From Sunday's Homily
On Sunday, preaching from Luke 18:9-14, I spoke about the fact that God's love and acceptance of us is not something we can earn or work towards. It is a gift freely given. As lovely as that sentiment sounds, it is a difficult truth for many of us, including myself, to accept.
When Jesus proclaims that the remorseful tax collector is the one justified (accepted and held in God's love) for merely expressing his heartfelt truth we might balk at the unfairness. What about doing the right things, being a good person, attending church, volunteering?
God's economy flips all of this upside down. The love and acceptance that God shows to us through the death and resurrection of Jesus tells us we are already saved. There is nothing we can do to earn that.
And it wasn't the tax collector's humility that won him God's favour. Rather, it was his humility that opened the door of his heart to receive what God had already given.
I concluded my homily with this quote from The Rev. Robert F. Capon:
For Jesus came to raise the dead. Not to reform the reformable, not to improve the improvable...as long as you are struggling like the Pharisee to be alive in your own eyes - and to the precise degree that your struggles are for what is holy, just and good - you will resent the apparent indifference to your pains that God shows in making the effortlessness of death the touchstone of your justification. Only when you are finally able, with the publican (tax collector), to admit that you are dead will you be able to stop balking at grace.
It is, admittedly, a terrifying step. You will cry and kick and scream before you take it, because it means putting yourself out of the only game you know. For your comfort though, I can tell you three things. First, it is only one step. Second, it is not a step out of reality into nothing, but a step from fiction into fact. And third, it will make you laugh out loud at how short the trip home was: it wasn't a trip at all; you were already there.
It is from this place of grace, where we stand in freedom, that we express our faith and hope and joy - by doing the right things, engaging in life-giving community and living lives that witness to others the love and grace of Christ.
Dr. Ankelly Armstrong shared this lovely "spoken word" video with me that sums up this teaching beautifully. Enjoy!