(Not) All About Me
Luke 18:9-14[1]
We all search for
meaning in life in a variety of ways. Many of us center our sense of meaning,
purpose, and belonging in our hopes and dreams. Most of you know that I was
never very close to my parents. Some of you know that life in my childhood home
was more like “All in the Family” than “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Actually,
that’s understating things, but I’m trying to be respectful toward my parents.
As a result, from an early age a big part of my sense of meaning, purpose, and
belonging focused on my “dream” that I would do things “right” with my family.
Of course, in my child’s mind the “dream” I had for my family wasn’t quite
realistic. But more to the point, my “dream” was really all about me.
I think all of us have
some kind of “dream” for our lives. It may be about the “right” career and the
rewards that will bring us. It may be about having a certain lifestyle. Living
in the “right” house, driving the “right” car, having the “right” friends. “Success”
for most of us has a very definite look to it. Often, our dream brings with it
the underlying assumption that we’re going to make the “right” amount of money.
Many of us have hopes and dreams about family, perhaps involving marriage and
children. Of course, life rarely turns out just like we imagine it in our hopes
and dreams. But if we’re completely honest, we’d all have to admit that the
real problem with orienting our lives in this way is that it’s always all about
ourselves.
For many, faith and
church are a part of our “strategy” for achieving those hopes and dreams. We
try to ensure that what we want will come true by saying all the right words
and doing all the right things. That includes how we practice our faith. We go
to church so that we can be confident of going to Heaven when we die. But we
also do so because we hope it will give us some measure of control over the way
our lives turn out. We think that if we go to church, our family will turn out
“right,” our career will be a “success,” and life will go “according to plan.”
But that’s taking faith and church and trying to make it into some kind of
magic way to get all we want in life. And in the end, it’s still all about
ourselves.
In our Gospel lesson
for today, Jesus tells us a story about two men who went up to the Temple to
pray. One man was a Pharisee, and he would have been a respected member of the
community. Pharisees were known for their devotion to studying and obeying
God’s word in all aspects of their lives. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with
obeying God in all aspects of life. But the problem with this Pharisee was that
he was living his life in a manner that was all about himself. If you pay close
attention to his prayer, it’s hard not to think that he was bragging about
himself to God!
The other man was a
tax collector. As such he would have been despised by more than just the
Pharisee. He would have been viewed as a thief and a traitor to his people.
Now, some of us might still think that way about tax collectors, but the
situation in that day and time was different. There were a variety of taxes,
and some of them were collected by people who basically “bid” for the right to do
so. Since it involved paying a fee up front, tax collectors like this man could
keep whatever they could extract from people. It’s not hard to see why the tax
collector would have been viewed as a thief and a traitor by the public.
Two very different men
came to the temple to pray. Both had made their lives all about themselves. The
Pharisee had set out to be seen by others as a respected leader of his
community by following the letter of the law. And all indications are that he
had succeeded in that. For the tax collector, it was about taking the “fast
track” to getting rich. He had thrown honesty and decency to the wind, and was
basically robbing his own people. But for both of these men, the fact that they
were living all about themselves made their success hollow.
Two men came to the
temple to pray. Two men not so different in their attempts to live their lives
all about themselves, although the paths they took were on opposite ends of the
religious and social scale. But I think the real difference was this: one of them
was thoroughly satisfied with the way he lived his life. He was quite convinced
that his life was right and even pleasing to God. The other one came to the
temple not satisfied, or pleased, or confident, but broken. He was so broken
that he wouldn’t even look up and he kept beating his chest in remorse. And
that’s the whole point of the story according to Luke: Jesus “told this parable
to some who trusted in themselves” (Lk 18:9).
That’s one of the most
important choices we have to make in this life. It comes down to whether we put
our trust in ourselves, in our hopes and dreams, and in our own efforts or we
put our trust in God, in his faithfulness, mercy, and love. While the people to
whom Jesus told this story would have expected him to say what a good man the
Pharisee was and what a rotten scoundrel the tax collector was, he shocked
them. Speaking about the tax collector, he said, “I tell you, this man went
down to his home justified rather than the other” (Lk 18:14). Jesus said this
because the tax collector had learned a lesson that’s important for us all.
When we make our lives “all about me,” our hopes and dreams may thrive for a
while, but they will eventually collapse. Only when we base our sense of
meaning, purpose, and belonging on our trust in God do we really find the life
we’re looking for.
That’s the message of
a Bible verse that may be familiar to you: “Trust in the LORD with all your
heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your paths (Prov 3:6-7). I don’t think we set out to
live our lives “all about ourselves.” It kind of sneaks up on us. For some of
us, perhaps our families of origin were such that the only “safe” place we had
was inside our own hearts and minds. And that’s where our hopes and dreams took
root and grew so strong. And so we put our trust in those hopes and dreams
because that’s all we had. For others, we may have noticed that our ideas differed
from most of the ones we heard from other people. And so we began to trust
primarily in our own viewpoints. This process becomes like second nature to us,
and I would say it goes unnoticed. But that’s still a form of making life all
about me. And that’s not what life is all about. It’s all about God, and what
God wants to do in and through us in this world.
[1] ©
2022 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 10/23/2022 for Hickman
Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
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