Luke 18:9-14 Conversations with God
Have you ever been in a
situation where you overheard a conversation
that was meant for someone else?
I suspect that if we did a
study of this before and after cell phones,
we would discover that we are now overhearing
many more conversations than we used to.
Cell phone conversations take
place everywhere and anywhere.
I go to the grocery store,
and as I push my cart down the frozen food aisle
or bread aisle or whatever,
I’ll walk past someone who is
having this animated conversation
and I think he’s trying to tell me something.
And THEN I realize he’s
having a conversation with someone else on his cell phone. Many of these conversations are not just your
standard
“Hello, how are you
conversations?”
They reveal a lot about
relationships.
Like the conversation Dave
overheard in the airport terminal one time
as a young woman, talking on her cell phone, broke up
with her boyfriend.
This week, I feel like I’ve
been overhearing conversations - but not from cell phones.
I have been living in the
world of the Pharisee and the tax collector
who we heard from in today’s scripture reading.
What we’ve heard is their
conversations with God.
Add to that the worship skit
that Joe and Pam shared with us
about another conversation with God.
Now these conversations were
actually prayers -
but prayer after all, is a conversation with God.
These conversations - these
prayers -
reveal something about us and our relationship with God.
There’s the bargaining prayer
-
“Lord, if you would just do
this for me this one time,
then I promise I will come back to church.”
There’s the begging prayer -
“Please Lord, you know I need this.
Please give it to me.” There’s
the accusatory prayer - “Lord, why did you let this happen to me?”
And there’s the emergency
prayer -
“Lord, I know it’s been a
while since I’ve checked in.
But you see,
there’s something that has come up.”
Now I’m not trying to send
anyone on a guilt trip.
All of us have prayed in all
of these ways at some time or another.
In fact, the psalms are full
of these very types of prayers.
The point is that the way we
pray says something
about who we are and who we think God is.
In today’s scripture reading,
the conversations that we overhear tell us something
about these men and their relationship with God.
The conversations come in the
form of another of Jesus’ parables.
The Greek word for parable
means literally to toss alongside.
So as we hear this parable,
we are invited to make comparison.
At first glance, this one is
easy. Listen to the Pharisee:
“God I thank you than 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.”
And listen to the tax
collector: “God be merciful to me, a
sinner.”
It’s easy to conclude that
the Pharisee is the villain -
proud, self-righteous, self-congratulatory, judgmental,
boasting.
And the tax collector is the
hero - humble, simple, prayerful, repentant, contrite.
None of us want to identify
ourselves with the Pharisee.
We all want to be the tax
collector.
And the end of the parable
seems to confirm our first impressions.
“For all who exalt themselves
will be humbled
and all who humble themselves will be exalted.”
This story tells of a truly
radical reversal that is the core of the Good News:
God loves the sinner. God
justifies even the ungodly.
But wait a minute. Maybe this isn’t so simple.
The Pharisee wasn’t all
bad.
He was doing what was right,
what the law required.
In fact he was going beyond
the law.
He was fasting more than most
righteous people.
He was tithing on everything
-
not just certain agricultural products as laid out in the
law.
Based on his prayer, we know
he was NOT a thief, a rogue, an adulterer, or a cheat.
By all appearances he was the
good guy.
His prayer may have been
offensive, but his life looked good.
And in the same way, the tax
collector wasn’t all good.
He is a Jew, but works for
collecting unfair and burdensome taxes from the Jews,
willing to commit all sorts of fraud to make a profit,
tangled up in corrupt political and economic systems.
He is religiously unclean
because of his contacts with Gentiles.
When it comes to collecting
taxes from the destitute people in his district,
he would have been heartless. He was a traitor to his own people.
His prayer may have been
pleasing, but his life was an offense.
So the question of who’s the
good guy and who’s the bad guy is not quite so clear.
It’s not just a question of
who is proud and who is humble.
In the end, the reason the
tax collector goes home justified - made right -
before God, is because he is totally dependent on God and
God’s grace.
“God be merciful to me a
sinner,” he prays.
God justifies anyone who confesses and relies on
grace.
If we go home today, proud of ourselves because we’re
so humble,
then we haven’t understood grace.
The grace of God is always an unexpected gift.
If we think we are the ones who make grace happen -
then it is no longer grace.
If we think we know who God’s grace is for - then it is no
longer grace.
Grace is all gift. And there is only one response to that gift
of grace.
According to theologian Karl Barth,
“Gratitude is the precise creaturely
counterpart to the grace of God.”
Which
brings us to our stewardship emphasis for this fall,
which we have called “A Season of Gratitude.”
We are going to be focusing
on God’s gracious gifts to us.
I’ll say more about that in a
minute.
But first, let’s be straight
with each other.
When you hear that I am
planning not one -
but four straight weeks of preaching and teaching on
stewardship -
what’s your honest reaction?
Who feels positive about
that? Stick your hand up.
Who feels negative about
that? Raise your hand.
Come on, you can be
honest.
Who is planning on being out
of town?
The ones who are already out
of town can’t even raise their hand for that question.
I want to encourage us to
rethink any negatives we may have about stewardship
because this next few weeks will be a time
NOT to talk about money and
budgets and bottom lines and breaking even.
These next few weeks in
worship we are going to have an opportunity
to grow deeper in our relationship with God.
Because stewardship - just like prayer -
reveals something about our relationship with
God.
When we start taking stewardship seriously,
we start growing deeper in our relationship
with God.
Back to the
theme of our stewardship season.
Notice it’s “A Season of
Gratitude.”
The theme is
Or Reviving
the Church.
Or Striving
for the Future.
It’s not even Pulling
Ourselves Up by the Bootstraps.
That’s because these are NOT
the foundation for growing a church.
The foundation for any church must be gratitude for
God’s grace and love.
So for the next four weeks we
are going to be thankful.
We are going to recognize
God’s gifts to us.
We are going to be grateful
for God’s grace.
That must be the foundation
of our church and of our stewardship.
Because when we live in thanksgiving, we want to
give.
All giving comes from thanksgiving.
When we give to the church,
we are not giving to the budget, to a person, to a
program.
We are ultimately giving as
an act of worship.
We are giving in grateful
thanksgiving that God’s grace is right here.
And we give because we want
to be - we are excited about being -
part of how God is using us to channel that grace to
others.
We are taking some time with
stewardship this fall,
because we want you to have the time to have some
conversations about stewardship. You
may want to talk about stewardship with your spouse or family members,
with your church friends or Sunday School class, with
yourself, and with God.
What might some of these
conversations sound like?
Our conversations with our
husbands or wives might be like this:
“Let’s talk about what we’re
going to commit to the church this year.
Is there a way we can make an
increase?”
Dave and I have come to a place where we tithe but
only because we have had conversations like this over many years.
Our conversations with our
church friends or Sunday School might go like this:
“What does the Bible say
about giving?
How did the early church
manage its money?”
My sense is that the modern
church doesn’t talk too much about
money -
we talk too little
about money.
Our conversations with
ourselves might be about our attitudes.
“Am I really giving my first
fruits to God, or just the leftovers?”
One of the best examples of
what it means to give your first fruits
comes from a friend who remembers her mother writing checks
at the beginning of each month when her father was paid.
The first thing this mother
did was to write four checks -
one for each Sunday of the month - and then stick them in
her Bible.
Then each Sunday, when it was
time for church,
there were the first fruits, ready to give to God’s work in
that church.
Or our conversations with
ourselves might sound something like this:
“Do I really need that new (fill
in the blank) this year?”
Stewardship is not just
giving your 10 percent.
It is what you do with the
other 90 percent.
But most of all, I want us to
have conversations with God.
Prayerful conversations that
might sound like:
“God, guide me into your
decision about my church.”
Or “Lord, help me to
recognize your grace all around and let that guide my giving.”
The amount you commit to giving to our church this next year matters
much less
than the conversation
you’ve had with God to get to that giving decision.
It’s true that there is a lot
to be thankful for here at our church.
This past week I wrote an
article for our church newsletter for November and I ran out of space counting
all the things I’m thankful for here at PCCC.
Our worship
together.
All the children we have
here.
Solid Bible study and Sunday School opportunities.
Strong
music.
Committed
leadership.
Prayer
warriors.
Our strong
outreach.
People who
are stepping up to new responsibilities.
Visitors
and guests each week.
Our pumpkin patch!
But these are just the little
things.
The big gift is God’s grace.
For that we give thanks --
and we are asked to give back. Amen.