Proper 25 Year C 2025: Luke 18:9-14

I can be an obnoxious person to watch movies with. I have…questions. I look for inconsistencies and plot holes. But I also find joy in spotting any of those things. The more it might seem like I hate a movie, the more I probably like it. I’ve decided I no longer believe in guilty pleasures. I vocally enjoy things that might be objectively bad. One consequence of this is that the more times I’ve seen a movie, the more thoughts I have on it. Because I have two young children, I have watched many children’s movies many times. At one point when watching The Lion King I found myself wondering if a lion could live off of bugs. I was about to Google it when I reminded myself, “Claire, they’re talking lions and you’re having issues with the biology?”

One of the nagging issues I have is in Frozen 2. Elsa is on a journey of self discovery and when she’s receiving answers in the song “Show Yourself”, one of the lines the spirit sings to her is “you are the one you’ve been waiting for”. You are the one you’ve been waiting for. And while I am quite aware of the context of the movie - I’ve seen it several times - with Elsa taking an important place in the world of Frozen, I can’t help but be struck by how…lame of an answer it is. She’s been through all of this, and the only answer is…herself? And I don’t even think it’s the right answer! Without her sister, she’d either still be locked in her room trying to not have feelings or dead. The answer for what we’ve been waiting for is never just ourselves.

Jesus tells today’s parable to, as Luke says, “some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous.” In other words, they were counting on themselves to be just or holy through their own doing. We tend to skip over the audience and jump to the Pharisee and the tax collector, forgetting to whom Jesus is speaking this message. So Jesus tells this story to those who think that they can, through their actions, earn God’s declaration of their righteousness. It is important that we keep this audience in mind as we read the story.

In the text, the Pharisee is not depicted as a hypocrite. Although a bit boastful, he has lived faithful to God’s commandments as he understood them. Is the problem that although he thanks God, he has not shown any need of God or of grace or forgiveness? He might not be a hypocrite, but he seems to show a lack of self awareness. The perfection he finds in himself is certainly problematic. He seems to simply be thanking God as he prays to himself - the phrase in the Greek is similar to a phrase used earlier in Luke to describe a man talking to himself - for making such an amazing person in making…himself. And through the example of the Pharisee, giving thanks for his own supposed righteousness, and the tax collector, who at the very least recognizes his sinfulness, Jesus reminds us that justification - that is, being declared righteous by God - is not ours to earn but rather is God’s to give. 

I don’t want to be the one I’ve been waiting for. I don’t want my righteousness to be dependent on me. And we oftentimes forget what that implies - to be able to earn my salvation means I can lose it. And what does that say about God? That our existence is just a decades long exercise in earning our own salvation without a clear set of rules? Plus, this view of our relationship with God only works if it is a contractual relationship, not covenantal. The distinction is important. In a contractual relationship, the basis is in “I will do this if you will do that” - the if being crucial. It is an exchange. A tit for tat. But in a covenantal relationship, there is a promise of relationship or loyalty, as an “I am yours and you are mine” - not if, but and. More importantly, from the standpoint of our relationship with God, there’s a promise of faithfulness even if the other party fails. God remains faithful to us even when we fail and need to repent and return to the Lord. The word translated as “righteous” in today’s text embraces the whole idea of moral uprightness, judicial equity, and covenant fidelity. Whether applied to God, or Christ, or to redeemed people, it always measures reality against God’s own character and revealed standards.

We pray in the Prayer of Humble Access that “we do not presume to come to this thy table, o merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies.” In praying that prayer we remind ourselves, before we receive the Sacrament of Holy Eucharist which is the repeatable part of our Baptisms, that we are not here because we are great. We are here because God is great. It is not our own righteousness that we trust in, but in the God who makes us righteous before Him.

I also don’t need another human or organization to be the one I’ve been waiting for. We are so hungry for salvation and so afraid to surrender to and trust in God that we are willing to put our entire trust in people. When we trust another person for something as all-consuming as our salvation, when they are to be the shining beacon of righteousness, we will be let down. Or, we’ll wriggle our way around being let down in order to keep that person or ideal on a pedestal, and in so doing we end up worshipping - placing the ultimate value upon - something or someone that is not worthy of our worship and let ourselves, and the values with which we began, down.

Even the church - and I love the church - is not the one we’ve been waiting for. Treating the church as the one we’ve been waiting for is another false god. Viewing any criticism of the church as an attack on Jesus is equating and elevating ourselves, our institutions, to the one who our institution exists to exalt and in so doing cheapens our love for Jesus. Taken to the extreme, it is how abusive people are able to hide from accountability, cloaking their violence in the respectability of the church.

We are blessed to already have the one we’ve been waiting for. While it is true that we are awaiting Jesus’ return - we say in the Nicene Creed “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead” - this is within the context of the rest of our experience of Jesus - where Christ has died and is risen. If any person claims to be the one we’ve been waiting for they are sorely mistaken and we would be wise to beware; they might actually be a narcissist. If a clergy person claims to be the one we’re waiting for, their bishop should be made aware of those claims. The only one we look to as our answer, the only one we are waiting for, the only one we look to for our righteousness, our justification before God, is our crucified and risen Lord. Amen.