Eleventh Sunday after Trinity 2022
St. Luke 18:9-14
August 28, 2022
Immanuel Evangelical-Lutheran Church, Alexandria, VA
There are two men in today’s parable. Both believe in God. One is saved; the other is damned. Why? Because one is a better person? Not so! In today’s parable, the condemned man is honest and fair; he is faithful to his wife; he tithes (i.e., he gives 10%) to the church; he prays to the one true God. Yet despite all his good works, and his belief in God, Jesus says that this man was not justified.
Justification is the central doctrine of Christianity. Justification is the article by which the Church stands or falls. Justification was the number one issue in the Reformation. More than indulgences, or the papacy, or monks howling masses for money, justification was the central issue. Take away the Bible’s teaching of justification, and you end up with an entirely different religion.
So what is justification? We can define justification like this: justification is a restoration to a right relationship between two parties who were in conflict. Justification is also making restitution for wrongs that have been done.
But how can that be done? If we are in a conflict, how can we get back to a right relationship? If you’ve done something wrong, how can you make it right? It’s hard enough to fix problems between two people. But the broken relationship here is with God. We have wronged God. How can that ever be made right?
That was the Reformation question, just as it was St. Paul’s question. But I don’t think it resonates with most people today. No one’s looking for a gracious God. Human concerns have shifted, and the temptation is to shift theology with it; or maybe it’s easier to say, Religion should offer new answers since the questions have changed.
I mean really! A God who demands satisfaction? A God who requires payment for sins? Sin?! This is the twenty-first century. Get over it!
But the questions haven’t really changed. We’ve just lost the terminology, the framework to address our ills. It’s like having a pain in your body but not knowing the cause. You know something’s wrong, but you can’t find the remedy until you know precisely what is wrong.
So what are the big problems humanity is facing today? You have the usual problems of war, food, and energy, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine just the current example. But at the risk of oversimplifying, maybe we can just think of two big-ticket items: ecology and tribalism. The fear of global warming is causing governments to implement sweeping changes to transportation and energy sourcing. And our culture is shattering into competing tribes all seeking victimhood status. The world is viewed through the Marxist lens of oppressors and the oppressed. In other words, the world is against us and other people are against us, and the only way it can be fixed is through good works: Buy an electric vehicle, confess your racism, renounce your transphobia, work for social justice.
Social justice. There’s that pesky word. We can’t get away from it. Justice, the same term that gives us justification. It’s still all about restoring wholeness, repairing the damage to world and humanity.
But government can’t solve these problems. Social movements cannot solve these problems. The gods of intersectionality cannot justify. There is no forgiveness there, only judgment and punishment and cancellation.
If we listen to the introduction to today’s Gospel reading again, we’ll see that it’s still quite relevant: “[Jesus] spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous.”
When you get mad about something you see on the telly or social media, isn’t there some self-righteousness lurking there? You’re right, and those rascals are wrong. I’ll send that Tweet to someone else, so the rest of my tribe can know just how wrong these people are!
Repent. You’re the one who trusts in yourself, and think you are righteous. You better make some restitution, make things right with the people who’ve hurt you. And it sure would be nice if the people who broke promises to you would apologize. I want the people who hurt me to acknowledge my pain and try to make amends.
But it can’t be done. The problem is too big. No one can go back and undo everything that he has wrongly or harmfully done. This is easy to see in extreme cases, for example, murder. Restitution is impossible. Once a life is taken, it can never be returned. Or adultery – the act of infidelity cannot be undone. The vow has been broken.
None of our efforts at restitution, no matter how sincere, can ever compensate for the sufferings we have caused. Once a sin has been committed, can you stop the chain of events that it sets into motion?
How much more with God? He made you for a purpose. And you’ve screwed it up, big-time. Do you really think your half-hearted confession and meager offering can make it right?
YHWH is a God of justice. His holiness is all-encompassing. He cannot simply set aside the Law. That’s against His nature. He can’t overlook sin. Theological liberalism tries to pit God’s love and God’s justice against each other. Man likes to imagine that the anger and wrath of God is not real; it’s simply a scarecrow or bogeyman employed by a repressed, antiquated, unenlightened society. But God is angry.
Some would say, “Yes, it is true that we find a God of wrath in the Old Testament; but the New Testament shows us a different God, the God of love.” But a cursory reading of the New Testament shows us a God who cares very much about sin. Rom. 1.18, “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.” And Eph. 5.6, “The wrath of God cometh upon the children of disobedience.”
We can’t work our way out if it. But it’s hard for us to really believe that. Edward Preuss in his classic book on justification wrote, “[Our] Old Adam is so very anxious to drag [in] a little package of merit.” We want to do something to give ourselves the credit, even if the something we do is an act of penance. We want to have a part, we want to be told, “Do this, and you will be saved.” Churches are often judged on the amount of activities they have; we suppose that there must be something good, something meritorious even about all the activity. If we give something back, then we’ll be a good person, we’ll have done our part.
All the business and activities can have their place. But the one thing God really wants is for us to stand still for a moment and become a beggar before God. There’s only one activity that needs to be going on in a church, and it’s what we see in the tax collector: He has nothing to offer; he can only beat his breast and say, “God, be merciful to me a sinner!”
That’s the essence of piety. He does nothing, offers nothing, gives nothing, makes no bargain. He’s the greatest of sinners. And he’s justified by God.
You have heard that Scripture teaches that we are justified “through faith.” What does that mean? Doesn’t the Pharisee have faith in God? He clearly believes in God. But there is a great difference between them in the matter of faith. The Tax Collector’s faith was in the God who freely justifies the sinner. The Pharisee, though he believed in God, did not have that kind of faith, since he did not think he needed any justification. He was good on his own – or so he thought.
What’s the context? These two guys are in the temple, and we can suppose it’s at the time for sacrifice. Why did God established those sacrifices? They were for the forgiveness of sin; they were the means that God had established for restitution; for God cannot and does not overlook sin.
Resurrection Church in Sloviansk, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine. By Dmytro Balkhovitin - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=62296160
We do the same as the tax collector – we look to the sacrifice that takes away sins. Jesus is that restitution. He takes away and pays for our sins. In fact, God’s Word tells us that God “made Him to be sin for us, [He] who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him” [2 Cor. 5.21]. That’s what justification is. Restitution and payment is made by someone else, on our behalf. We could never give the required payment; we could never make restitution. Jesus was without sin, but He took on ours. That is why we sing at every Holy Communion, “O Christ, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”
The tax collector left the temple “justified.” That means God reversed His judgment. When the tax collector came to the temple, he was guilty. God did not set aside the law, but through the sacrifice, God declared that it was fulfilled. It was fully and completely fulfilled when Jesus says at His death, “It is finished.” Sinners are justified. The guilty are innocent. Strangers now become sons of the Father. The prodigal is welcomed home.
The one remaining sin, then, is unbelief – the rejection of God’s gift of justification. Man’s will is so curved in on himself, that he wants nothing to do with the righteousness that comes only from God. It is faith, then, that makes us justified before God, faith like the Tax Collector’s, saying, “God, be merciful to me a sinner.” Faith justifies, not because it is a good work, “but because it lays hold of, and accepts, the merit of Christ in the promise of the Gospel” [FC].
Repent and believe that Gospel. Believe God’s promises to you, and you leave here today the richest man on earth. +INJ+