Humility: A Meditation on Luke 18

And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted

in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others:

Two men went up into the temple to pray;

the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican.

The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself,

God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are,

extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.

I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.

And the publican, standing afar off,

Would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven,

but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.

I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other:

for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased;

and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.

Humility is not a particular mark of our age, but neither was it in Jesus’ day.  Today as then, people of certain social standing, possessed of certain titles and dignities, make sure that everyone around them is aware of their greatness.  As Americans we don’t tend to use titles of nobility from the old world to segregate ourselves, but find other substitutes that accomplish the same ends.  Our titles of middle, upper, and lower class help separate people from each other based on money; job titles such as white collar and blue collar, executive, director, management, union, labor, and others help divide people based on position; academic titles of degree, field of study, administration, and faculty separate people based prestige of intellectual accomplishment, and the awards they lavish upon each other.  In nearly every field of human endeavor there are titles to distinguish the ones in power from the ones under authority, the ones with wealth and those in poverty, the ones with dignity and those who are despised.  Try as we might, there’s simply no escaping the practical reality in human society that there are those who are exalted and those who are abased.

This rottenness of our fallen human nature which we experience in secular society, often follows us into our houses of worship.  If you’ve never found yourself in a Christian congregation where people with money, power, or various other titles of importance attempt to set themselves up in the church as the voices to which all others must yield, give it time… you’ll find that unsavory situation eventually.  The Church has the same people with the same fallen nature within her walls as secular society does, and it should not surprise us that people with pride and dominance issues seek out positions of authority and power.  It is an old axiom from the ancient world that those least suited to use power well are often most vigorously attracted to it, and those best suited to use power well are often the most resistant to such aspirations.  Something about wealth, power, and prestige pulls out the worst in people, enflaming human pride and prejudice in such a way that suffering and destruction often follow in their wake.  Those with all their titles and positions of dignity come to think of themselves as deserving of their power and accolades, while at the same time believing those under oppression have gotten what they deserve, as well.

As awful as this plays out in secular society, it is far more horrible when festooned before God.  In Jesus’ parable about the Pharisee and Publican, He pulls out the eternal significance of this evil delusion.  The Pharisee would have been a teacher of the Law, having both secular and religious authority.  He had titles, prestige, and honor in abundance.  The Publican was a tax collector, repulsive to his own countrymen because he allied himself with the occupying Romans to fleece taxes from the people… and enrich himself by the same means.  Other than the loathsome power to coerce money from people, the Publican had no prestige, no honor, and no dignity—to the Romans he was still just a Jew, and to the Jews he was traitor.  Both came before God to pray, drawn by His Holy Spirit working through His Word to faith and repentance.  Both had very different experiences.  While the Pharisee brought all his human trinkets of honor before God to justify himself, the Publican brought nothing but contrition—godly sorrow for his sins, born of a desperate hope in both the justice and mercy of God.  Both prayed, and both left the sanctuary, but only the Publican left justified.

Justification, we learn from St. Paul’s exposition of the subject in his various epistles, is to be declared righteous for Christ’s sake alone—a gift of grace and mercy given through faith alone.  No amount of earthly accolades and accomplishments can give a person what they need to be justified on their own, because as fallen creatures we can never be fully righteous before God on our own merits.  Attempting to justify ourselves to God based upon our own works and dignity leads only to the Law’s exposure of our wicked sickness unto death, and the sin which corrupts us to our very core.  Standing before God on the basis of titles, positions, wealth, power, or any other manmade segregation which people delude themselves with, receives from God only condemnation.  For when man appears before God and demands of Him what he has earned and what he deserves, God sadly gives man his just reward:  an eternity of separation in the fires and torments of hell.

On the other hand, the one who appears before God with nothing, knowing himself to be a poor, miserable, fallen sinner, declares before his holy God that he deserves nothing but death and hell.  Such a broken person does not ask of God to receive what he knows is his due, but rather begs for mercy and forgiveness, trusting in the love and compassion of his saving God.  Such brokenness of spirit and faith receives the free gift of God’s grace and forgiveness for the sake of Jesus’ death upon His Cross in the sinner’s stead.  While the unrepentant and unbelieving sinner receives from God only condemnation for his own sake, the repentant and believing sinner receives Justification unto eternal life for Jesus’ sake.  The humility of faith and repentance before God is what brought salvation to the broken hearted Publican, while the hubris of the Pharisee sealed him in judgment.

How does this Word of our Lord reach you today?  Have you puffed yourself up in titles, degrees, and trappings of prestige which you think give you honor and standing before God?  Repent!  Lay your trinkets and baubles down at the feet of Christ your savior, that He might give you the true riches of His mercy and grace.  Are you one of the broken and downtrodden, perhaps the victim of those in power who have abused and spitefully used you, seeking to find vengeance by taking their power and using it against them?  Repent!  Leave the world’s power and strivings for pride to their own destructive ends, and hear Christ call you by faith and repentance into His Kingdom of grace and mercy.  Are you a broken sinner who knows how unholy and unworthy you are, and that you have nothing to bring before God but the prayer of desperate hope which pleads, “God be merciful to me, a sinner”?  Rejoice!  For you have been called by His Word and Spirit to believe the Gospel of forgiveness, life, and salvation which Jesus alone has won for you, and by which Jesus alone declares you justified and righteous in His sight.  However this Word of our Lord finds you this day, let it pierce and destroy your pride, that knowing the depths of your fall before His holy Law, you might know the heights of exaltation in His holy Gospel of grace.  Hear the Word of the Lord, and with a humble and contrite heart, receive the free gift of grace which Jesus brings to heal, restore, and enliven you forever.  Amen.

Perilous Times: A Meditation on 2nd Timothy 3

This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.

For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters,

proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,

Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers,

incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,

Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;

Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof:

from such turn away.

Sometimes the prophetic foresight of Scripture is overwhelming in its contemporary application, and such is the case with the third chapter of St. Paul’s second letter to Timothy.  Nearly 2000 years ago, Paul as an Apostle of Jesus Christ, ordained and set Timothy in charge of a locality of churches, giving him encouragement, challenge, and warnings appropriate to the work that lay before him.  As a young bishop entrusted with the care of souls, Timothy was given by Paul a great deal of practical advice for his vocation, which the Church has benefited from ever since.  For this Sunday’s lectionary readings, the Church turns her eyes and ears to this wisdom once again.

Timothy is warned that despite the nobility and high regard Christ holds for His pastoral office delegated to men, bearing that office in our fallen world would be a path of sacrifice, suffering, and service more akin to Jesus’ path to Calvary than any worldly path to glory.  St. Paul warned the young pastor that not only will his service be hard in the days at hand, but as time wears on, the world will only grow worse in its disregard for Christ and His Gospel.  This worsening of the world, the hardening of its heart against the truth of Christ revealed in Scripture and handed down since the days of Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Moses, would manifest in ever greater public embrace of evil.  Unlike the empty headed theologians of the last century or so, St. Paul does not paint a picture of man’s efforts bringing about the Kingdom of God on earth; rather, it is God who invades this dying world with His Kingdom, preserving it by His Word, and sustaining it against the ever darkening days which culminate in the final apostasy and judgment of all mankind.  St. Paul and all of Scripture warn us that the world is getting worse rather than better, and that the cross to be born as a baptized child of God is only going to get heavier in this world, rather than lighter.

This may seem counter-intuitive, when perusing the progress of history.  From a worldly perspective, we might be tempted to see ourselves at the pinnacle of an evolutionary ladder, building new rungs upon which future generations may climb as they achieve new technological, political, and social goals.  From a human perspective, we see today’s world as ever closer to utopia, with scientists on the verge of producing Artificial Intelligence to rival that of people, medical wonders to cure disease and forestall death, complex energy and utility systems that provide electricity, water, and sanitation to all, military weaponry to quickly obliterate any foe, political alliances aimed at global trade, world peace, and common prosperity. More and more people convince themselves that they have evolved beyond the ancient world’s attachment to gods and myths, and are becoming the gods of their own persons and societies.  These individuals now free from the absolutes of good and evil which flow from an absolute and transcendent God, seek to rebuild the world and redefine everything in their own terms—everything in relation to the pursuit of personal pleasure, losing not only their grasp on God but on philosophy, reason, and even Natural Law.  We find today a world leaning forward into the vortex of disordered passion and unhinged sentimentality, building ever greater technological wonders to prop up the civilization they have dreamt.  No longer content to live upon the shores of the civilizations which gave them birth, they yearn for the horizon of a not too distant shore, where they may be the gods they desire, and fashion the world in the image of their passions.

These are perilous times, indeed.  Throughout history’s ebb and flow, there have been civilizations which rose and fell as they gained or lost their grip on reality.  Regardless of the technological wonders of the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, the greatness of Assyria, Babylon, Greece, and Rome, the various empires of the East and the West, the hearts of fallen man remain the same:  bent on passion and lust, pride and avarice, if they are not curbed or held in check they produce some the darkest and most deadly of times.  In fact, we have the near history of the 20^th century, which shows in startling detail the inability of the technological wonders of the Industrial Revolution to prevent the greatest loss of human life the world had ever known—not wars of religion, but tyrannical aspirations of twisted atheists, who bent the technological wonders of their day to re-craft the world according to their disordered passions.  Hell bent to rebuild the world according to Darwinian, Marxist, and Nietzschean visions of a world without God and beyond good and evil, hundreds of millions of lives were brutally slaughtered to make the foundations of their tyrannical and murderous empires.  These atheists knew well that without God there was nothing left for man but the will to power, and they were quick to seek their place at the top of heaping skulls.  The technological marvels of the 20^th century did not curb the darkness of the human heart, but rather became the mechanized weaponry able to implement those dark passions with every greater brutality.

And now we come to our own age, this burgeoning 21^st century rushing to the end of its second decade.  New voices call for abandoning God in search for a new technological utopia, convinced that the world they will build in their image with these new tools and wonders will be better than the one’s attempted before.  Don’t be naïve—in the hands of those with darkened and fallen hearts, new technological wonders will only help them accelerate the implementation of their disordered passions in ways and rapidity unknown to past generations.  Those who know the end game of atheism know that all which remains without God is the will to power, and those who are ignorant of their ambitions will be made to know them in time, as their wicked power is brought forth to slaughter or enslave them.  As each successive generation has discovered down through the halls of human history, each technological step our race takes is not a step closer to utopia, but a weapon in the hands of evil men who unwittingly strive to bring hell on earth.  The fulfillment of the image of fallen man in the world is not a reflection of the beauty and virtue of heaven, but of the twisted fires of corruption and vice curling around the devil in his eternal prison.

Our minds in proper focue, we are prepared to hear St. Paul’s encouragement and admonition for how to endure this ever darkening world.  The answer is not in human hands, but rather in the pierced hands of Christ—an answer of grace, redemption, and restoration which God works through faith and repentance in His Only Begotten Son.  In Jesus we see the good that the world and all mankind was originally made to be, and in His death we see not only the height of human wickedness but the inexhaustible depths of God’s love and mercy for His creation.  In Jesus’ resurrection we see the first fruits of God’s promise to restore and resurrect His people and His cosmos to the good, the virtue, the beauty of His image.  There in Jesus we find the promise of His abiding Holy Spirit to keep and guard His people in every darkening age, and His assurance that the gates of hell shall not prevail upon His Church.  Not in the technological wonders of man’s fallen intellect, but in the eternal Word and Wisdom of God made flesh, Jesus shows us the beginning, the middle, the fulfillment, and the eternity of His saving love for us.  The salvation, preservation, flourishing, and assurance of mankind is not found in man, but in Jesus Christ alone.

And where does fallen man learn of this saving Jesus but in His Word, the power of the Holy Spirit working through it to give new life by faith through grace in Christ alone?  Thus St. Paul points his young pastor, and all to come after him, to that sure foundation breathed out by God, which has endured the rising and falling of every past age, and which will endure through every age yet to come:

All scripture is given by inspiration of God,

and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction,

 for instruction in righteousness:

That the man of God may be perfect,

throughly furnished unto all good works.

Here is the rest and the assurance of the saints in our age, no matter how dark and perilous it may become, just as it was the rest and assurance of the saints in every age before.  Hear the Word of the Lord come to you this day, breaking through the wicked delusions of fallen men, to declare to you the love and mercy of Almighty God through Jesus Christ His Son.  Hear Him, turn from your evils and the passions of evil men; repent, believe, and live.  Amen.

The Giver and the Gift: A Meditation on Luke 17

And it came to pass, as he went to Jerusalem, that

he passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee.

And as he entered into a certain village, there met

him ten men that were lepers, which stood afar off:

And they lifted up their voices, and said,

Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.

And when he saw them, he said unto them,

Go shew yourselves unto the priests. And it

came to pass, that, as they went, they were cleansed.

 And one of them, when he saw that he was healed,

turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God,

And fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks:

and he was a Samaritan.  And Jesus answering said,

Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine?

There are not found that returned to give glory to

God, save this stranger. And he said unto him,

Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole.

In this short vignette from Luke 17, Jesus’ encounter with these ten lepers reveals something very troubling about human nature.  Leprosy was an umbrella diagnosis with serious physical, social, and religious implications in ancient Israel.  Regardless of which skin ailment or deformation was medically presenting, Mosaic Law prescribed that such people should be segregated (quarantined) away from the community until the priests cleared them to return.  While modern understandings of micro-biology and infectious disease have given us tools for more refined treatment of people with contagious diseases, quarantine is still the method used when dangerous or life threatening diseases appear in populated areas (consider the recent Ebola outbreaks) and infected people are not allowed back into the general population until evaluated by a competent authority and declared “clean.”  For these lepers which Jesus encountered, their disease left them rotting in exile, excluded from their families, their communities, and their places of worship.  When Jesus healed them and sent them to show themselves to the priests, He gave the gift of life and restoration in every facet of their lives.  However long these ten lepers had been in their condition, their ostracization was at an end.

The enormity of the good gift Jesus gave them was apparently enough to make nine of the ten forget the One who gave it to them.  Just one of the ten returned to fall at Jesus’ feet, giving glory and thanks to God for rescuing him from his morbid fate.  Jesus took the moment to teach those around Him, noting to His Jewish disciples that though all ten were cleansed by His miraculous and gracious gift, only one foreigner—a Samaritan, generally loathed by Jews—recognized the Giver of the gift.  Nine Jews who should have known better, taught by the Hebrew Scriptures to reverence their God of grace, healing, and mercy, instead reveled in the gift without regard to the Giver.  Noting the depth of difference between those nine and the thankful Samaritan at His feet, Jesus told the penitent and grateful man, “Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole.”  Something more than leprosy had been healed in that Samaritan, as the gift of grace Jesus offered him was received in faith, raising him up in a new life of love and gratitude for the One who had saved him.  All ten had been healed of their leprosy, having received a great and wonderful gift—but we see only one who received the even greater gift of reconciliation with God by grace through faith in Jesus.

It is worth taking a moment to examine ourselves in light of this teaching moment Jesus offers us.  How many great and wonderful gifts have we received from Almighty God, as individuals, families, communities, a nation, and a world?  Our world is blessed with much abundance, variety, and beauty, set apart from the wasteland expanses of sterile space.  Our nation is blessed with stability and prosperity unrivaled anywhere in the world.  Our communities have running water, electricity, sanitation, schools, and hospitals, so that even our most downtrodden enclaves still fare much better than so much of the rest of the world.  Our families generally dwell in peace, protected by the laws of the land.  As individuals we live as free persons, where everyone can work and learn and make a living for themselves according to their own choice, effort, and competence.  On even the most superficial of examinations, we are blessed—and at a finer point of consideration, every person, no matter how rough or coarse their circumstances, is blessed with life in this world, and the promise of eternal life in the world to come.  All of these gifts, and so many more, come to us freely from the hand of our good and gracious God, whose life and love and mercy He pours out to us through His Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ.

And yet, how many of us become so bedazzled by the gifts, that we forget the Giver of our gifts?  How easy it is to revel in the beauty of nature, the freedoms of our nation, the joys of hearth and home, and our own personal freedom to determine the paths we tread in our lives, and to forget the good and gracious God who gives them all to us by His grace.  As great and wonderful as these gifts are, it is all too easy for us to forget that deep down inside us all is a sinful and fallen nature which before God is sick, diseased, contagious, ostracized, and unable to heal itself.  Deep down inside us all is a dead and dying heart full of pride, malice, lust, covetousness, hatred, and a thousand variations on the evils which enamor us.  Way down deep in places we don’t like to talk about even with our closest friends, we know we’re in desperate need of forgiveness, new life, salvation, and reconciliation with our good and gracious God.  In that dark and diseased recess of our corrupted soul, we know we need Jesus to heal, cleanse, restore, and enliven us again.

Hear Jesus as He calls to you from the pages of His Holy Scriptures, that you might not lose sight of the Giver as you enjoy His good and gracious gifts.  Rejoice in the good creation He has given you, but do not forget the Creator; enjoy the blessings of good government and local community, without forgetting the King of the Universe; embrace the joys of family and friends, yet without forgetting your heavenly Father; give thanks for your life and the freedom you have to live it, while remembering the Author of Life.  And beside all these things, so wondrous and gracious and good, give thanks and glory to Jesus who restores your soul and your eternal fellowship with your good and gracious God through the sacrifice of His Cross.  Return by faith to the feet of Jesus, that you may hear His Word of grace reach into every corner of your being:  Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole.

Amen.