Open to God’s Abundance

Joel 2: 23-29 & Luke 18: 9-14

Roger Lynn

September 22, 2019

(the audio and video for this sermon are unavailable due to technical difficulties)

The two were as different as night and day. The Pharisee had spent his whole life striving to do everything necessary to be in right relationship with God. He took his prayer life so seriously that he fasted twice a week. He took his financial responsibilities so seriously that he gave ten percent of his income to help the poor. He knew the scriptures backwards and forwards. Every action he took was calculated to conform to the law. He had his life together and he knew it.

The tax collector’s life was a different story. He was employed by the Roman government, which was the hated occupying enemy of his people. And his wages were actually obtained by demanding more money from the people than payment of their actual taxes required. In other words, he was a liar and a thief and an enemy collaborator, and he knew it.

The Pharisee was sure he was so good that he didn’t need any help from anyone. The tax collector was sure he was so bad that he was beyond help from anyone. And they were both out of touch with the truth. The Pharisee’s problem was not that he was striving to live a good life. His problem was that he thought living a good life made him self-sufficient and earned him a ticket to heaven. The tax collector’s problem was not that he was making choices which put him at odds with both his people and his values. His problem was that he thought those choices made him a worthless person and earned him a ticket to hell. The truth of the matter is that it isn’t particularly helpful to think of ourselves as either saints or sinners. We are all just human beings who need both God and each other to experience our full potential.

In telling this story, Jesus says that it is the tax collector who went away justified, rather than the Pharisee. That would have been absolutely shocking and scandalous to those who were listening. It takes everything they thought they understood about being in relationship with God and turns it upside down. The radical idea which Jesus sought to communicate with this story is that it isn’t about being “good enough.” On the other hand, it isn’t about being “bad enough” either. It is only about being open to God’s active, abundant, gracious presence in our lives. That, and only that, is what “justifies” us. And even the idea of being justified needs to be clarified. At a basic level, to be justified is to be brought into alignment – to be restored to right relationship. Such a re-alignment of our lives is God’s desire. We don’t have to earn it. We don’t have to be good enough to deserve it. We only have to be open to the possibility.

And there we discover what distinguished the tax collector from the Pharisee. It was not his declaration that he was a sinner. It was his acknowledgment that he needed God’s help. The Pharisee cut himself off from God by his smug, self-sufficient attitude. “I don’t need anyone!” Even God can’t move us unless we are willing to be moved. The tax collector knew perfectly well that he was broken and in need of healing. He understood that something in his life and in the world needed to change. And thus he was open to the powerful, healing, transforming presence of God. In the moment he utters the words, “God, have mercy on me.” it is as if God reaches out, takes him by the hand, lifts him to his feet and says, “Welcome home, you who have always been my beloved. You really don’t need to grovel. Come and be filled with my abundance. It’s time to celebrate!”

This unconditional desire to lift us up into abundance really is at the very heart of who God is. Listen again to how the prophet Joel put it several hundred years before Jesus arrived on the scene. “Then afterward I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old shall dream dreams, and your young shall see visions. Even on the male and female slaves, in those days, I will pour out my spirit.” (Joel 2:28-29) I really love the exuberant excess of this vision of God’s Spirit being poured out. It isn’t being rationed. It isn’t being served up in nice, neat, controlled portions. It is being poured out with complete and wild abandon. And it is being given to everybody. Not just everyone who meets certain requirements. Not just everyone who does the right things or lives the right ways or says the right words or believes the right doctrine. Not just everyone who was born the right gender, or loves the right way, or has the right color skin, or lives in the right country. Just everyone – sons and daughters, young and old, even slaves. If you are human then you are included in this divine exuberance. All that is required is an acknowledgment of our need for such abundance and a willingness to receive it. Because when we let God into our lives – really let God in, deep down in the core of our being – then we begin to discover a new sense of being re-aligned. And such re-alignment brings everything else in our lives into a new kind of perspective. When we remember that we cannot do it on our own, God is right there waiting to empower us to begin living justified lives where we are in alignment with God and with each other.

May God continue to fill all of us with God’s Spirit so that we might be lifted to new life by God’s abundance. Let the healing of the world begin right here, right now, with us, in this moment.