Oct. 27, 2013, 23rd Sunday After Pentecost

Luke 18:9-14

9 To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: 10" Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood up and prayed about[a] himself: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.'
    13 "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.'
    14"I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."

“IT’S ALL GRACE!”

This parable seems to be simple, black or white, right or wrong.
But it isn’t.  And we have to see ourselves in both men; take the good with the bad.

For there is good and bad in both.  The pharisee is everything we might wish to be in terms of religious commitment and dedication.  But it carries him to self righteousness, the last thing we want to be.  The Publican is everything we don’t want to be in terms of life style yet his prayer of the heart is the best he or we can pray.

Both need God’s grace; neither deserve it; both get it.

The parable is to wake us up to the truth that “nothing, nothing, nothing I can bring can earn, deserve, be worthy of, or pay off my debt, - it is all grace.”

Grace is not reserved for those who are close to God; grace is for all and those who admit they need it are the first to receive it.

Grace is not about a nice God being nice to nice people.  It is about a loving God being gracious to hurting people, no matter who. It’s about receiving what I do not deserve and never can deserve no matter how holy I become.

To live in God’s grace is to never stop praying the prayer of the tax collector even as I live with the zeal of the pharisee - knowing that a God of grace will never let me down, never let me go, nor never let me off.