Finding the courage to be You

October 26, 2025

Scriptures: Joel 2:23-32, 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18, Luke 18:9-14

It is both interesting and revealing that Luke starts his passage with the words, “Jesus told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt…”  I say this because I think that to fully understand this parable we need to consider that there may be a difference between our understanding of the word ‘righteous’, and that which Jesus was teaching. And that is because I think when many consider the word ‘righteous’ they think it means how well they are living out their faith life. Not seeing it as necessarily tied in with our relationship with God or others, but rather as a condition of our own souls in relationship to the ‘faith’ we say we follow. 

Unlike the Pharisee in our story, we do not see it as being the same as ‘high self-esteem’ or ‘personal success’, but rather more related to how well we practice our own understanding of what it means to be a Christian. And it is this difference…between our understanding of the word ‘righteous’, and the ways the reading is actually presenting it that may keep us from grasping the meaning of the passage as fully as we might.  

At the heart of this passage it seems that Luke is speaking about how it is we see ourselves, versus how we see others around us, rather than how well we exhibit some sort of personal behavior we think is ‘righteous’. For in fact, if righteousness is solely the result of our own actions, then in fact we have said exactly what the Pharisee was saying.

In truth, being seen as one who is ‘justified’ before God, meaning being seen by God as one who has received, and now acts on God’s free gift of forgiving grace and mercy, as our tax-collector was, has nothing to do with our own ‘righteous’ actions before God, but rather, everything to do with how we view ourselves, and our own worthiness before God. 

Righteousness that leads to justification in the eyes of God is a result of the deep humility and honesty that can only come from standing alone before God as we truly are…complete with all the fullness of our life story, and seeking God’s forgiveness and grace. For like the tax collector in our story, it is only in this sort of searingly honest appraisal of who we are, that we can be set free from false self-worth, and a false sense of some sort of ‘religious entitlement’.

However this sort of ‘honesty before God’ is not easy, it is far more comfortable for us to simply discount the Pharisee’s egotistical rant and vow to become more humble like the tax-collector…to vow to never think or talk in such demeaning ways as the Pharisee…but in doing so, we have in fact already become the Pharisee! For we have set apart the Pharisee as someone we therefore vow not to be like, just as the Pharisee also set apart the tax-collector as someone he was so thankful he felt more worthy than.  In this passage, Jesus has set a trap of sorts, and it is so easy to fall into it.  It is so easy to criticize the Pharisee for his self-congratulation, even as we congratulate ourselves for not being like him! Truly there must be more…another underlying message which Luke is seeking to share with us.

Somewhere I think Luke is coming squarely against our all too common tendency to structure our lives and understanding around a principle or habit of setting up categories or classifications of people into those who are like us, and therefore acceptable, and those who are different, and therefore might either pose a threat, or may not be worthy of our friendship or consideration.  Like the Pharisee, we look around and see ‘difference’…and we let that ‘difference’ be the measure as to who is welcome within our circle and who is not.  

We set up boundaries, which then somehow morph into how we think God feels as well…like the Pharisee we end up setting up our own categories of those ‘whom we are glad we are not like at all, as opposed to others like us those whom we are sure God actually loves’!  However, Luke seems to be saying that those perceptions are not the same as God’s whatsoever. He seems to be telling us that God sees people in ways we may not…that God may not have all of the conditions and filters we have set up in determining who is in and who is out.

A long time ago I came up against this very notion in my own life and by grace was forced to deal with the fact that I was truly very far from ‘righteous’ or ‘holy’ in my innermost being. And by grace alone I came to see that if I was truly honest about myself…if I was willing to be brutally honest, as though looking at myself from a distance, knowing every thought and inclination I had ever had or thought…if I could do that, then what was revealed was mostly a self-absorbed individual who looked to define himself mainly through the accolades and praise of others, when in fact those accolades if sought, were merely shadows to hide behind in an effort to preserve a sense of self that was in truth only self-acceptable and self-pleasing.

To have my life exposed and laid bare on the altar of God was not only tremendously difficult, convicting, and upsetting, it was also liberating in a new challenge it presented to me. A challenge as to how it was I was supposed to conduct my life from that point forward. For no longer could I simultaneously hold a true sense of who I was before God, and still stand in a place of judgement of another for any reason whatsoever, either in terms of how they were seeking to live their lives of faith, or for who I perceived they were. In knowing my true state before God…as one broken and failing in basic goodness on a regular basis, I was therefore dependent upon God for any sense of purpose, or personal value.  

And by grace again, I came to believe that in spite of how I now knew myself to be on the inside, if God felt I was still of potential use in ‘divine purposes’, then that was all I had, all I was, and all I needed. No longer was I allowed to imagine that I was somehow accruing some sort of value or grace which would therefore somehow establish an inner quantity of holiness or goodness through my own actions. Rather, I knew that I was day by day, minute by minute dependent upon the mercy and grace of God to be ‘seen’ as even ‘good’ at all.  I had come to the realization, that seeking to accrue ‘righteous value’ or ‘righteousness’ through my own actions, would only and always lead again into the trap of feeling better than, or more righteous than, or more loved by God than another. I would once again have become the ‘Pharisee’ of our scripture passage.  

Finding the courage to look honestly and deeply at oneself, (and believe me it takes great courage) looking deep inside at one’s words, thoughts and actions regarding how it is we view others in every area of our life, is not only difficult but potentially frightening as well. No one wants to find that they might actually be closer to the tax collector than the Pharisee.  And that is because they do not see the tax-collector as the writer of our passage wanted us to. It was not about the humility of the tax-collector at all, but rather about the state of ‘unworthiness and sinfulness as a person’ which he had come to realize was who he was!  

He was set apart by God as justified, not because he was humble and in such contrast to the Pharisee, but rather because he had come to a place of knowing that as that person…as that sinful and probably in many ways ‘normal’ person, he was fully incapable of receiving grace and blessing from God except through the freely offered grace and love which is our God. He knew that he was not worthy of forgiveness and that he would never be counted as righteous through his own actions, that it was only by grace that he could begin to reorder his life on a pathway of holiness and justice towards others.

So in the end, this scripture presents us with quite a challenge.  It is often neither easy nor even desirable to submit to the task of seeing ourselves, as through the eyes of God.  It takes deep courage to come to know ourselves as unworthy, yet deeply cherished…as petty, yet adored, as divisive and demeaning, yet continuously forgiven…as fully unworthy, and yet joyously and fully declared God’s own.  

However, it is also important to see this as a function of the body of our Lord all together, for it is not just individual righteousness that is needed to bring about the changes our Lord desires, but a commitment to pursue this justice of God together as a people as well.

In his essay titled, “The Politics of Being On The Wrong Side of History, Alistair Roberts points out, ‘we all look forward to a better day…a day in which we will truly be able to live in a just and inherently good society…a time when we will have learned to get along, when there is less strife and an abiding sense of harmony and peace’. And while I speak often of such a time and the need to consider the incoming Kingdom of God which Jesus spoke so often and so forcefully of, I am not sure that we all realize just how much it is upon our shoulders right here to bring it into being. But also, and perhaps even more importantly, how much we will each have to look within and perhaps change some of our core-habits and understandings in order to make that day a reality. 

Truly this is a scripture passage that speaks to the core of who we are, both as individuals, as well as those who together claim to follow after our Lord and Christ. Might we come to find the courage and humility to draw near to God, seeking ever to love one another as he so loves us, and to see every ‘other’ as in fact one of our sisters and brothers…

…it is by grace alone that we are even able to do so…and by grace alone as well, that we surely will be found as those ‘suitable for the work’ in the eyes of our Lord and God…

…amen