The Unasked Question

The Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost C Wilmington and Trinity Lutheran Church Arnegard & Alexander, North Dakota October 24, 2010 Jeremiah 14:7-10, 19-22 Psalm 84:1-7 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18 Luke 8:9-14

“The Unasked Question”

Greetings to you, greetings on this day that the Lord has made; a day for us to rejoice and be glad. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

“Two men went up to the Temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.” (Luke 18:10) By this time in Jesus’ life his companions would have become accustomed to his use of the Pharisees as examples of a “wrong” righteousness. The real shock would have come in hearing that a “tax collector” went up to the Temple. The hypocrisy of such an event would have stirred the crowd so that it didn’t think to ask an important question

Jesus further stirs up the crowd by the parable’s reversal of fortunes. The Pharisee, a paragon of virtue and filled with righteousness, is not “justified.” Not necessarily self-righteousness, he is thanking God for the blessings he’s received—blessings that define “holiness”—the being “set apart for God.” This “holy” Pharisee is expressing gratitude for his “being different” from the un-holy. The tax collector, on the other hand, is “un-holy” in the sense that he has none of the virtues or righteous practices that set him apart from others and for God. As Jesus tells it, this tax collector is unique in his un-holiness as he cries for mercy and confesses his sin. In a great “reversal” of fortunes, Jesus tells the crowd that the “un-holy” tax collector will go to his home justified and not the “holy” Pharisee.

“For all who exalt themselves will be humbled; but all who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Luke 18:14b) With these words Jesus sets the old Adam and the old Eve busy out-doing one another in “humbling” themselves. And it’s a race. Who can be more humble than the next one? Eventually, the whole purpose is defeated: the old sinner takes pride in being so humble. How do I know? Ole explained to me one day, saying: There I was humble and glad of it, but then I was sad that I was glad that I was humble, then I was glad that I was sad that I was glad that I was humble, then I was sad that I was glad that I was sad that I was glad that I was humble. Yep… that Ole sure nailed what happens when you get “turned in on yourself” in a quest for humility. Jesus, by telling his hearers that “justification” is applied to the humble, could not have “turned them in on themselves” in a more calculated manner.

Jesus’ hearers were so busy looking at themselves and their own status vis-à-vis humility that none of them asked the most important question. The crowd missed it, exegetes have missed it, and you’ve missed it: all—then and now caught by the drama of contrast between the Pharisee and the tax collector. Two men went up to the Temple to pray, only one returned home justified; the other went home merely righteous.

Now, I have to say, I want the Pharisee for my neighbor. In this parable Jesus depicts him as a paragon of virtue. By his own admission he’s not a thief, a violent man, or an adulterer; therefore my property, my person, and my wife would be safe. He’s a religious man, too, with a well-practiced piety; generous with his tithe; and patriotic to boot—that is, he’s not cooperating with those pagan Romans. Yep, the Pharisee would be my choice for a neighbor. In fact, a whole neighborhood of such people would make quite a safe community, one anybody would want to live in.

That’s not necessarily the case for a neighborhood full of tax collectors. I mean, how could you trust one of them as a neighbor? They’re thieves, stealing legitimately maybe, but thieves none-the-less. They’re collaborators, helping impose a military occupation upon their own country. How could they be religious, cooperating with the pagan Romans? Their occupation branded them sinful. Why, if one moved in next door, the whole neighborhood would be devaluated. Yep, I’d rather have the Pharisee for a neighbor than the tax collector.

But Jesus tells the parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.” Two men went up to the Temple to pray, only one returned home justified; the other went home merely righteous. Nobody, nobody asks Jesus the most important question so Jesus has to answer it himself. Immediately upon telling this parable, Jesus must receive or not the little children. Jesus answers then, the unasked question by declaring: “I tell you the truth; whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will never enter it.” (Luke 18:17)

Two men went up to the Temple to pray, only one returned home justified; the other went home merely righteous. The unasked question hanging over that ending is “How did they know?” How did the tax collector know that he went down to his home justified? How did the Pharisee know that he went down to his home merely righteous? The tax collector’s plea, “Lord have mercy!” hangs in the air unanswered; his confessed sinfulness unabsolved. The Pharisee’s prayer of thankfulness elicits no further reward than what he’s already received: virtue and righteousness. How do they know that one is justified and the other is not?

Just looking at them, which would make the better neighbor? Just looking at them, one possesses the righteousness of justification—the other, not. Just looking at them sets us up for the great “reversal” of fortunes: the “un-holy” tax collector goes to his home justified—the “holy” Pharisee, not. So the question hangs there: “How do they know?” The answer is “They don’t know.” They don’t know because they don’t have a preacher.

Two men go up to the Temple to pray… not to find a preacher. Because they don’t find a preacher, neither one of them ever knows justification or righteousness. Because they don’t find a preacher, the sinner never hears a life-restoring word of promise; and the virtuous and righteous one never hears a pretention-destroying word of law. Because they don’t find a preacher, they’re left to themselves and their own humility or lack thereof.

Because nobody asks the question “How do they know,” Jesus has to answer the unasked question: “I tell you the truth; whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will never enter it.” (Luke 18:17) His answer plumbs the depths of the previous parable: it is much, much deeper than the difference between humility and self-righteousness. Plumbing the depths of that parable takes you right to the sheer election of God who declares: “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy! I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” (Romans 9:15) God is the one who chooses. God is the one who decides who is justified and who is not. Nobody, nobody self-selects either by humility or by virtue. Nobody knows by looking who is justified or who is merely righteous. Nobody knows by looking… by looking at themselves… or by looking at others… nobody knows by looking who is one of God’s elect.

For that you have to be told. To be told is to hear a preacher. To hear a preacher is to be like a child always being given an authoritative word of command and promise, of law and gospel. To be like a child is to humbled beneath another’s authority and simply receive what your Lord delivers.

This is what the God who elects and who chooses has to say to you: “Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God Incarnate, was handed over to such as the likes of you and you killed him. But God raised him up from the dead so that the whole world will know that God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Christ. By your baptism into Christ you have been baptized into his death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so too you may live a new life. For, if you have been humbled with him in a death like his, you shall certainly be exalted with him in a resurrection like his!”

You have found a preacher. You are not left to yourselves and your own humility or lack thereof: In the name of Jesus the Christ and your Lord your sins are forgiven. Now, you too, can go down to your home.

The End of Religion

“Capon’s Take On the ‘End of Religion’”

from Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: paradox, outrage, and vindication in the parables of Jesus

by Robert Farrar Capon

Matthew 17:24-27 “The First Parable of Grace”

24When they came to Capernaum, the collectors of the half-shekel tax went up to Peter and said, “Does not your teacher pay the tax?” 25He said, “Yes.” And when he came home, Jesus spoke to him first, saying, “What do you think, Simon? From whom do kings of the earth take toll or tribute? From their sons or from others?” 26And when he said, “From others,” Jesus said to him, “Then the sons are free. 27However, not to give offense to them, go to the sea and cast a hook, and take the first fish that comes up, and when you open its mouth you will find a shekel; take that and give it to them for me and for yourself.”

Capon writes:[1] (footnotes are not in the original)

The general thrust of my treatment of the coin in the fish’s mouth—and especially of Jesus’ words, “then the children are free”—is to interpret the whole passage as a proclamation of the end of religion. To me, the episode says that whatever it was that religion was trying to do (the religion of the temple in particular and, by extension, all religions everywhere) will not be accomplished by religious acts at all but in the mystery of Jesus’ death and resurrection. As I said, that perception seems to have been so liberating to Jesus that he allowed himself the frivolity of this very odd miracle indeed. But beyond that, it is also (or at least it should be) radically liberating to everyone.

The entire human race is profoundly and desperately religious. From the dim beginnings of our history right up to the present day, there is not a man, woman, or child of us who has ever been immune to the temptation to think that the relationship between God and humanity can be repaired from our side, by our efforts. Whether those efforts involve creedal correctness, cultic performances, or ethical achievements—or whether they amount to little more than crassly superstitious behavior—we are all, at some deep level, committed to them. If we are not convinced that God can be conned into being favorable to us by dint of our doctrinal orthodoxy, or chicken sacrifices, or the gritting of our moral teeth, we still have a hard time shaking the belief that stepping over sidewalk cracks, or hanging up the bath towel so the label won’t show, will somehow render the Rule of the Universe kindhearted, softheaded, or both.

But as the Epistle to the Hebrews pointed out long ago, all such behavior is bunk. The blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sins[2], nor can any other religious act do what it sets out to do. Either it is ineffective for its purpose, or the supposedly effective intellectual, spiritual, or moral uprightness it counts on to do the job is simple unavailable. The point is, we haven’t got a card in our hand that can take even a single trick against God. Religion, therefore—despite the correctness of its insistence that something needs to be done about our relationship with God—remains unqualified bad news: it traps us in a game we will always and everywhere lose.

But the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is precisely Good News. It is the announcement, in the death and resurrection of Jesus, that God has simply called off the game—that he has taken all the disasters religion was trying to remedy and, without any recourse to religion at all. Set them to rights by himself. How sad, then, when the church acts as if it is in the religion business rather than in the Gospel-proclaiming business. What a disservice, not only to itself but to a world perpetually sinking in the quagmire of religiosity, when it harps on creed, cult, and conduct as the touchstones of salvation. What a perversion of the truth that sets us free (John 8:32)[3] when it takes the news that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Rom. 5:8)[4], and turns it into a proclamation of God as just one more insufferable bookkeeper.

I realize this is a long fetch from the parable of the coin in the fish’s mouth, but I make no apologies. In fact I end with something even farther fetched. The Messiah whom Jesus’ contemporaries expected—and likewise any and all of the messiahs’ the world has looked to ever since (even, alas, the church’s all-too-often graceless, punishing version of Jesus’ own messiahship)—are like nothing so much a religious versions of “Santa Claus is coming to town.” The words of that dreadful Christmas song sum up perfectly the only kind of messianic behavior the human race, in its self-destructive folly, is prepared to accept: “He’s making a list; he’s checking it twice; he’s going to find out who’s naughty, or nice”—and so on into the dark night of all the tests this naughty world can never pass. For my money, what Jesus senses clearly and for the first time in the coin in the fish’s mouth is that he is not, thank God, Santa Claus. He will come to the world’s sins with no lists to check, no tests to grade, no debts to collect, no scores to settle. He will wipe away the handwriting that was against us and nail it to his cross (Col. 2:14)[5]. He will save, not some minuscule coterie of good little boys and girls with religious money in their piggy banks, but all the stone-broke, deadbeat, overextended children of this world whom he, as the Son of man—the holy Child of God, the Ultimate Big Kid, if you please—will set free in the liberation of his death.

And when he senses that… well, it is simple to laugh. He tacks a “Gone Fishing” sign over the sweatshop of religion, and for the debts of all sinners who ever lived; he provides exact change for free. How nice it would be if the church could only remember to keep itself in on the joke.

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[1] Capon, Robert Farrar, Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: paradox, outrage, and vindication in the parables of Jesus, pp 176-178, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge, U.K., combined edition, 2002

[2] Hebrews 10:4 “For it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins.”

[3] John 8:32 “and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free”

[4] Romans 5:8 “But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us”

[5] Colossians 2:14 “having canceled the bond which stood against us with its legal demands; this he set aside, nailing it to the cross.”

The Devil, the Doctor?

Oh, how little did Luther think of free will?

So little of it that not even the devil had free will but was compelled by God to act against his own interests.

The following is quoted from Steve Hein (the reference is at the end) and presents a snippet of what Steven calls Luther’s De Servo Arbitrio Diaboli, “concerning the unfree will of the

Devil”: against his will, he is forced to proclaim God’s Word.

(quote)

Luther could also refer to the Devil as the Magister conscientiaa—
Master of the conscience. It is odd, notes Oberman, that much of the Luther
revivals in the 19th and early 20th centuries could portray Luther as the great
champion of the conscience over against the powers of this world. Luther
insisted that the Christian conscience be tied to the Word of God. Let it
thereby be imprisoned by God. “The alternative to this ‘prison of God’,”
notes Oberman about Luther, “is not ‘freedom of conscience’ but rather
‘conscience imprisoned by the Devil’, because the conscience—and this is
terrifying even unbearable for the modern ear—is the natural kingdom of the
Devil.”

Luther had one other strange title for the Devil as he considered his

work of tentatio. He called him Doctor Consolatorius—the Doctor of

consolation, which is the honorary title of the Holy Spirit! The Unholy Spirit

comes to us and makes his case in the conscience that by rights we belong to

him. The Hound of Hell … has three throats—sin, the law, and death.21

Our sinfulness, in word and deed, has erected a wall between us and God,

and we are imprisoned behind it. But it is precisely at this point that we have

proof of Christ’s presence and His righteousness. Here we have the

unmistakable sign of being the elect of God—justified, and joined to Christ

by faith. The Devil is not interested in the unbeliever—he has all of them

already. His battle is with those who belong to the “Enemy”; where the

Gospel lives in the heart, where the Word of Christ rules the conscience by

faith. Here is our experiential assurance—and the Devil provides it—that we

really belong to Christ. What comfort! Said Luther, “the fact that the Devil

presses us so hard shows that we are on the right side”.22 Satan attacks the

conscience and afflicts the heart and soul, pointing out our spiritual

poverty—our wretchedness, cowardice, and weakness in fear, love, and

trust. But then, here therefore, are the consolations and comforting signs that

we most assuredly belong to Christ. God enlists the Devil to assure the

Christian of his own election by experiences of the sickness unto death.

This

is Luther’s De Servo Arbitrio Diaboli, “concerning the unfree will of the

Devil”: against his will, he is forced to proclaim God’s Word.

Hein, Steven A., "Tentatio," Lutheran Theological Review, 10 (1997-98), 29-47.