Joel 2.23-32; Luke 18.9-14
Good morning and God’s Peace to you …
Today, the second sermon in a three-part series about looking … last week, looking ahead … next week, looking to see … and today, looking within.
Within ourselves … to find something of God … there’s a whole lot to God … we can find God in a whole lotta ways … in the highest mountains, the deepest seas, the sacred traditions of religions all around the world … in our daily walk with life … the laughter of a child, the cry of gull on the morning tide … and in those moments, occasional and often unexpected, when we pay attention to God …
And by attention, I mean something more than asking God for something …
Although that’s part of it … we all ask God for something, much of the time, if and when we pray …
I pray God will keep my children, my granddaughter, my wife … I pray God will give me strength, strength of soul and body, mind and heart, to continue in my work - to be the interim minister for this remarkable church … I pray for friends, family members … I pray for our President and Vice President … I pray for the nation … for the people of Ukraine.
The LORD’s prayer includes personal requests: give us this day our daily bread … forgive us our debts … deliver us from evil … provisions for body and soul …
In the gospel reading today, two men go to the temple to pray.
One man, the religious leader, is frightened … he’s afraid of the truth … maybe he’s afraid of God, too … maybe someone taught him to be afraid … so he pretends … he pretends to be higher than “that man over there.”
A dangerous move … “that man over there” …
Have any of us done that?
I’m quite sure we all have …
It’s a dangerous game to look at others so we don’t have to look too closely at ourselves. By comparison to some, I look pretty darn good … but in just such a move, love cannot abide … I really can’t the other … but blinded by myself.
Perhaps the other man is comparing himself, too … to the religious leader, despairing of ever being so good.
Who are these people?
Jesus chooses well the character of his little tale of two men … a religious leader, a man of importance … well-dressed, I’m sure … respected in the community … people consult him with personal matters, legal questions, and all sorts of things.
The other man, a tax collector, an enforcer, with Roman soldiers to back him up … he collects more than he should, pays off the Romans, and keeps the rest … he’s very well off … with a troubled conscience.
The one boasts … but it sounds hollow, doesn’t it?
The other beats his breast … and Jesus says that man went home justified …
We don’t know how the story ends for either of them … after all, it’s a just story … of two men in prayer … one boasting, because he’s afraid to look within … the other, beating his breast, because he has dared to look within.
Yet, that inward look is essential …
I don’t know about you, but I think I’m both of them … boasting on Monday, beating my breast on Friday … and sometimes both in one day.
None of us are as good as we think we are when the sun shines bright on our work … and none of us are as bad as we think we are when the clouds of doubt and despair hang heavy upon our soul.
In our success, and in our failure, we are what we are … complicated human beings, mostly trying our best to be our best … working hard to make a living, and working hard to make a life.
But of the two men in prayer, Jesus affirms the one who beats his breast and pleads for God’s mercy … it is well that we pay attention to this man … this man walks the healing road … the road that leads to God …
We don’t know how the story turns out … did the tax collector change his life? We don’t know …
Jesus is clear - looking within ourselves may sometimes shock us - evil thoughts and bitter memories … the ill we’ve wished upon others, the lust and desires of our basest instincts … yes, it’s all there, isn’t it? … along with our goodness and tenderness, our skills and abilities, our love and gratitude …
The look within may frighten us, but it’s the beginning of spiritual enlightenment … the look within is the road to God.
I cannot tell you how to find God. No one can.
It’s more mystery than method … more accident than design.
Years ago, at Louisville Theological Seminary … late summer, early fall … from the window of my room, I was able to watch a child chasing cottonwood fluff … fluff blowing in the wind … the child chasing it, running hither, thither and yon, having a good time, and every time her hot little fist closed over a piece of the fluff, the fluff turned into a soggy little blob that fell to the ground when released from her hand.
In the meantime, some of the fluff landed on the child’s head, and there it was … soft, white, gentle … Be still, and know that I am God.
You may hear God today in the sounds of music … in the words of Scripture … even in this sermon …
Maybe in a moment of prayer … a quiet moment later this afternoon … this coming week, who knows? … at work, or stuck on the 210 … a memory comes our way … something tender and sweet, good and profound, maybe something hard and demanding … a flood of thanksgiving … maybe a wave of guilt … it might well be the presence of God, plowing the soil of our soul … inviting us to look within, to see ourselves as honestly as we can …
So we can love all the more, that neither pride nor despair would diminish our care.
Maybe today our soul will sing: to God I belong, forever and a day …
I have strength for the journey …
I will make it by-and-by …
and so will my neighbor …
and all whom I love.
It is well … it is well with my soul.
Hallelujah and Amen!
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