Pentecost CXII – C

October 28th, AD 2007

Meadowvale Lutheran Church, Mississauga

Pastor Peter Lisinski

"IRRECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES"

Consensus among those who attended last Sunday's congregational meeting was that we need more active members -- not only new active members, but also current members who have become inactive to become active once again.  It is a need felt by all mainline Christian churches, and most congregations across North America, who have been steadily losing members at a rate of about one per-cent per year for the last 30 or 40 years.  And no matter -hat we do to respond to our need for more active members -- stewardship campaigns, direct mail, personal visits, phone calls, and in­vitations, even producing websites -- nothing seems very effec­tive.

I often wonder what would happen if we took a reverse psychology approach and placed an ad in the local newspaper:  “Christian congregation now accepting applications for membership.  Please forward resume to Meadowvale Lutheran church_.  We thank all applicants for their interest, but only those selected for an interview will be contacted."

I doubt it would generate much response, but you never know.  And it's hard to imagine a more desirable applicant than the Pharisee we meet in today's parable.  Jesus presents him as a sincerely religious person -- not just in public worship on the Sabbath, but in the everyday discipline of personal spirituality.  After all, how many of Us fast twice a week?  (Some of us should per­haps consider it.)  He is also generous in finacial support of  the congregation's ministry; he offers ten percent of his income, compared to the 2.5 percent average of Lutherans.  There isn't a congregatian in all of Peel Region that wouldn't welcome as many such members as we could get.

But Jesus seems rather unimpressed.  In fact, he says the Pharisee is in worse spiritual condition than the tax collector standing alone in the far corner of the temple, trying not to be noticed.  In Jesus' day tax collectors were the very opposite of the Pharisees -- greedy, dishonest law-breakers.  They were more like what we would today call loan sharks.  They were independent contractors, hired by the infidel Roman occupiers, who lined their own pockets through extortion of their own oppressed neigh­bours.  So, while Pharisees were socially respected, tax collec­tors were socially rejected.

The two characters in Jesus' parable represent opposite ends of the scale of social approval, but there is one thing bith of them have in common.  They are both sinners -- that is, out of touch with God. and out of tune with God's will -- as are we all accor­ding to the Bible  But the two shed some light on the two basic types of  person most likely to opt out of the church.  The self-righteous Pharisee is the type who opt out of church because others in the church fail to meet their standards of faithfulness.  Theirs is the sin of self-pity.

The question Jesus' parable raises is, which one of the two you and I have more in common with.  It’s just as important a ques­tion for those who opt into the church because, as Jesus points out, only One of the two was justified in God's eyes. Only the tax collector's broken relationship with God was reconciled!  And what is it that made the difference?  It was the focus of their judgments.  Remember_, Luke introduces the parable by telling us that Jesus' target audience was those "who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt”.

The Pharisee was so smug about his personal relationship with God; so sure that God recognizes a good person when he sees one, that he felt justified in judging another child of God as un­worthy -- not just unworthy of God's good will, but also unworthy of the basic human decency of courtesy and respect!  But the tax collector's judgment was focused on himself.  So, if you and I want to know where we stand in God's eyes -- that you and I are right with God -- we need look no further than the focus of our own judgments.  When we focus our judgment for what's wrong in the world, in our community, in our family -- what's wrong at home, at work, at school, at church -- when we focus our judg­ment on others, the odds are pretty good that our own personal relationship with God may not be quite as right as we may imagine.

In today's reading from the Apostle Paul's second letter to Timothy, he writes, "I have fought the good fight...I have kept the faith."  The faith Paul talks about is the Gospel, the good news that human beings are justified -- reconciled, made right with God by the free, undeserved, unlimited, gracious love of God, not by our own efforts to please God by our own religious or moral behaviour.  That is the heart of Christianity, as Lutherans understand it.  And the fight Paul talks about is his lifelong difficulty in convincing thick-headed, thin-skinned_,hard-hearted sinners from opposite ends of the socia1 and religous spectrum to be as merciful to one another as God has been merciful to us in Jesus Christ.

In today's parable, Jesus calls people to see every person as God sees them; to value each person as a reflection of the divine image in which God created them; to share the pain, loss, grief, and fear that makes each one of us the unique human being each of us is; to welcome one another, in spite of what seem like ir­reconcilable differences, as beloved children of God, essential for the completion and fulfillment of God's one global family --in which there are no irreconcilable differences. Believe that, teach that.  Do that.  And, even today, the church -- including this congregation -- will have all the active members we need.