Pleased With Ourselves?
Luke 18:9-14[1]
As you may recall, I’ve spoken occasionally this year about
some of the criticisms of religion. Especially those people who avoid church
use to justify that choice. And you may recall that I’ve mentioned that Luke’s
Gospel, which is the foundation for the Lectionary readings this year, lends
itself to this topic. Like the other Gospel writers, Luke recounts the
conflicts Jesus had with the Jewish religious leaders. Because of this, many
have concluded that the Jewish leaders of that day were just bad people. Beyond
that, some throughout history have used these passages to conclude that all
Jewish people are corrupt. But those who do so read into the Gospels something
that’s not there. To be sure, Jesus exposed the flaws in the Jewish religious
leaders’ traditions and the way they selectively observed them. And they
attacked him for it. Some of them even engineered his death. But that was more
about a grasping for power that is a human trait than anything inherent
to Jewish people.
In fact, if you read the Gospels thoughtfully, you have to
recall that they were not only written to record Jesus’ life and teachings, but
also to instruct early Christian churches about the practice of their faith.
What most Gospel scholars like myself conclude from this is that the attention
paid to the flaws of the Jewish religious leaders was, at least in part, meant
to serve as a warning and even a rebuke to Christian leaders. It’s
likely that Luke, like the other Gospel writers, already saw the same behaviors
emerging in early Christian churches. They called attention to Jesus’ conflicts
with the Jewish religious leaders of his day in order to correct the missteps
of the Christian religious leaders of their day.
I think what we have to acknowledge is that all the
criticisms and shortfalls of religion that we’ve been discussing don’t just
apply to certain groups of (other) people. That would be much too convenient
for all of us. No, the truth of the matter is that all of the flaws in religion
we’ve addressed are pitfalls we all can fall into. “Religion,” as some
theologians like Karl Barth have often pointed out, is a human endeavor. Faith,
on the other hand, can be a spiritual matter, something that God brings about
in and through us. But the ways we express our faith are all inherently human.
And because we are all flawed people, the pitfalls of religion apply to us all.
I wanted to say all of this as part of my sermon today
because it deals with a topic that can potentially be offensive. And I think it’s
important from the outset to recognize that all the pitfalls of religion can
apply to all of us. None of us are immune. I would say that one of the reasons
why some people avoid church is because they have encountered Christians who
are really quite pleased with themselves. Often you see it in a kind of “humble
bragging” about one’s faith and how thankful a person is for the “perfect” life
that God has “blessed” them with. It can come across as a kind of smugly
condescending look, a pity-filled smirk that basically communicates to those
“outside” the church that it’s just too bad they haven’t made all the right
choices (like we have). At times, it can come across as outright arrogance.
Like when someone asks you, “if you died tonight, do you know for sure you
would go to heaven?” The very question assumes that they do! And it
comes across as if they’re assuming the person to whom they ask the question doesn’t!
Our Gospel lesson for today presents us with two men. One man, a Pharisee, would have been a
respected member of the community. He was respected because of his devotion to
studying and obeying God’s word in all aspects of their lives. Now, in and of
itself, that’s what we’re all called to do. But the problem was that this
particular man was very satisfied with himself. I like the way Gene Peterson
puts it in The Message: Jesus told
this parable about some who were “pleased with themselves over their moral
performance” (Lk. 18:9). Judging from his prayer, this fellow was very pleased
with himself. It’s hard not to think that he was bragging about himself to God![2] But
perhaps more importantly, his spiritual arrogance translated into looking down
on the other man who had come to pray as inferior. I would say that’s a clue
that there’s something wrong with his religion. Again, we’re not talking about a
uniquely Jewish problem. It’s a problem we all can have with our religion.
The other man in the Gospel lesson is the exact opposite.
In fact, as a tax collector, he would have been despised by more than just the
Pharisee. He would have been viewed as a traitor to his people and a thief. That’s
because of the way taxes were collected in that day and time. It was an
inherently corrupt system. Whoever was in control gave the right to collect
taxes to the highest bidder. As long as the tax collector paid off his “bid,”
he could keep anything else he could extract from people. And so he would hire
a whole team of people who would work under him, each collecting a portion of
the taxes. And as long as they paid their quota, each of them could keep
whatever they could get. and it’s not hard to imagine why people despised tax
collectors in that day.
Two very different men came to the temple to pray. The one had
become a respected leader of his community by following the letter of the law.
The other had thrown virtue and decency to the wind, and was basically robbing
his own people, taking the fast-track toward getting rich. But the point of the
parable was that the first man was quite convinced that his life was right and
righteous and even pleasing to God. The other man came to the temple not
satisfied, or pleased, but broken.
And 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 surprised them. In fact, he shocked the
living daylights out of 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). That was the exact opposite of what they expected. But he was pointing
them to something important: when we are “pleased” with ourselves and our
religion, it raises a huge red flag regarding the genuineness of our faith.
Biblical faith, the kind of faith that actually makes a difference in our
lives, comes from experiencing the healing power of God’s mercy in response to
our brokenness. And when we experience God’s mercy that way, our faith will
look more like the humility of the tax collector than the smugness of the
Pharisee.
Again, it’s too easy for us to walk away from a parable
like this and think that those silly Pharisees really missed the point of it
all. But the truth is that one man’s self-satisfied arrogance in this story is
there to remind us all that we can fall into the same temptation. There was a
time when I fell into this temptation. Everything in my life was going just the
way I hoped it would. My life was going “according to plan.” A few years later,
it all came crashing down, and it was probably the best thing that ever
happened to me.
There is room in our faith for genuine satisfaction that
comes from looking back over our lives and recognizing how far we’ve come. But
for it to be truly genuine, it will always be mixed with generous helpings of
humility and gratitude. That’s why religious smugness is so offensive. We might
as well be wearing a neon sign that says, “you need God, but I’m doing just
fine!” But the truth is that we all need God as much as anybody else. The truth
is that at the end of the day none of us are really “pulling ourselves up by
our own bootstraps.” We all are who we are only by the grace and mercy of God. And
anyone who truly knows that will never be “pleased” with themselves, in the
smug way that first man in the parable was. Rather, like the other man we will
humbly and gratefully acknowledge that God’s mercy is a gift beyond what we
could ever deserve.
[1] © 2025 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 10/26/2025 for
Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
[2] In
fact, although many English Bibles translate the passage to say that he prayed
“standing by himself,” and many others say that he prayed “with himself,” there
are several that render it with a significant difference: he “stood and prayed
about himself” (Lk 18:11, CEB, NET, NASB). There
is actually a textual variant in the Greek New Testament that alters the word
order to emphasize the latter interpretation.
Cf. Bruce Metzger, A Textual
Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 143. J. A. Fitzmyer, Luke X-XXIV, 1186, differs from the
majority view and supports the variant because it has some of the most
important early witnesses to the text of the New Testament in support.
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