Several years ago then Iranian
president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited the US to make a speech at the
UN. While there, he made the audacious request to visit Ground
Zero of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center to pay
his respects. This happened during the federal election season
and so the request became fodder for immediate responses from both
the Republican and Democrat presidential candidates. Republican
contender Rudy Giuliani, the mayor of New York on 9/11, said, "Under
no circumstances…This is a man who has made threats against America
and Israel, is harbouring Bin Laden's son and other al-Qaeda leaders,
is shipping arms to Iraqi insurgents and is pursuing the development
of nuclear weapons. Assisting Ahmadinejad in touring Ground Zero –
hallowed ground for all Americans – is outrageous." Another
Republican candidate Mitt Romney said, "Ahmadinejad's shockingly
audacious request should be met with a vehement no. It's
inconceivable that any consideration would be given to the idea of
entertaining the leader of a state sponsor of terror at Ground Zero.
This would deeply offend the sensibilities of Americans from all
corners of our nation. Instead of entertaining Ahmadinejad, we should
be indicting him."
Regardless of your opinion of the
former Iranian president, one cannot help but admit that, considering
the relationship between the two nations and the rhetoric that was
exchanged, President Ahmadinejad’s request to visit Ground Zero is
pretty much off the scale when it comes to audacity. For the
sake of definition, audacity can mean daring to or willingness to
challenge assumptions or conventions and it can also mean showing a
complete lack of respect toward another person. Ahmadinejad
would have seen his request as audacious in the first respect. Most
others took it as the second.
Well, in comparison, this tax
collector coming into the temple in Jerusalem to pray would have
appeared to some as being audacious and the some to whom I refer are
the self-righteous such as this Pharisee who thought of himself as
being righteous and looked with contempt on others such as the tax
collector whom he considered to be unrighteous even wicked. Tax
collectors back then were usually Jewish people appointed by the
Romans to collect taxes for Caesar. They were often quick to
use extortion and always took a little extra for themselves. Most
Jews in Jesus’ day looked upon tax collectors as traitorous scum
who had rejected their Jewish birthright as one of God’s chosen
people for the love of money and power. The Pharisees in
particular would have looked down upon tax collectors because they
believed themselves to be the only people in Israel to be upholding
the righteous requirements of the Law of Moses that came with their
birthright as the chosen people of God. In the eyes of the
Pharisee, this tax collector’s presence in the temple would be akin
to the audacity of President Ahmadinejad should he have gone to
Ground Zero.
But, the presence of the tax collector
in the temple is not where the gross audacity lay in this text.
Rather, it lies in his prayer, his request. We have here
that he prays, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” It is
translated this way because we no longer have the concept in the
English language and in Western culture of what he actually prays.
He is not simply asking God to be merciful to him because he is
a sinner. There is a word in the Greek language “eleeo” which
means to have mercy, but that is not the verb he uses. In fact,
Luke uses that word exclusively for physical healing from diseases.
Lepers and blind people come to Jesus asking for mercy and he heals
them. The tax collector is not asking for a pardon for
conscious sake or for a healing and thus was not asking for mercy.
The tax collector uses a different
verb which we wrongfully translate as mercy. He uses the verb,
“hilaskomai”, which in this sentence would mean “be for me the
sacrifice that removes my sin so that you may show favour or deal
graciously me”. The mercy this tax collector asks for is that
God himself be the sacrifice that atones for his sin so that God can
show him grace. That is one very audacious prayer. Asking,
pleading with, begging God to be his sacrifice. That was unheard of
and indeed would have been considered blasphemous especially from the
mouth of a tax collector. We don’t know why he would ask such
a thing other than that his own sense of sinfulness, of shame, of
having betrayed his birthright was so great that he knew there was
nothing…no lamb, no goat, no bull…that he could bring as a
sacrifice that could reconcile him to God due to the extent of his
wickedness.
Yet, this prayer in all its audacity
is the central message of the Christian faith as we have it in the
Bible. God the Son himself became the man Jesus of Nazareth by
the love and will of God the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit
and has indeed become the sacrifice that atones for all humanity’s
sin so that the Trinity can be gracious with us. The Triune God
of grace has made it so that we can have unhindered access to his
very self through union with Christ Jesus the Son in the Holy Spirit.
Jesus’ death on the cross was truly more than a
mere political tragedy. He was indeed bearing unto death humanity’s
sin in his body so that sin and its stain of shame, guilt, and fear
may be removed so that we can be clean in heart by the free gift
God’s presence with us as the Holy Spirit who brings us together in
reconciling human community.
Saying that Jesus’ death was a
sacrifice is very unpopular these days, actually for the last two
centuries. Modernity in its arrogance dismissed this reality
outright by thinking we are smart enough to know that sacrifice is
not what its ideal of a loving and good god does. Theologians and biblical
scholars began to say that this stuff about sacrifice in the Bible
was just ancient Israelite religion doing what most ancient religions
did; sacrifice something to appease the gods so that they will grant
one's request.
Friedrich Schleiermacher, the father of what we
call Classical Liberalism, replaced sacrifice with experience teaching that if all human beings were honest with themselves they
would realize that they have a feeling naturally within themselves which he
called “absolute dependence” and it is this feeling that proves
that there is a God, but a God which we cannot possibly know. Then
he goes onto say that if we just develop our basic goodness in
prayer, contemplating this feeling of dependence, and living morally
upright lives we will be pleasing to God and will wind up where God
wants us to be. In Schleiermacher’s system sin is simply
being bad and we can overcome it by the act of our will and there is
no such thing as evil.
Classical Liberalism and its secular
brother called Progress ruled the day until WWI when good people
entrenched themselves in the bloodiest war humanity has ever known
and then came Hitler, the Nazi's, and the Holocaust; brutal proof
that we humans are not basically good. We are not righteous in
ourselves as the Pharisees and Liberalism claimed. We humans can not simply
pray and will our sin away. Someone once said that the line
between good and evil runs not between us and them, but right down
the middle of each of us. I agree but I would also argue that the extent of sin
is that that line often seems to disappear in that the good we do can
often have evil effects and so often we must use evil to accomplish
good. When we are honest with ourselves what we find is not
Schleiermacher’s feeling of “absolute dependence”. Rather,
we find that even at our best we are all capable of and have down
some pretty horrendous things. Even when we thought we were
doing good and believed ourselves to be acting according to truth, we
have hurt people gravely. The only way to cure humanity’s disease
of sin is for God to carry out this tax collectors audacious request
and take sin and death unto indeed into himself and and die with it. We
are powerless over sin and death and only a power greater than
ourselves can deliver us. Thus the Trinity has done for his Creation.
Schleiermacher and Modernity made two
grave errors. First, they said God cannot be known. The
true Christian faith says that God can be known, that God has
revealed himself as Trinity by becoming the man Jesus Christ and this
self-revelation continues on by the presence of the Holy Spirit with
us. We know we have met the Holy Spirit when we find ourselves
saying “I have been inexplicably changed and Jesus Christ did it”.
That transformation comes with the experience of knowing God
has forgiven my sin and relieved my guilt, shame, and fear and now I
must live accordingly. As Paul said, "I have been
crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who
lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in
the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me (Gal. 2:20)."
God can be known. Look to and lean into Jesus and you
will see.
Second, the sacrifices in the Old
Testament were not simply something that ancient people did to get a
god on their side. The Old Testament sacrifices pointed forward
to Jesus’ death and resurrection and the gift of the Holy Spirit.
In the Old Testament sin was dealt with by life passing through
death and by being born away unto to death. Several places in the Old
Testament it is written that the life of an animal is in its blood.
On the Day of Atonement they sacrificed to atone for sin.
First, they killed a bull and a goat and took their blood and
sprinkled it all over the priesthood and the temple to cover over and
cleanse away the stain of sin incurred in dealing with people. Then
they took a second goat and the priest laid his hand upon it and
whispered the sins of the people into its ear. It was then led
away and set free as the scapegoat in the wilderness where it would
be devoured.
Jesus Christ is the only human whose
life has passed through death into resurrection and this new life is
being sprinkled around all over creation in the gift of the Holy
Spirit to Christian communities. If you want me to say it
graphically; since the Holy Spirit is with and in us Christians, Christian
churches are to be a puddle of the blood of new life and new creation
covering over the stain of sin which is hidden in everyone.
Furthermore, each of us, because the Holy Spirit has come to
dwell in us, is a sprinkle of that same living blood. Our sins have
been born away and devoured in death by Jesus Christ, our scapegoat.
There is nothing, no sin, no shame, no false pride, no guilt,
no fear, that can separate us from our loving and good God because he
has gotten his hands dirty and dealt with our sin and evil by taking
it upon himself and dying with it that we might be free of it. Sin
and evil are very real and we are all part of it, but God has gotten
his hands dirty and dealt with it once and for all. Friends,
hear this good news: This saying is sure and worthy of full
acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,
that he himself bore our sins in his body on the cross. All who
are in Christ Jesus are new creation. The old life is gone and
a new life has begun. Friends, hear this good news you are forgiven.
This tax collector’s audacious prayer has been answered for
each of us. Rise up and live as the new creation that you are.
The old life only leads to death. Don’t turn your back on
Jesus or dismiss him with modern arrogance for only in him can God be
known. The Triune God of grace has given us more than a
feeling. He has freely given us open access to himself so that
we may truly live and learn to trust him. Friends, come to Jesus and find
your life that is hidden in God with him. Amen.
