, yes, if the two thousand tens are anything like the two thousands, we may not be around for the two thousand twenties.

   It was a similarly depressing scenario for the people of Isaiah’s day.  Let me set the scene for you.  The time was likely somewhere around the year 700 B.C.  The Jewish state had become a divided monarchy.  Israel and its capital city of Samaria were to the north, and Judah and its capital city of Jerusalem were to the south.  The northern kingdom of Israel had fallen to the Assyrians in the year 721 B.C.  The southern kingdom of Judah was little more than a vassal state by this time.  They may have maintained their status as an independent nation, but they were forced to grant Assyria certain “concessions” in order to maintain their existence.  Suffice it to say that it would not have been a pleasant way to live: in constant fear for one’s life, replete with anxiety about the future.  And all the while they managed to push God farther and farther to the margins of their existence as well.  How so?

    The nation of Judah had become a sin-infested society.  Isaiah himself describes the state of their affairs throughout the book of Isaiah.  There was a basic ignorance of God.  There was rebellion among people who were upset with Assyrian rule. The worship of God had become insincere. There was infidelity, injustice, murder, dishonesty, bribery, and oppression among the people.  Isaiah lamented their idolatry and their pride.  He noted the greediness of their rulers.  There was irresponsible luxury, drunkenness and carousing, the rejection of God’s law, the confusion of evil with good, and a distinct lack of faith in God.  Why, it almost sounds like 21^st century America, does it not?

     It was to this southern kingdom of Judah that Isaiah was called to be a prophet.  What did Isaiah say to the sin-infested society of his day?  He said, “O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!”  Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.  In other words, it’s time to change the way you are living.  It’s time to have a change of heart.  It’s time…to repent.

     Many years ago, a minister friend of mine came to talk to me about his son.  The minister’s

son was in trouble – real trouble.  The young man was accused of being in possession of child pornography and was facing an extended period of time in jail.  All judgments regarding the son aside, as you might suspect, my minister friend and his wife were utterly devastated.  Sometimes parents suffer even more than their children when they get into trouble, don’t they?

     During the course of one of our conversations, my minister friend showed me a picture of himself and his son that was taken in his church sanctuary during the season of Advent.  There in the picture was the minister on one side and his son on the other.  In between them – just over their heads – was a sign on the wall of the church.  That sign read, “Time to Repent.”  It sent an eerie chill up my spine when I saw it.  It was like a sign from God…literally.

     That young man should have heeded that sign when he first saw the picture.  He should have repented of his evil ways right then and there.  To fail to repent is to continue to live in sin and to suffer the consequences of one’s actions.  We do indeed reap what we sow, and that young man eventually did.  He went to jail for a long, long time.  To repent is to have a change of heart and to begin life anew.  When one repents, one confesses one’s sin, but to repent of one’s sin is more than to merely say, “I’m sorry.”  To truly repent, one must also vow to live a better life in days to

come.

      That, in essence, is what Isaiah was saying to the people of Jerusalem.  It’s time to repent.

 It’s time to have a change of heart and to begin life anew.  It’s time to put aside the self-centered, godless ways of the past and begin a new kind of life…one that has God at the center.    For if you do, your life will be much better than it has been in the past.

   Right before Isaiah calls upon the people to repent, he tells them what God will do for them if they but turn to him.  “In days to come,” Isaiah says, “the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills.  All the nations shall stream to it.  Many people shall come and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.’  For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.  He shall judge between the nations and shall arbitrate for many peoples.  They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.  Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”  In other words, as I like to say, God    wins in the end.  God always wins in the end.

     The world to come God promises is a world of justice.  The world to come God promises is     a world of peace.  The world to come God promises is a world of harmony.  But in order to get there, you have to repent.  In order to get there, you have to have a change of heart.  In order to get there, you have to believe that God indeed holds the secret to a better society, and that God can really do what he says he can do.

    On Thanksgiving Day I watched an old movie called Miracle on 34^th Street.  The plot of the story is that a woman has hired the real Santa Claus to play Santa Claus at Macy’s department store during the Christmas season.  Santa’s sanity was ultimately questioned in court.  But there was a line in the movie that really struck me.  That line was this: “Faith is believing when common sense tells you not to.”  Again, “Faith is believing when common sense tells you not to.”

     Do we believe that God can deliver a world of justice, peace and harmony?  Common sense seems to tell us that our world is hopeless.  Faith, on the other hand, tells us that it is not.  So I say to you today: It’s time to repent.  It’s time to have a change of heart.  It’s time to turn back  to God and trust that he can make our world a better place for everyone.  Amen. 

 

11-7-2010 Sermon by The Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen

IT’S TIME FOR A RUMMAGE SALE

   I don’t think anyone can argue with the observation that churches in America are changing.  A recent poll called the American Religious Identification Survey indicates that in 1962, the number of people who called themselves “secular Americans” represented a mere 2% of the population.   By 1990 that number had increased to 8%.  In the year 2008, the number of Americans who referred to themselves as secular had increased to 15% of the population.

     Worship attendance is on the decline as well.  In 1990, 20.4% of the population in our country claimed to be in worship on any given Sunday.  By the year 2010, that number had decreased to 17.1%.  Worship attendance in the year 2050 is projected to decrease to 11.7% of the population.

     A number of theories have been postulated as to what is causing this decline.  A man named Bradford Wilcox writes a column in The Wall Street Journal.  He wrote a recent article entitled, “God Will Provide – Unless the Government Gets There First.”  How’s that for a snappy title?   Wilcox theorizes in his article that as the American “welfare state” expands, the church recedes as a source of charity and social services.  The expansion of the state, in his mind, thus becomes a driving force behind the secularization of society.

     That may be, but I have another theory in mind.  Consider our own church.  Our attendance and membership are on the decline as well.  Here’s what I think is happening.  I have conducted 84 funerals since my arrival in Meadville almost exactly 7 years ago.  That doesn’t count the funerals Dave Fugate, Travis Webster and Kate Irish Filer have done.  Count those and the number easily surpasses one hundred.  Many of those individuals were active and vital members of this church who were here on a weekly basis.  Others are retiring and now have the luxury of travel.  People who once were here four times a month are now here more like one or two times a month.  Kids who grew up in this church go away to college and many of them do not return.  Then there are soccer games and hockey practice and jobs that take place on Sunday mornings, not to mention the fact that the mall is open as well.  And typically, young families are not joining the First Presbyterian Church in droves.  From what I understand, they’re not joining any church in this community in droves.  These factors combine to form what we might call the perfect storm.  In light of these factors and the decline they produce, we look around our church and ask: “Where will we be in ten years?  Where will we be in twenty years?”  I suppose the next question then is this: “What can we do about it?”

   The church is changing and it is changing in dramatic fashion.  Phyllis Tickle, author of the book The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why, offers some real insight.  Early in the book, she quotes an Anglican bishop by the name of Mark Dyer.  He said, in essence, “The only way to understand what is currently happening to us as twenty-first century Christians in North America…is first to understand that about every five hundred years, the Church feels compelled to hold a giant rummage sale.”

     What does he mean when he says, “…about every five hundred years, the Church feels compelled to hold a giant rummage sale?”  What he means is that about every five hundred years the Christian Church undergoes a seismic, earth-shattering change that shakes it to its very core.  Think about it.  What happened five hundred years ago?  Five hundred years ago the Church encountered what we call the Great Reformation.  Many say that the Reformation began when Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg on October 31^st, 1517.  Of course, the rumblings of reform had actually begun many years before that.  The year 1517 was just when the issue really came to a head.

   What happened five hundred years before the Great Reformation?  In the year 1054 the Church encountered what we call the Great Schism.  There was division between the east and the west over issues pertaining to the Holy Spirit, among other things.  They were issues that we might define as splitting theological hairs, but they were issues of vital importance to them.  In the end, the Church split into the Eastern Orthodox Church, centered in Constantinople, and the Roman Catholic Church, centered – of course – in Rome.  Again, the rumblings actually started many years before, but in 1054 the issue really came to a head.

   Five hundred years ago the Great Reformation occurred.  Five hundred years before that, the Great Schism occurred.  What happened 500 years before that?  We come to the sixth century, often referred to as “The Fall of the Roman Empire” or “The Coming of the Dark Ages.”  The Church had done some major fighting over the nature of Jesus Christ.  One of the documents that arose from that time that might be familiar to all of us is the Nicene Creed.  Gregory the Great was Pope in the latter part of the sixth century.  He came to be referred to as great not because of what he did to lead a revolution, rather,  he came to be referred to as great because of what   he did to clean one up.

     The world had become illiterate in worship and there was lawlessness in the streets.  After all, the order established by Rome was no longer around.  Chaos abounded.  Gregory the Great was able to save five centuries of Christian relics, artifacts and writings in Europe’s convents and monasteries.  Perhaps we could go so far as to say that Gregory the Great saved Christianity from extinction.

     What happened five hundred years before Gregory the Great?  Five hundred years before Gregory the Great, God took the form of a human being in the person of Jesus Christ.  One could convincingly argue that Jesus Christ brought a bit of upheaval to the Jewish faith at the time, as well.

     Every five hundred years the Church holds a giant rummage sale.  Five hundred years ago, it was the Great Reformation.  Five hundred years before that, it was the Great Schism.  Five hundred years before that, it was Gregory the Great.  And five hundred years before that, it was none other than Jesus Christ himself. 

   It has been five hundred years since the Great Reformation.  Perhaps it’s time for a rummage sale.  The present change in the church today is now being called The Great Emergence.  What does The Great Emergence look like and what might it mean to us?  Let me try to explain.

     Let us begin by saying that The Great Emergence, like all the great changes in the Church, hinges first and foremost on authority issues.  For example, what was the authority issue in the Great Reformation?  Martin Luther felt that the Roman Catholic Church had overstepped its bounds.  He called the Church back to the Bible.  Sola scriptura, scriptura sola was the clarion call.  It meant, “Only Scripture and Scripture only.”  The Great Reformation brought the Church back to the Bible many thought it had abandoned – or had at least neglected. 

     We have authority issues in the Church today as well.  What is the source from which we draw our inspiration and guidance?  We may want to say the Bible, but society has challenged the authority of the Bible.  Some say the erosion began during the Civil War.  Thousands and thousands of godly, devout Christians in the South fought for the practice of slavery as being biblically permitted and accepted.  Thousands and thousands of others to the north took the opposite stance.  Let us not be naïve enough to presume that the Civil War did not have economic factors involved as well, but for our purposes here, consider how this issue rattled the cage of authority.  The Bible could not be counted on as the arbiter of justice in this particular circumstance.  After all, both sides felt like the Bible was on their side.

     The next battle to be fought was not over race, but over gender equality.  At the beginning of the twentieth century American women were demanding equal rights in American life and politics.  Many would have seen this as an upending of biblical mores.  While we might argue that the Genesis story does not make woman subject to man, the Apostle Paul certainly seemed to think that way.  Equality for women rattled the cage of biblical authority as well.  Now lest anyone misunderstand me, I am not saying this was wrong.  I am merely stating a fact.

     By the middle of the twentieth century the issue of divorce began to rise.  Divorce was seen by many as antithetical to biblical values.  As divorce became more popular and accepted, the Church seemed to be accepting what it had clearly stood against for centuries.  As Phyllis Tickle put it in her book, “…before century’s end, the Church would be accepting divorced clergy as not only professionally able, but also morally uncompromised.”  Again, I am not offering a theological commentary, I am merely stating a fact.  In any case, call it another blow to biblical authority.

   Of course, the great issue today has to do with homosexuality.  Making biblical claims about that issue has lost some of the luster in our society it might once have had.  The question for us today is: “What is the source of our authority?”  It has become the clarion call of The Great Emergence.

     The Christian Church in America is sorely divided.  We call that division “denominations.”  For the sake of simplicity, we have what some call Liturgical Christians in one corner.  That might include Catholics, Episcopalians and the like. We have Social Justice Christians in another corner.  That might include Presbyterians, Methodists and the like.  In another corner we have Renewalist Christians.  That would be the Pentecostals.  And in another corner we have Conservative Christians.  That might include anyone who falls under the category of Fundamentalist. 

   All these different kinds of Christians encounter one another at work.  They talk to each other.  They talk to each other over the water cooler.  Experts refer to these discussions as water cooler theology.  Thus, what people really believe becomes an amalgamation of many different notions of faith.  Spinning in the center of all these corners of faith is what we call The Great Emergence.  It’s a combination of many different versions of faith.  Theological tradition is thereby put aside and authority seems to rest more with the individual than with a book we claim to be inspired by God.  I’m not saying this is a good thing, I’m merely telling you what is happening. 

   A Medieval mystic by the name of Joachim of Fiore would have seen this development as prophetic fulfillment.  Many in his day saw history as being divided into bi-millennial units.  For them, the time of Abraham to the birth of Christ was 2000 years of primary emphasis on God the Father.  The time of Christ to the year 2000 was seen as 2000 years of primary emphasis on God the Son.  The year 2000 to the year 4000 was seen as 2000 years of primary emphasis on God the Holy Spirit.  To complete the biblical scheme of seven millennia, the era from 4000 to 5000 will be the consummate union of all three parts of the Godhead.  The point is, The Great Emergence rests authority in the individual.  It equates the movement of the Spirit within us with ultimate authority.

   There are churches out there that are a major part of The Great Emergence.  The good news for us as Presbyterians is that the Great Reformation did not put an end to Roman Catholicism.  It just had to drop back and reconfigure.  Each time a Church rummage sale occurs, in other words, whatever held pride of place before simply gets broken down into smaller pieces.  Then it picks itself back up and goes through a kind of renewal.

   Look at it this way.  Suppose you inherit a massive Victorian home in a state of disrepair from your grandparents, and you want to move into it.  You can leave it as it is – that is, falling down all around you.  Or you can restore it – you know, repair the things that are broken, put on a fresh coat of paint, replace the carpeting.  Or you can completely gut it.  You can tear everything apart, knock down a few walls and completely remake it.  Or you can hold a rummage sale and sell off all your grandparents’ things.  Then you can tear the house down and build a new one to replace it.

     The church is a lot like that old Victorian home.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live in a house that’s falling down around me.  And I don’t want to gut the thing and destroy its historical integrity.  Nor do I want to tear the thing down and start all over again.  I want to restore the house.  I want to fix what’s broken and live in that rich, old Victorian home.

    Ladies and gentlemen, that is exactly what our Church Revitalization Task Force has been attempting to do.  We’re trying to engage our own church in a kind of renewal.  We began by asking everyone to pray for our church.  Then we tried to create a stronger sense of community.  That’s why we have our monthly congregational luncheons and we’ve been asking people to wear name tags…with marginal success, I might add.  That’s why they asked the session and the deacons and the trustees to call on people we haven’t seen in a while.  We’re trying to keep people from falling through the cracks.  We’re doing everything we can to become more vital and active and alive.  I truly believe we’re doing everything right.  At least we are trying to do everything right.

     At this point I’ve got to say that what I have presented so far probably sounds a lot more like a seminary lecture than it does a sermon.  Let me try to “sermon it up” a bit.  The passage I read from the book of Haggai came at a very critical time in Israel’s history.  Jerusalem had fallen to the Babylonians and the people had been dispersed across the Babylonian empire.  But now the king of Persia had defeated the Babylonians.  Jews from all across the land were allowed to return to Jerusalem to reestablish their lives and to rebuild their temple.  Yet the people had become more interested in their own building pursuits and agricultural interests than they were in rebuilding the temple.

     Enter the prophet Haggai.  Speaking on behalf of God, Haggai promises the people that the latter splendor of the temple of Israel will be greater than the former.  “I am with you,” God says.  “I will help you.”  We call these words the oracle of salvation.  To those who are faithful, God promises to be with them, and God promises to help them.

 

   The future of the Christian church in America may look bleak at times as well, but if just a remnant remains faithful to God, God will be with them to help them.  As someone from this particular church recently said, “We may no longer be a church of 1000 members.  But maybe we can be a church of 600 members that truly makes a difference.”  That’s the stuff we’re looking for.  Maybe we can have our own little rummage sale.  Maybe we can get rid of some of the things that no longer work and focus on the things that do.  In the process, we will maintain our structural and theological integrity.  And with a little help from God, maybe we will find that the future is brighter than we think.  Amen.                                            

 

10-24-2010 Sermon by The Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen

THE PERIL OF PRESUMPTUOUS PRAYER

     Kate Irish Filer told a wonderful little story in our adult education class last Sunday that works quite well as an introduction to where we’re headed today.  Once upon a time, a poor widow with three young daughters moved to a town near a Methodist church.  The minister went over to visit them and even invited them to worship on Sunday morning.  The widow said, “We would love to come to church, but we don’t have any Sunday clothes.” 

   The minister went back to his church and talked to a few of the women.  Those women then went out and bought and delivered beautiful Sunday outfits for the woman and her daughters.  The next Sunday morning, the whole congregation watched for the woman and her daughters, but for some strange reason, they never showed.  Sorely disappointed, the minister went back to the widow’s house to see what had happened.  “Well,” woman replied, “we got all dressed up in our brand new clothes, and we looked so nice that we decided to go to the Presbyterian church instead!”   

     Ah, we’re forever making distinctions, are we not?  One woman decided that she and her daughters looked too good to go to the Methodist church, so they went to the Presbyterian church instead.  We make distinctions like that all the time.  We make distinctions about a person’s worth based upon the color of that person’s skin.  We make distinctions about a person’s value based upon what that person does for a living.  We make distinctions about a person’s intelligence based upon where that person got their education.  We make distinctions about a person’s substance based upon whether we deem that person to be liberal or conservative.  We make distinctions about a person’s appeal based upon nothing more than their looks.  We make distinctions about a person’s relevance based upon the location of that person’s house.  We make distinctions about a person’s usefulness based upon that person’s net worth.  We are forever making distinctions about people based upon our perceptions rather than upon seeing them for who and for what they really are.  How often we fail to see that person as a precious child of God.

     A similar thing was occurring in the passage we read from the gospel according to Luke.  There Jesus tells a story about two men who went up to the Temple to pray.  One of the men was a Pharisee, while the other man was a tax collector.  The Pharisees, of course, were an exclusive sect of the Jewish faith 2000 years ago.  This particular Pharisee was a very righteous man; he worshipped God in the Temple, he gave God ten percent of his income and he obeyed Jewish law.  Thus, the people listening to Jesus’ story would have seen him as the hero.  The tax collector, on the other hand, was not a righteous man.  The people listening to Jesus’ story would have seen him as the villain. 

   Tax collectors in Jesus’ day were actually thought to be traitors.  They were ordinary citizens who had the good fortune – or the bad fortune, depending on how you look at it – to have been appointed by the Roman government to assess and collect taxes.  They were notorious for their dishonesty.  They frequently overcharged the Jewish citizenry, obtaining great wealth for themselves and earning the disdain of the general populace.  Because the Pharisees hated the tax collectors, they thought Jesus should hate them, too.  Thus, in the parable Jesus tells, we have a clear cut case of good versus evil – the good and faithful Pharisee versus the evil and traitorous tax collector.

     John Dominic Crossan is a former Catholic priest and one of the cofounders of the Jesus Seminar.  To give us a better feel for how the people of Jesus’ day might have felt about this parable, he offers the following analogy.  Modernizing the parable a bit he says, “The Pope and a pimp went into St. Peter’s to pray.”  How’s that for a graphic illustration?  Do you see how Jesus’ audience might have understood his parable now?

   In any case, as the story goes, the Pharisee was quick to make distinctions.  He actually said in his prayer, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.  I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.”  The Pharisee sees the tax collector as less than human.  In making his distinction between himself and the tax collector, he is thankful to God that he is not like him.       

    We might take offense at the Pharisee’s prayer, but prayers like that were often said in Jesus’ day.  They were common fare and were not considered self-righteous boasting.  The Talmud, a record of rabbinic discussions about Jewish law, actually records a prayer just like the one that we just heard.  It was said by rabbis whenever they entered what they called the house of study.  The prayer goes like this:

I give thanks to Thee, O Lord my God, that Thou has set my portion with those who sit in the house of study, and Thou has not set my portion with those who sit on street corners.  For I rise early and they rise early, but I rise early for words of Torah and they rise early for frivolous talk.  I labor and they labor, but I labor and receive a reward and they labor and do not receive a reward.  I run and they run, but I run to the life of the future world, while they run to the pit of destruction.

     Perhaps we could actually say that self-righteousness was a part of their culture.  It was certainly a part of their prayer book.  So the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable said a prayer to God, thanking God that he was not like the tax collector.  It was a prayer Jesus’ audience would have understood well because many of them would have said a similar prayer themselves.

    The tax collector was in the Temple to pray as well, however.  His prayer was a little bit different than the prayer of the Pharisee.  He stood far off – he could not even bring himself to look toward heaven – he beat his breast and he cried, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”

     Now remember, this is a parable.  A parable of Jesus always has a twist and a central truth.  The twist of the parable is this.  Jesus says, “I tell you, this tax collector went down to his home justified, rather than the other.”  The tax collector was justified in the eyes of God, while the Pharisee was not?  Jesus audience would have been shocked.  They would have reacted much as we might react to John Dominic Crossan’s analogy.  Remember?  “The Pope and a pimp went into St. Peter’s to pray?”  How would we react if the ending were this: “The pimp came out justified in the eyes of God, while the Pope did not.”  It’s not exactly the ending we might expect either, is it?

     The question we’ve got to ask ourselves now is this: “Why?”  Why was the tax collector justified in the eyes of God while the Pharisee was not?  I believe Jesus gives us the answer to this question at the end of the parable.  He says, “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

    Well what, exactly, is humility?  Does it have to do with keeping your eyes to the ground and seeing yourself as a nobody?  Does it have to do with self-deprecation?  I don’t think it does.  One can have a healthy sense of self-esteem and still be a humble person.  I think C.S. Lewis describes humility well in his book, Mere Christianity.  He writes:

Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call “humble” nowadays.  He will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody.  Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him.  If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily.  He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.   

     In other words, a humble person is a person who thinks of someone besides themselves.  A humble person is a person who puts you ahead of him or herself.  A humble person places others above himself because he has learned to see others as precious children of God as well.  This is the kind of person who will be “exalted” as Jesus says, because this is the kind of person who comes nearest to the heart of God.  Think of the truly humble people you have known in your lifetime.  They do seem strangely “Godly,” do they not? 

     Last week we examined Jesus’ parable about the widow and the unjust judge.  The judge neither feared God nor respected man.  Yet the widow continued to badger him until he gave in to her demands.  Today we examined Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, which immediately follows the parable of the widow and the unjust judge in Luke’s gospel.  Dr. Peter Rhea Jones, a professor at the McAfee School of Theology in Atlanta, Georgia, believes these two parables are meant to stand together.  He calls the first parable, “The Promise of Persistent Prayer.”  He calls the second parable, “The Peril of Presumptuous Prayer.”

     The peril of presumptuous prayer is that presumptuous prayer just might go unanswered.  Justification in the eyes of God is a gift to those who seek it, not an entitlement to those who think they deserve it.  It comes to us freely, not as a result of our labors.  It comes to us when we humbly ask for it, not when we arrogantly assume we’ve earned it.  The tax collector begged God for mercy.  He knew himself for who and for what he really was.  The Pharisee did not know himself.  He could only point a finger at others.  He made clear distinctions between himself and others, and in the process he encountered the peril of presumptuous prayer.  Perhaps the lesson here is this.  We have no right to make distinctions between people.  We have no grounds to condemn the sin of others.  I mean, if we’re honest with ourselves, we come to realize that we have enough of a need for forgiveness ourselves.

   What we’re talking about here is what we call the doctrine of reconciliation.  The doctrine of reconciliation has to do with the restoration of our relationship with God.  Recall how the tax collector went home justified, while the Pharisee did not.  To go home justified is what we mean by reconciliation.  But there are actually two parts to the doctrine of reconciliation.  There is what we call vertical reconciliation and there is what we call horizontal reconciliation. 

     Vertical reconciliation has to do with the restoration of our relationship with God, up above.  That’s what the tax collector found.  Horizontal reconciliation has to do with the restoration of our relationships with others, all around us.  That’s what the Pharisee failed to understand.  You see, the two go hand in hand.  When we are reconciled to God, we necessarily seek to be reconciled to one another.  One can never be reconciled to God when one fails to be reconciled to one’s fellow human beings.  One can never be reconciled to God when one makes distinctions among human beings.  You know how the Apostle Paul writes in the book of Galatians, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all made one in Christ Jesus our Lord?”  This is exactly what he was talking about.  In the eyes of God, all are created equal.  All are precious children of God.  It is not up to us to make distinctions.

     Jonathan Swift was an Irish essayist, poet and clergyman who lived between 1667 and 1745.  He is perhaps best known to us as the author of Gulliver’s Travels.  Perhaps he summed up our problem when he once said, “We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.” Again, “We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.”

  Our religion – our faith – cries out to us to love one another.  It pleads with us to think of someone besides ourselves.  It urges us to see everyone as a precious child of God.  That’s where the Pharisee came up short and that’s where the tax collector came up a winner.  The peril of presumptuous prayer is that it cannot reconcile us with God.  Learn to see yourself as a person in need of the grace of God.  Learn to see others as persons who are loved by God as well.  That journey begins when we pray for them, not prey upon them.  If we can do that, we just might find our own relationship with God growing closer by the day.  Amen.