Introit: Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee - 2
Call to Worship
Good morning! I’m Pastor Ashley. To those here in the sanctuary and those joining us online: we are so glad you’re here!
This morning, we will sing songs of worship, pray together, hear from scripture and one another, as we move toward the pinnacle of our service: the table of our Lord, where we will take the bread and drink the cup in remembrance of our most Gracious Host, Jesus. The purpose of our time together each Sunday is to bring our hearts closer to the heart of God, so I invite you to participate in as much or as little in our prepared liturgy as your spirit is willing.
We welcome all sounds and smells from the youngest to the oldest among us. The Kids Corner is in the back for anyone who needs to move around and play to worship God this morning. There is also a nursery available. We know that the energy and spirit of children can be different than adults and we consider that a gift.
There are information cards in the pew in front of you—if you are a guest, or if you have moved and have not updated your info with the church, please fill it out and drop it in the offering plate when it goes by later in worship.
For those watching online or for those who would like to follow along, our liturgy for every service is posted on our website before the service begins.
We invite you to Sunday School at 10 AM every week. There’s classes that meet in the Seekers room and the Parlor. There is also a combined children and youth class that meets in the MUB. Godly Play meets behind the sanctuary for our younger elementary students.
The Seekers’ Class invites you to game night this Wednesday in the Fellowship Hall at 6:30 pm.
Next Sunday is Children’s Choir!
Mark your calendars for Trunk or Treat on Sunday, October 30 at 5 PM. If you’re interested in helping, please see Becky or Nancy.
We will also have our annual All Saints service on Tuesday, November 1, at 7 pm in the Heritage Building.
And putting this on your radar now: on November 6, we will have a Blessing of the Animals and Stuffed Animals. We will have a pancake breakfast service in the parking lot at 11 AM where you are invited to bring your pets for a blessing. It will be a very abbreviated service, so there will be no need for you to sit through long service wrangling your animals. If you animal does not play or pray well with others, or if they’re too big to transport, I invite you to bring a picture of them for the blessing. Children are invited to bring their favorite stuffed animal for a blessing. All creatures of our God and King are welcome.
If you serve in any capacity on Sunday, I want to draw your attention to the various places the serving calendar for the month is posted: inside the tech booth, on the bulletin board right outside the sanctuary, and in the work room in the office.
Finally, following service, we will have a cookie reception for Gini in the Fellowship Hall.
We continue our October series today called Let Me Tell You a Story: Jesus Stories from Luke.
Let’s pray to turn our hearts toward God for this hour.
Spirit of truth, open to us the scriptures, speaking your holy word through song, through the bread and cup, and through offering ourselves, and meet us here today in the living Christ. Amen.
Call to Worship: O God of Vision - 288
Litany of Faith
One: You answer us with awesome and righteous deeds, O God of our salvation, O Hope of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest seas.
All: You still the roaring of the seas, the roarings of their waves, and the clamor of the peoples.
One: The whole earth is filled with awe at your wonders; where morning dawns, where evening fades, you call forth songs of joy.
All: You care for the land and water it; you enrich it abundantly.
One: The streams of God are filled with water to provide the people with grain, for so you have ordained it.
All: You crown the year with your goodness, and your paths overflow with plenty.
(From Psalm 65)
Pastoral Prayer
The Lord be with you.
Since this is Gini’s last Sunday with us, I would like to ask her to come to the front of the chancel.
We first want to cover you with a prayer shawl knit by Sharon.
And now I invite anyone who would like to, to come and lay hands on her as we pray a prayer of blessing over her. Gentle touch, please. If you’re at home watching, I invite you to stretch out a hand toward your computer.
Join me in prayer.
Most Holy One, you have called us into being through love. You have joined us to one another in love, and we experience and love you best when we are in community together.
And even so, we are always saying goodbye to our beloveds. For everything there is a season, the writer of Ecclesiastes tells us. A time to welcome in and a time to send out. And though this ritual of goodbye becomes familiar, it does not get easier.
Holy One, we give thanks for Gini and the gifts she has offered the Body of Christ in this specific iteration at Azle Christian Church. We thank you for all that we have done and learned and shared together, for the way that we have been changed by her presence among us.
You have now called Gini to a new adventure. We are sad to let go, but we recognize that just as she has been your gift to us, so now she goes as a gift to others.
We pray for Gini as she explores and clarifies the call that takes her onward from here. May she grow in your grace and in the knowledge of your love, so that she may be a blessing to many.
Grant Gini the strength to carry your blessing from this place to the next. May she be at home in any place, for all the earth is yours. And may she remember always the love here that sends her out.
Grant Gini a deeper fullness of being and spirit, by carrying our memory with her in this next chapter of her life.
We pray for the community to which she goes, that they will value her, support her, learn from her, and encourage her. We pray for ourselves as we stay, that you will keep us faithful to the vision we have shared.
As we part, we reaffirm that it has been your Spirit who brought us together in the first place, your Spirit who has enlivened our fellowship; your Spirit who goes with Gini and your Spirit who stays with us; Your Spirit who keeps us all together somehow in the worldwide family of your church. Thanks be to God.
We pray this blessing in the name of the one whom we cannot keep but who is our eternal keeper, our brother and redeemer Jesus, who taught us to pray….
Our Father, who art in heaven
Hallowed be Thy name
Thy Kingdom come
Thy will be done
On earth as it is in heaven
Give us this day our daily bread
And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors
And lead us not into temptation
But deliver us from evil
For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever.
Amen.
Nicole: presents gift to Gini on behalf of ACC
After Prayer: Nearer, My God, to Thee - 577 v 1
Children’s Moment
Anthem: Beloved - ACC Choir
Sermon
Luke 18:9-14
He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ 13 But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ 14 I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other, for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”
This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.
I have to tell you something that I’m not supposed to. A trap has been laid for us today in this parable. I wonder if you see it already. For dramatic effect, it would be better if I did not tell you that there was a trap waiting for you, but I am betting on the fact that you’ll either forget about the trap or you’ll walk right into anyway. I did.
So, against all conventional wisdom, I’m letting you know: there’s a trap. Watch out. But also, don’t feel too bad if you find yourselves caught in it.
In today’s text, we have another parable. This parable follows the one we heard last week about the persistent widow and the unjust judge. And just like the gospel writer did with last week’s parable, he frames the story, giving us the inscrutable motives of Jesus, before telling us the actual parable. He says that Jesus told this parable to those “who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.”
Who do you think Luke was talking about? To me, that qualification before the story feels a little gossipy, a little petty. There’s absolutely pettiness in the Bible. If you don’t believe me, here’s an example.
In the gospel of John, when the disciples find out that Jesus has been resurrected, the gospel writer, which we are told is John, tells us that both Peter and John ran toward the tomb. And then the gospel notes that John outran Peter and beat him to the tomb. He literally wrote in his gospel, what we consider sacred scripture today, in the account of the greatest miracle of humankind, that he can run faster than another disciple.
The Bible can be petty, y’all. It’s so good.
Anyway, Luke is side-eyeing somebody and says, “This is why Jesus told this parable…because of you jokers.”
So in the story, there are two men at the temple: a Pharisee and a tax collector.
The Pharisee, stands by himself, and prays, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, and even like this tax collector.” He goes on to tell God about his piety: he fasts more than he is supposed to, he gives more of his income than is called for.
And then there’s the tax collector, and he stands off by himself as well. And he beats his chest and says, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”
And then Jesus ends the parable by saying that the tax collector went home justified. And he concludes presumably with a saying we have heard in other places in scripture: “all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”
This seems like a straightforward lesson. It’s more of a fable, really, than a parable.
Don’t be full of yourself, don’t judge others. You don’t know their heart. This downtrodden outcast asked for mercy rather than listed his accomplishments. He focused on his own shortcomings rather than naming those of others.
I mean, this is like Christianity 101, right?
Hilarious that this is even labeled a parable. It’s more of an extended proverb. Don’t be like the Pharisee. Be more like the tax collector.
I could end the sermon right here.
In fact, I’ll just end us with a prayer, “God, we thank you that we are not like the Pharisee. Amen.”
Ooh. Did you feel it? Did you feel the trap close in around you as it snapped shut?
Let’s retrace our steps, shall we?
In our traditional understanding of the parable, in the classic interpretation of it, how most of us have always heard it told, the Pharisee is the bad guy. The tax collector is the good guy. The saint is the sinner, the sinner is the saint. Be like the tax collector, not like the Pharisee.
But that interpretation depends on so many assumptions. And you know what they say about assumptions, right? They make an ass out of u and me.
Now, it’s impossible to leave our assumptions at the door. We read the Bible subjectively. Even those who say they read it objectively, read it subjectively. We are all operating out of our own lived experience, our own inherited history and its interpretation, our own context.
And I want to be clear, it’s not inherently bad to be subjective. What’s bad is when we ignore it or deny it.
But right now, we are going to acknowledge it. That we have some biases that are at play in our interpretation of this parable. And by acknowledging these biases, we will be less likely to stumble over them and run into them. We can perhaps step over them. Or move them aside to get to where we’re going.
So let’s start with the characters themselves.
These two characters have become stock characters in our Christian vernacular. The way that we interpret this story often makes these two caricatures, dependent on stereotypes formed by anti-Jewish and ahistorical understanding.
Let’s start with the Pharisee. Now, I debated changing the language from Pharisee to religious leader in our text today because of the prevalence of anti-Jewish sentiment in Christian interpretation of Scripture. But I didn’t because it’s important that we reckon with Pharisees in particular.
Pharisees have been so demonized in western Christian culture that it’s a synonym for the word hypocrite. But to the Jewish audience of Jesus’ day, and to Jewish people today, Pharisee is not synonymous with hypocrite. To use the word Pharisee in that way is a slur.
It’s not for one-for-one, but it would be helpful for us to think of Pharisees as a denomination or role in the church. Like, we might think of them in the same way we would Presbyterians. Or deacons.
Because do you know what the Pharisees were like to Jesus’ Jewish audience? They were respected teachers. They walked the walk and talked the talk. They had a liberal understanding of Torah, which means our caricature of them as legalistic and exacting is incorrect. Their life’s aim was to make the Torah more relevant to the society of their day.
Now, it’s helpful to remember that all the gospel writers are writing decades after Jesus walked the earth. These are not diaries or ghost-written biographies of Jesus’ life. The gospels have an agenda. One that we buy into, but one that depends on shaping the story in a way that shows us how unique and important Jesus is. And the time in Jerusalem when Jesus was crucified and the events that transpired after were traumatic. We know now thanks to neuroscience and psychology how trauma deeply impacts the brain, memory, and the way one views the world. And indeed, the way that we tell our stories.
Jesus was a good Jewish man. He loved the Torah. He went to temple. He observed the Sabbath. He ate kosher. He loved the God of Abraham. He was Jewish when he was born and he was Jewish when he died, and we owe it to him to give Jewish people in scripture the benefit of the doubt and our most generous interpretation. And that includes listening to Jewish scholars say to us Christians, “Hey! Stop demonizing the Pharisees! They’re part of my ancestry! They were good dudes for the most part! This is who they are. Jesus knew this, too!”
And that’s why it’s so surprising, shocking even, that the Pharisee in this story would be dismissive of others in the community. To the Jewish audience, that behavior is completely out of character.
Think of the most generous and upright person you know. A person that would never in a million years pray a prayer like, “At least I’m not like those people,” and then you hear them pray, “At least I’m not like those people.” This is what’s happening. Our brains should be saying, “Can. Not. Com. Pute.”
And in a traditional interpretation, we criticize the Pharisee for judging the tax collector harshly even though he does not know what is in the tax collector’s heart.
But herein lies the trap.
By participating in the demonization of the Pharisee for doing that, we judge the Pharisee harshly even though we do not know what is in his heart.
Kettle, thy name is pot!
Now let’s talk about the tax collector. Depending on the gospel writer, the tax collector could be sleazy or simply misunderstood. For Christian readers today, the tax collector is lumped in with other people who suffer the stigma of being considered second-class citizens in scripture. Single women. The physically disabled. Foreigners. The homeless and the poor.
But first century Jews would beg to differ. Tax collectors were not powerless outcasts—they were traitors. They were liars. They were corrupt. They were agents of Rome, not agents of God or their fellow Jewish people. Venal, unscrupulous, dishonest. Collaborators with the occupier.
This is part of the scandal of Jesus eating with tax collectors. It’s not that he’s eating with the poor and downtrodden in this case—it’s that he’s eating with traitors. With powerful people who got rich off of others’ suffering. I would be mad at Jesus, too.
The idea that the tax collector could be repentant would have been surprising. Almost as shocking as a Pharisee dismissing his fellow Jewish man.
And so to read this parable as damning the Pharisee and justifying the tax collector is to miss the point. It leads us right into the trap of feeling self-satisfied and self-righteous because we judge one better than the other.
There is a theme here in this parable that shows up in a lot of parables. In the parable of the prodigal son, in the good samaritan’s story, in the parable of the laborers in the vineyard.
In fact, the parable of the laborers in the vineyard is a good story to remember. A landowner goes out early in the morning and hires laborers and agrees to pay them one silver coin. And he goes out again a little later and picks up more laborers, promising them one silver coin. And he does this a couple of times. And then an hour before the work day ends, he goes and picks up more. And at the end of the day, he pays them each a silver coin, as agreed. And those who had been working all day, and had agreed to one silver coin, were upset. Why did those who only worked one hour get the same wage as us, who worked all day?
And the landowner asks a piercing question that haunts me: Are you envious because I’m generous?
And then Jesus ends that parable saying, “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
Where have we heard that idea before? For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.
“Are you envious because I’m generous?” What a sledgehammer of a question.
And it’s even more powerful when we see that in these parables is a beautiful Jewish understanding that we borrow as Christians, and that is the indiscriminate generosity of God.
Now, I haven’t forgotten that the parable says that tax collector went home justified.
So here’s what I mean by the indiscriminate generosity of God.
In Jesus’ religious and cultural world, religious life is a group project. We are all hopefully pulling our own weight, but when we can’t, the goodness of others helps to pull us along. The Pharisee saw his relation to God not because of his good works, but because he was in covenant with God. He’s not doing his good works to earn a reward or get to heaven; he does his good works because that is what he understands God wants him to do.
There are many of us who talk about the duty of faith. We do things because we ought, because we’re Christians, because that’s what it means to follow Jesus.
In the same way, this Pharisee is talking about his tithing and his fasting, revealing that he does more than is expected of him for no one was expected to fast twice a week or tithe that much, because that is what it means to serve the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.
And his going above and beyond is a crucial point. It’s not supposed to tell us that he was feeling high and mighty. It’s to show us that there’s extra, that there’s more than enough righteousness and grace to go around, even for a tax collector.
Now, Jews knew that the God of Israel was maddeningly generous like this, that there was indeed grace enough for the Pharisee and the tax collector. They saw the relationship between these two men. Who did not speak to each other, but who both spoke to God in the same place at the same time. And whose fates were bound up in each other.
The Jewish listeners might not have liked it. But they would see how these two were connected.
They knew that God makes the sun shine on the just and the unjust alike. They knew that God’s generosity allowed for the tax collector to take part in the collective repentance at the Temple, to benefit from the good deeds of the Pharisee. And it allowed for the Pharisee’s uncharacteristic judgment to be subsumed into the tax collector’s own repentance. Justice is not limited here. There is more than enough to go around. The generosity of God is not a zero sum game. It’s loaves and fishes that keep expanding every time you pass it.
So truly, our prayer leaving this parable should not be, “Thank God I’m not like the Pharisee!” But rather, “Thank God we are like the Pharisee and the tax collector.”
Because we are our brother’s and sister’s keeper. We live in a faith community that is a group project. We all have something to give, and sometimes what we have to give is the opportunity for someone else’s righteousness and grace to benefit us.
Ram Dass, the late spiritual teacher, wrote that we’re all just walking each other home.
And I appreciate the tenderness of that idea in the context of this parable. It’s been a parable that we’ve gone to with a red pen, ready to give an F to one of the characters.
But perhaps if we saw it as a reminder that we are all in this together, that we are all helping each other, we might avoid falling into a trap and instead fall into the generosity of grace.
Amen.
After Sermon: Come, Share the Lord - 408
Sharing Our Resources
There are many ways to support and resource the ministries of Azle Christian Church. You can give online on our website, on Venmo, or in the offering plate as the deacons come by during our final song. Don’t forget to drop your notification survey in the plate.
Invitation
If you’d like to become a member of this faith community, or if you’d like to become a disciple of Jesus, please talk with me after service or sometime this week.
Benediction:
Please rise in body or spirit for our benediction, the final song, and the Doxology.
Receive this blessing….
May the peace of Christ go with you
Wherever he may send you
May he guide you the wilderness
May he protect you from the storm.
May he bring you home rejoicing
At the wonders He has shown you
May he bring you home rejoicing
Once again into our doors.
Amen.
Benediction: The Lord Bless You and Keep You - 446
Doxology