Tough Truths Of God’s Justice
Pastor Mathew Magera – 10/23/16 – Sermon 187
St. Thomas Lutheran Church, Trufant, MI
To God be the Glory!
Grace and peace to you from
God our Father, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Here's a scenario for you.
If you had to pick one of the following two people, would you choose a
self-righteous jerk or a law breaking sinner? For the record, I'm not talking
about the election, so don't get excited. Jesus tells us a story of a Pharisee
and a Tax Collector praying in the same temple. One is justified and made
righteous before God while the other is not. But it's the sinful tax collector
that goes away justified not the one who, though makes a very snarky comment in
his prayer, actually follows the law. Why does God act this way? Why does God
not look favorably upon the one who follows the commandments, doesn't steal,
doesn't murder, and doesn’t commit adultery? How can God not see into that and
reward such behavior? You might say because he looked down on the tax
collector. In that case, they are still both sinners. So, why doesn't God
justify them both? We continually find ourselves asking to know more about God
so that we can at least begin to understand his rationality behind his actions.
Why does God act the way He does? Why does he redeem the one and not the other?
There is always a burning
desire to know more about how God works. The problem is that when God chooses
to reveal himself to us in new ways about exactly that, we don't always like
what we hear. What we learn today is how God enacts his divine justice. But
when God reveals this to us, there come some tough truths from it that we may
not like. We may find God being unfair in our understanding and though we may
not like it, my overall point will be that we are still stuck relying on God's
messy justice as our only hope of eternal life.
God Does Not
Owe Us Anything
With that said, one tough
truth to learn about God's justice is that God does not owe us anything. So, we
have this Pharisee going up to the Temple to pray. Now, just looking at this
Pharisee alone we already have some stereotypes coming to play. Notoriously we
know that Jesus tends to portray the Pharisees very negatively, that even
though they are the religious folk they are lacking something so already we are
expecting him to go away empty. Still, this Pharisee goes to pray. He's a
devout guy too. If he speaks the truth when he prays this guy doesn't steal, he
doesn't murder, he doesn't commit adultery, he doesn't even covet his
neighbor's money as he puts it, "thank you that I am not like this tax
collector." Aside from this snarky comment, this Pharisee doesn't have
nearly an ounce of sin on him. He fasts twice a week and he tithes. This is the
religious person that everyone strives to be. And here he is in the Temple
praying. For all intents and purposes, this is the good guy in the story. Aside
from his remark about the tax collector, that is, but we're all known to fall
into this small error from time to time.
Yet, it is this Pharisee
that, when leaving, is not justified and made righteous by God. Though, we
never hear him speak after this point, his lenthy prayer of thanks leads us to
believe that what he has done in order to be nearly perfect was quite the
difficult sacrifice to make. And he is even thanking God for it. Thank you that
I am not a lawless person. But, though in such high stature he is sent away
without God's favor.
How much of our offerings,
whether our money, our self, our time, how much of our offerings do we place a
value on that we expect God to repay? How often do we feel that we should be
owed for what we give? How often do we feel that we should be owed for the
sacrifices we make in Jesus' name? God's actions here show us that God does not
owe us anything. We could be the most involved in the church, present at every
church function, we could be the highest giver in the congregation, the hardest
worker, but God does not owe us anything for that. We can't, at the end of the
day, say God I gave a lot for my church today, what do I get for it? Remember
that the Bible says we are saved by grace through faith not by works, that none
may boast. Does God owe us anything from our giving or involvement? Absolutely
not. But we still don't like that answer. We still feel that we need something
for it, if not from God, from our neighbor. We still desire some sort of
compensation for what we do. The Pharisee brought all of his good deeds before
God in prayer and said God, here I am, nearly clean as a whistle and God said I
choose the other guy. It's not something we want to hear but God does not owe
us anything.
Just look at our Old
Testament reading of Cain and Abel. Cain is upset that God favors his brother's
offering over his own. Cain brought the best of what he had. Nothing in that
reading tells us that he brought anything less than his best and when he saw
that Abel's offering of his best was accepted, Cain was naturally led to
believe that God would accept his but not only that, he expected God's
approval. But, though his offering was the same as his brothers, though they
both gave freely to God, though they were equal in all regards, God chose the
other guy. God chose Abel. Cain felt that God owed him something because he
accepted Abel's offering. Cain felt that a reward of God's favor and acceptance
was required but God did not owe him anything. This leads us right into our
next tough truth.
God Calls the
Shots
Not only does God not owe us
anything but our next tough truth to learn about God's justice is that God calls
the shots. Still thinking of Cain and Abel, as an outsider don't we want to
look deeper into the story and come up with an excuse on why God didn't accept
Cain's offering? We might try to justify God's behavior saying that God knew
Cain's evil thoughts before he had them and that Cain had a jealous heart when
he brought his offering. But, the Bible doesn't say that. We're reading into an
idea that isn't even there. Regardless, Cain doesn't like God's answer and Cain
kills his brother as a result. Now, the aftermath of the offering we might see
why God wouldn't want to accept an offering from Cain but now we know the end
of that story. If we read this for the first time and we stopped before we got
to the murder, we would be seriously wondering what the terms were that God
used to decide between one offering over another. The Jewish Law hadn't even
been written yet so there were no laws about sacrifices even. Can we say that
God just liked one and not the other? Is God allowed to do that? Is God allowed
to just say he likes one offering over another, that while they may be equal,
God can choose one just out of His own preference? Whether we say yes or no,
God did it anyway and Cain gets mad.
The point here is that in
God's justice, he calls the shots and he doesn't have to back them up with
reasoning. When it comes to Cain's punishment for killing his brother, we might
internally hope to see an eye for an eye type of punishment as we do throughout
the Old Testament but God doesn't respond in this way. In his disciplining of
Cain, God is actually merciful to Cain. Cain isn't even sorry for what he did
and talks back to God. God has no reason to show mercy but he not only doesn't
take Cain's life but he prohibits anyone else from doing it either. He gets to go
free. Why? Because God calls the shots. I mean, have we ever wondered why Cain
didn't get the death penalty? Perhaps not because we know God is merciful. But,
then if we know that God is merciful and we go back to Jesus' parable and play
the part of the Pharisee who is not shown mercy for not being a murderer, why
isn't God favoring his behavior? Why act one way in one circumstance and a
different way in another? Because God calls the shots? But are we okay with
this? There seems to be nothing to fall back on. Why did God choose to show
mercy on the tax collector and not he Pharisee? Because he asked for it?
Because he said that he was a sinner? It doesn't say but we are tempted to fill
in holes and say any one of those reasons. In the end, all we are left to
believe is that God calls the shots.
The Key To
Righteousness is a Child-like Faith
The last tough truth to
learn about God's justice is that the key to righteousness is a child-like
faith. At the end of the parable comes a small post script that doesn't seem to
fit in at all yet comes with a pretty informative description of God's justice.
In the place we might expect
Jesus to say something like "Go and be like the tax collector" or
something to that effect, we are transitioned to a separate experience of Jesus
and children and, while it seems so unrelated, he says to his disciples
"Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for the
kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly, I tell you, anyone who will not
receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it." We
might tend to romanticize about this event saying that the faith of a child is
something to imitate, that they are innocent, naturally faithful, they believe
what they are told. What I want you to understand is that children in this
society were lower in status than slaves. They were absolutely powerless.
Children had no voice, no self-will. But, not only do we see this powerlessness
in children, here it's not just children that are being brought to Jesus but babies,
infants, the most powerless of the powerless. Luke is really trying to impose a
big point here in describing this saying that not only are children, the most
unimportant human beings in society, going to drive home the point, the lowest
of the lowest, babies, infants are going to make the point. People were
bringing infants to Jesus, carrying them to Jesus. And this is his point. To
receive the blessing of Jesus, these infants were physically unable to come to
him on their own. To receive the kingdom of God like a child, like an infant,
is to realize our powerlessness and to have us brought, carried into God's
kingdom. Jesus says if we cannot accept this, if we cannot accept our
powerlessness, we cannot enter the kingdom. The key to righteousness is a
child-like faith, to accept that we have no power of voice in how God enacts
his justice, but that we are carried by the Holy Spirit into Jesus' arms, the
same Holy Spirit that creates faith in us, the same Holy Spirit that descends
upon us in our Baptism and carries us into a relationship with God, not by any
of our own doing but solely by the grace of God alone.
We are powerless to
determine why God chose Abel's offering over Cain's because it is not our
decision to make. They were both sinners but God made his choice, we could not
make it. We are powerless to determine why God chose the tax collector over the
Pharisee. But what we do know about these choices is that nothing that Abel did
earned God's favor. It wasn't his offering or his thoughts. We know that
nothing that the tax collector did in that Temple that day earned God's favor.
It wasn't his confession, it wasn't his prayer, it wasn't his actions, his
appearance, nothing he did earned God's favor. It was only God who could make
that decision, who could bestow that mercy and favor. If there is anything we
need to hear about God's justice it is this. Nothing we do can earn God's favor
or acceptance. Not our worship attendance, not our tithes or offerings, not our
potluck casseroles, not our quilting skills, not our prayers. Nothing we do can
earn God's favor. It is only when we see our powerlessness to earn anything
from God that we see that we have already been carried into relationship with
him, not by our own doing, but by Jesus' death on the cross.
* * *
So, when we don't understand
why God showed favor to Abel's offering or was merciful to Cain in his
punishment or why God justified the sinner in the Temple, remember that there
was no reason for God to reach out to you and show you mercy on the cross. You
were dead because of sin and by Law we were sentenced to death. You had nothing
to stand on, guilty as charged. But God showed you mercy. In the understanding
of all things right and wrong, the freedom of a convicted thief, murderer,
liar, and adulterer is completely insane. But, there are many things we don't understand
about God's idea of justice. It's true God doesn't owe us anything, we're
sinners. He gets to call the shots. And it's when we are brought powerless to
our knees that we see we must rely on faith to understand the incomprehensible.
God's justice is messy like that for us to understand but thankfully it is God
in control and not any of us. Thank the Lord that God's justice has looked upon
us and called us free, righteous, loved and redeemed, not by anything we do but
by the total and complete grace of God alone in Christ Jesus. You, who are
undeserving, have been set free. Instead of asking why, try saying amen instead
and let God's justice be done to you in Christ our Lord. To God be the glory,
now and always. Amen.