Luke 18:9-14
“But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’” (Luke 18:13)
It’s hard to think of a better passage to read on Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent, than this parable from Luke’s gospel. Two men go up to pray and it is the sinner that is lauded for his prayers, not the righteous man. It is just such an archetypal story for Jesus that we’re hardly even surprised by the conclusion. It is David over Goliath. It is “blessed are those who mourn.” It is finding eternal life through Jesus’ death. None of it make intuitive sense and yet it is all part of the essential logic of God (or, if you will, the “theologic”).
Yet as (blessedly) predictable as this story is, what it doesn’t do is tell us what the Pharisee could’ve done differently. To be clear, Jesus doesn’t – at least in this instance – present this Pharisee as being a liar or a hypocrite. In fact, all those good things the Pharisee does are true and should be the sort of good things everyone does. I mean, the tax collector could learn a thing or two. No, it isn’t that the Pharisee is a bad guy, but rather that he demands to be known – even by God! – based upon his own self-righteousness. In humbling himself, the tax collector realizes that if he is to be known by God in a favorable way, it will only be because God gifts him a righteousness that is not his own.
And that’s what Lent is all about. As we’ll explore in even greater detail at our Ash Wednesday worship service tonight, Lent is a time to expose and express our shortcomings, failures, and sins. It is a time to be known in our need and not in our strength. It is a time to embrace vulnerability rather than exercise strength. And that’s because this entire season is leading up to a Cross – an instrument of capital punishment, a sign of the strength of the worldly empires – and we are going to have to trust that God’s graciousness is larger than the empire’s might. It is, of course, a trust that we’ve already had affirmed in us through Jesus’ resurrection and so, we should be all the more eager to present our lowliness to God and trust the rest to Him.
I hope you can tune into the Ash Wednesday service for further instruction on how to come vulnerably before the Lord and seek His blessing. Amen.
