It's Me; It's Me; It's Me, Oh Lord ...

A Sermon
Proper 25
Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost
"It's Me; It's Me; It's Me, O Lord ..."
Luke 18: 9 - 14
October 28, 2007

I want to tell you about one of the most incredible statements ever made to me as a pastor. Now, to fully understand the impact this statement had on me, let me give you some background by telling you about Ron and Barbara,



Ron was a guitar player. His was an exceptional talent. One of my friends described Ron, after hearing him play once, as “Roy Clark without the silly grin.” Ron was my friend. And someone like Ron needs a pastor friend. If you have a pastor for a friend there’s someone with connections when the police pick you up for panhandling, petty theft, drunk and disorderly, or such other charge. It’s not that your pastor friend has the pull to get the charges dismissed, but he usually can rescue your bag of “stuff” so you’ll have it when you’re released and you start sleeping again down by the storm drain in the park across the street from your friend’s church.

That was Ron, tall, lean, black, and with long dreadlocks, a perpetual smile and a con man’s ingenuity.



Barbara was Ron’s girlfriend. They were an improbable couple. While Ron was black, tall and lean, Barbara was white, short and a little on the pudgy side. Sometimes the ages of the permanently homeless are hard to determine, but my impression was always that Barbara was at least ten years older than Ron.



Both Ron and Barbara were lost souls. The drugs and the booze that had become their guides into the world of those who lived and tried to survive in the park had destroyed any potential they may once have had. They never complained; they were always cheerful when they were not in jail. They were just poor, homeless, victims to both circumstance and choice.



Neither was considered a fine upstanding citizen.



One day I was changing the sign in front of the church. As I stood there looking up at the letters, trying to work out the spacing of the words to whatever clever saying was going up, Ron and Barbara came up to me.

“Pastor Guy,” Barbara asked. “Did you know Clarence was sleeping on the church porch last night?”



“I did,” I said proudly, just knowing they would rejoice in my extending hospitality to one of their fellow park dwellers? “He asked me if he could stay there because he’d lost his bedroll.”



Ron shook his head slowly from side to side. His lips pursed and a “tsk, tsk” sound came from him. He reached over and placed his arm around my shoulders in a comforting manner. With a voice that reeked of sincerity he said, “Pastor Guy, we don’t need Clarence’s kind at our church.”

What is it about we humans that causes us to look down on other people. Do you ever do that? Have you ever done that in the church? Have you ever looked at the new folks that visit and then start attending and decide they’re just not “our kind?”



Have you ever know a congregation where someone joins and then discovers they were forgotten when the others were asked to be part of the Christmas play?



Have you ever seen someone join the church and wonder to yourself why they’re here, at this church, after all; you’d think they’d be more comfortable among their own?



Maybe you’ve never passed judgment on others. But I must confess I have. I’m not proud of it, but I’ve looked down my snobby nose at other people from time to time. I hate to tell you this but we pastors are really good at this. “Gracious, what in the world was the bishop thinking when he sent him to First Church of the Fat Pay Check?” I hope I’m not the only sinner among my clergy colleagues, but I know I’ve been guilty from time to time of thinking I followed a servant of less ability than I. And, I’ve got to tell you, — just keep this between you and me, okay — that pastor the bishop sent to follow me at those previous churches I've served … well, let’s just say everything has fallen apart since I left.

But, to our credit often when we clergy get these feelings we repent of them.



There’s a wonderful story of the senior minister of the large urban church who walked into the sanctuary one afternoon and quietly knelt at the altar. He began to pray aloud, “Oh, God, I am despicable. I am not worthy of your calling. I am the chief of sinners. I am but a worm.”



The associate pastor happened to be walking through the sanctuary at a time when he overheard the prayer. Impressed by the senior pastor, he, too, knelt at the altar and he began to pray a prayer similar. “Lord, I am not worthy. Lord, I am a sinner. Lord I am a worm. I am less than the lowest. I am nothing”



The church custodian walked through the sanctuary at this time. He heard the two clerics praying. Impressed, he quietly knelt at the altar beside them. “Lord,” he prayed, “you know what a sinner I am. Have mercy on me, Lord. I am nothing.”

The associate pastor, hearing the custodian’s prayer, nudged the senior pastor with his elbow and whispered, “Look who thinks he’s nothing.”



Why are we like that? What is it that causes us to take such a judgmental attitude? Why do we think ourselves so often as better than others?



We read this story of Jesus today and it is not hard to find ourselves in it. Dr. Luke once again this Sunday helps us out with the meaning of the story. He tells us to whom Jesus is talking. “To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable.”



There are two characters in the story. Both characters, as we are, are in church. One of the characters thanks God he is not like the sinners—the robbers, the evildoers, the adulterers. The second character, the tax collector, the worst of the worst in Hebrew society, beats his breast and cries to heaven, “Lord have mercy on me, a sinner.”

Where are you in this story? I sure don’t have trouble finding myself.



Gregory Peck once was waiting for a table at a famous restaurant. He had a friend with him. The friend began to get a bit impatient. It seemed none of the diners appeared to have the least concern for those who were waiting. They took their time eating. The friend said to Peck, “Why don’t you tell the maitre d’ who you are?” Gregory Peck responded, “If you have to tell them you’re famous; you’re not.”

We could all use that test on ourselves. If we have to tell folks we’re followers of Jesus Christ; if we have to tell folks we love our neighbor as Christ taught us; if we have to tell people that we are saints; we’re not. And if we’re not then we should fall on our knees and ask God’s mercy on who we are. We should ask God’s mercy because we know who we are; don’t we?



What was it about Ron and Barbara that morning that caused them to walk up from that park and inform me another homeless drunk, down on his luck, victim of choice and circumstance, as were they, was not good enough for the church?



What causes us when we have the opportunity of making people feel accepted, one of the group, a child of God over whom we rejoice, choose instead to isolate them as we focus on our own?



Where in the world did we get this idea that we are not like others? We are. We are just like them.

The night before the admonition I received from Ron and Barbara, each of them had been searching for the bottom of a bottle of Wild Turkey. And each of them had discovered it.



But Ron and Barbara woke up the next morning to discover Clarence on the porch of their church and immediately they felt the need to rid the church of that kind of sinner.



Is that what the church does to us? Is it the church that makes us stand in judgment? Or is it our own sinful nature?



Later that year the snows came. It was brutally cold in the park. Limbs were snapping from large trees because of the weight of the ice. We opened the doors of the church that night to let the park’s homeless sleep in the fellowship hall. They came, dozens of them, and among them were Ron, Barbara and Clarence, all finding rest within the bosom of their Lord.



Two people came to church today. One was you. One was — you know — that other person. Both prayed to God.

What was your prayer?

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Comments

[Anonymous Visitor]

Praise be to God.