“Get Real”

Luke 18:9-14

October 24, 2004

St. Paul United Methodist Church of Little Rock

I was just wondering. When you pray, especially those parts of your prayers when you are confessing your sins, telling God the things that you have done, do you tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, or do you leave some things out, hoping that God will not have the entire picture? If you do that, then that is kind of crazy. After all, we believe that God knows our thoughts before we think them. Our Bibles tell us that God knows the number of hairs on our heads. And so keeping things from him seems to me, a little crazy. But still, sometimes we do it. Sometimes I do it.

I heard the story of a man who did not do that. He went to a prayer meeting that happened in a church on a Sunday night. You know what a prayer meeting is, don’t you? It is what preachers hold on Sunday evenings when they do not want to preach another sermon. Instead of a worship service, they hold Bible studies and prayer meetings. So there was a prayer meeting at this particular church on a Sunday night. The regulars were there, taking their normal places in the pews. Just after the prayer meeting began, a man slipped in through the back doors and took a place on one of the back pews. Few noticed his presence. He said almost nothing during the Bible study portion of the evening. Near the end of the service, the preacher asked for the prayer concerns of the church. Each week the Sunday night crowd came up with a list. One by one they prayed for those whose names were called out loud. They prayed for the church and it’s ministries. They prayed for the lady up the road whose husband had just died. One of the saints of the church mentioned that she had been to see her just hours ago. They prayed for Cindy’s grandfather who lived in another state. His cancer had returned and Cindy had asked that the church put him on their permanent list. They prayed for Calvin’s grandson who had just been deployed to Iraq. Now that I think about it, most of the ones that they prayed for were not physically there that evening. In fact, the ones that they prayed for were almost never present in the chapel as their names were called.

The man on the back row, the one who had been quiet for an entire hour gathered all of this in. It was obvious that the time of prayer requests was quickly coming to a close. The preacher asked if there were any other concerns on anyone’s hearts. That is when the man on the back stood. Almost everyone knew Bill. He lived in their community. He said, “All of you know that I am not a member of this church. In fact, I almost never go to church. I should change that. But, could you pray for me?” The preacher and the people in that church nodded their heads and then they listened. Bill told about what had happened to him during the past week. On a Friday night, the week before, Bill had too much to drink. His drinking led to an awful argument between he and his wife. Bill admitted that his drinking had become a problem for him and for his marriage. On that night, he and his wife argued. He stormed out of their house with his car keys in one of his hands. He got behind the wheel of his truck and sped off. At an intersection a mile from his house, he ran a stop sign and hit the car of one of his neighbors. It was an awful wreck, totaling both vehicles and breaking the leg of his neighbor. When the police arrived, they gave Bill a Breathalyzer test. When he failed it, they arrested him and took him to jail. Now a week later, he was out of jail, on bail, with a court date looming over his head. The man that he had hit had threatened to sue him. His wife had threatened to divorce him. In front of God and everyone in that church, Bill admitted his sins and his shortcomings. He also admitted that he was scared and embarrassed. He was afraid for his marriage. He was afraid for his job. He was afraid for his problems.

Now obviously Bill had not been to many church prayer meetings. Because if he had, he would have known that these aren’t the kinds of things that you mention at prayer meetings. The rules are that you are not supposed to stand up in front of the entire congregation and confess big and ugly sins. You don’t air dirty laundry, not in the church. In the church, you are supposed to pretend that all is well with your soul. Oh, you admit with everyone else that you are a sinner. What that means is that you accidentally had some cross words or had bad thoughts about someone. But that had been years ago. You had been a saint for years and years. That is how it is supposed to work. Bill did not know that and so he told his whole story. I would like to tell you that the church was great to him. In the moments after his confession, the preacher invited him to come to the front. Along with others, he prayed for him. In the weeks and months that followed, they helped him with his drinking problem. Professional marriage counseling was also provided by the church. And Bill put his life back together. Honesty, friends, is where the spiritual journey begins. Being honest with yourself, with those that you love, and with God is so important.

And in our scripture lesson for this morning, taken from the second part of Luke’s eighteenth chapter, we encounter another man who knew the power of confessed sins. In this story, this parable, Jesus tells that two men went to the Temple to pray. The one who confessed it all was a tax collector. Tax collectors, in Jesus’ day, were famous for being dishonest. We will hear about another tax collector in our sermon for next week. We know something about the profession. In Jesus’ day, the Roman government hired local men to gather the taxes. They were given a bottom line to collect and they did that, but if they wanted to make any money, they were to charge more than the required amount. The problem was that there wasn’t a check and balance system for the collectors. They pretty much did what they wanted to do and were despised for it, and considered traitors by their countrymen. This man makes his way to the temple. As he gets close to the altar, he refuses to look up to God. He is so ashamed of his ways, but he prays. I want you to hear the verse from the New American Standard Bible. There the tax collector prays, as he beats his breast, “God, be merciful to me, the sinner!” Did you catch that. He says that he is the sinner. He says that he is the worse one. He says, in essence, I am the supreme sinner. He thinks this, “I can do this sinning thing better than anyone else!” They are like some of us, who do our very best, who love the Lord Jesus Christ, and try to be who God wants us to be between Sundays. And, for the most part, they were admired. Some in the church even hoped to be like them one day. This particular Pharisee walked into the temple, looked at those in prayer, and then prayed, “God, I thank Thee that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax‑gatherer. 'I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.” Do you understand how good this guy was? The law required that he fast one day a year. He fasted two times a week. That is seven hundred times more than the requirement. The law required that he give a tenth of the grain offering to the church. He gave a tenth of everything that he earned. I don’t mind telling you this friends, this guy was a preacher’s dream. Any preacher would love to have him in his church. He was the kind of guy who you wanted to hand a pledge card. He was the kind of spiritual leader that you wanted to head up one of the important committees. He was the kind of guy that you wanted other people in your church to be like.

But listen to the punch line of the parable. Jesus’ stories always have a punch line. Jesus says that one of those men went home justified. Before we go on, maybe we should define what justified means. I asked that question in our staff meeting the other afternoon, and Margaret Srygley quickly replied, “It means just as if I didn’t sin.” She admitted that it was something that she had learned in a Bible study. Justified means forgiven. Justified means made right with God. Justified means a clean slate in a relationship with God. One went home with that and the other did not. The punch line is that the one who did was a tax collector, a sinner. Now, why was one justified and forgiven while the other was not. It is simple, really. One beat his chest and asked for it. The other simply gave his track record. The Pharisee never asked for forgiveness and so he could not go home with it. Scholars tell us that the words of this parable are the beginning of Paul’s understanding of justification by faith. You remember his words to the Christians in Rome, I hope. There Paul writes, “Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God...”

Now let’s go back to the question that got this sermon started. Why is it that we sometimes keep things from God? Why is it that we leave a detail or two out of the story? After all, aren’t we told at an early age that confession is good for the soul? Sure we are. We know that it is. Among the most important thing for me, as your pastor, is for you to be in a good relationship with God. Somewhere along the journey we think that we are like the tax collector in the story. We are too bad, we have done too many terrible things, to be redeemed and to be in a good relationship with God. The truth is that we are never beyond the grace of God.

The great preacher and teacher of preachers from West Tennessee, Rev. Fred Craddock, tells of a time that he and his wife were vacationing near Gatlinburg, Tennessee. They were in the small community of Crosby. They stopped in at a restaurant for a meal. Just after they sat down, a man came over and joined them at their table. He knew they were vacationing, because he knew everyone in town. He asked, “Where are you all from?” Fred admitted, “We’re from Oklahoma.” He asked, “And what do you do in Oklahoma?” Under his breath Fred was saying, “Leave us alone. We’re on vacation.” But instead he said, “I am a minister.” He paused for a moment, grabbed a chair and sat down. Fred wondered who this man might be. The man said, “I grew up in these mountains. My mother was not married and the whole community knew it. In those days it was a shame and the shame fell on me. Kids said ugly things to me. In my teenage years, I began to attend a little church in the mountains. There was a minister there with a chiseled face, a heavy beard, and a loud voice. His preaching did something for me, so I kept going to the services. I always slipped in right before the preaching began and I left just before he was finished. One day I got caught. I tried to get out of the church, but I couldn’t. I began to panic. Just then I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder. I looked up and the hand that had grabbed me was the preacher’s. I trembled in fear. I knew what he was doing. He was trying to figure out who I belonged to. A moment later he said, “Well, boy, you’re a child of...” He just paused. I knew that it was coming. I knew my feelings would be hurt. But just then he said, “Ah yes, Boy, you are a child of God. Now go out in the world and claim your inheritance!” The man admitted that he left the building a different person, a better person. In fact, he said, “It was the beginning of my life.” Fred was drawn in by such a great story. So he said, “Sir, what is your name?” He said, “It’s Ben Hooper. It’s nice to meet you.” When he left, Fred and his wife remembered how the people of Tennessee, long, long ago, had once elected twice a governor whose name was Ben Hooper.”

Would you go home with this? Being honest with ourselves. Knowing who we are and admitting it is among the most important thing that we do. Now go out and claim your inheritance. Thanks be to God. Amen.

(The story about Ben Hooper can be found in Fred Craddock’s book, Craddock Stories. Available at many bookstores. I purchased mine at the Cokesbury store in Little Rock, Arkansas).