The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost | 10/26/2025 | Sermon on Luke 18:9-14 | by Paul Bieber |

Luke 8:9-14 Revised Standard Version

⁹ Jesus told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others: ¹⁰ “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. ¹¹ The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank thee that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. ¹² I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I get.’ ¹³ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’ ¹⁴ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

also

Jeremiah 14:7-10-, 19-22

Psalm 84:1-16

II Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18

HE WENT HOME JUSTIFIED

Grace, peace, and much joy to you, people of God.

Two men went up into the temple to pray, but only one went down to his house justified. What a privilege to be able to go up to the temple to pray. Several of the Psalms are songs of pilgrims going up to Jerusalem, to the temple, but Psalm 84 is one of the most beloved: “They will climb from height to height, and the God of gods will reveal himself in Zion.”

We know the privilege of having a place to lift up our hearts in worship, a place to pray, a place where God will reveal himself to us. Last Sunday we heard Jesus tell a parable to the effect that his followers ought always to pray and not lose heart. In today’s parable two men go up to God’s house, not for formal worship, but for personal prayer. Some of us can remember when church doors were unlocked twenty-four hours a day so that people could do that: come before God’s presence, in God’s house, in personal prayer.

What a contrast between the two men who go up to pray. One is a Pharisee, a serious religious person who values God’s law. Indeed, his religious practices in the areas of fasting and tithing exceed the requirements of the law. These are good devotional practices. In saying that this man did not go down to his house justified, Jesus is not saying that we ought not fast or tithe. He is pointing out the danger of trusting that these practices will make us righteous. He says that this parable is told “to some who trusted in themselves and despised others.”

If I trust that my religious practices make me righteous, then I am self-righteous, and that will lead to contempt for others. And, indeed, this is what we find in the Pharisee’s prayer. His prayer is one of thanksgiving—so far so good—but for what does he thank God? That he is not like others who are, of course, not as righteous as he. Luke Timothy Johnson characterizes this part of the parable as “a portrait of prayer with peripheral vision.”

I cannot lift up my heart to God in prayer even as I run a quick inner comparison of myself and my neighbors, exalting myself with a recital of how good I am in contrast them. Pride and vainglory do not lead me into the relationship with God that prayer is. How can God justify me when I am so sure that my own righteous acts have secured my own self justification?

Two men went up to pray. The other is a tax collector. And you know that this is not a hardworking IRS agent, concerned to make sure that everyone pays his fair share to support our government. Tax collectors in the Roman Empire were “tax farmers”: They contracted with the occupying Romans to collect a certain amount from their neighbors, and their compensation was whatever beyond that amount they could squeeze out of those neighbors. No wonder they were so despised. The one we meet in Luke 19, Zacchaeus, was fabulously wealthy and just as crooked.

The one we meet in today’s parable does not lift up his heart. He comes to pray with downcast eyes. Beating his breast, he pleads for mercy. He doesn’t recite the words of today’s reading from Jeremiah, but something like them is in his heart: Our iniquities testify against us. Our apostasies indeed are many. Yet we set our hope on the God who is in the midst of us.

Aware of his sin, the tax collector pleads for mercy. The word is hiláskomai, asking that the gracious God purge him from sin and expiate its guilt, not éleos, the kindness and compassion for which the lepers prayed in the gospel we heard a couple of weeks ago,  for which we pray in the Kyrie in the Liturgy (kyrie eleison), and to which we ourselves are called in the Parable of the Good Samaritan. The tax collector is praying for the forgiveness of sin that only God can give, for the new life that comes when guilt is taken away by God.

The new life that comes with forgiveness means the death of the old life. The God who justifies the ungodly is the God who raises the dead. When we are afflicted, crushed, despairing, like this tax collector, it is so that, as Paul writes in II Corinthians 1:9, we come to trust not ourselves but God who raises the dead. To say that the tax collector went down to his house justified is to say that he has received God’s forgiveness in faith, in trust. That is a new life.

Receiving a new life, justified, given a righteousness not of his own but that only God can give, what does the tax collector want with his old life? Will he not now seek to bear the fruit of repentance? Not so that he can come back next week like the Pharisee with a list of good deeds, confusing the gift of resurrection with a possession, but to show to God, his neighbors, and himself that he has not believed in vain.

Of course, even in his justified life, the tax collector can find only sin in himself, the sickness unto death. But he can find only grace, mercy, and forgiveness in the God who raises the dead and justifies the ungodly. Having asked for and received mercy he knows he doesn’t deserve, it is just possible that he will not come to treat this gift as his own possession.

Each of us has in us a bit of both of those who went up to pray. We pray that when we come up to the place of prayer we will not be so full of ourselves that we will be unable to receive God’s gift. We pray that we will not treat his gift as our possession, but as a gift we do not deserve, a free gift that cost Jesus his life on the cross.

Then we can give thanks not like the Pharisee but like Paul in our Second Reading. He is coming to the end of a life that has been like a sacrifice, a libation offered to God. As the sacrifice is about to be completed, he likens it to fighting the good fight, to finishing a race. These are images of struggle, not complacency. Paul gives thanks to God for his presence in the struggle and his promise of rescue, as from a lion’s mouth. The focus is on God who strengthened Paul for his task, not on what Paul accomplished. God’s power is made perfect in his servants’ weakness. A paradox.

Jesus ends today’s parable with the same paradox he spoke when commenting in Chapter 14 on the way people scramble over each other for the best seats at a banquet: “every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.” I know that I have the Pharisee in me, but I pray for the honesty to recognize that anything good in me is the gift of God in Jesus Christ, not my doing. There are no healthy ones who need no physician, no sinless ones who need no repentance, no ninety-nine unlost sheep, and no one who has no need to be raised from the dead.

We came up here today to pray. Prayer is faith in action. It is not an exercise to demonstrate our relationship with God. It is that relationship with God. I have to die to my inner Pharisee’s agenda if I am to enjoy that relationship. The Lord will rescue me from my inner Pharisee and save me for his heavenly kingdom. Even now he stands by me and strengthens me as I lift up my heart to pray. “Happy are the people whose strength is in you, whose hearts are set on the pilgrims’ way.” I can make my way home trusting not myself but God who raises the dead.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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The Rev. Dr. Paul Bieber

E-Mail: paul.bieber@sbcglobal.net

Retired Lutheran Pastor

San Diego, California, USA