“The Jesus Connection”

“The Jesus Connection”

Text: Luke 18:9-14

© October 28, 2007 by C. Edward Bowen at Crafton United Presbyterian Church.

Mahatma Gandhi, as you’re probably aware, was a major figure in the history of India. Back in the first half of the twentieth century, Gandhi was a national leader when it came to bringing help to the poor, bringing rights to women, and eventually bringing freedom to the whole country when he succeeded in convincing the British to leave and end their rule in India. Gandhi, you might say, was a real mover-and-shaker.

But even though Gandhi was probably the most famous and most powerful man in his country, when he traveled – and he traveled a lot all over India – he never went first class. Instead, he insisted on riding in the cheapest section on the trains, what was known as third class. And so that meant on his journeys he could sit for hours elbow to elbow on hard benches, surrounded by noisy peasants who hadn’t bathed in weeks – and surrounded by their noisy farm animals that they brought with them onto the train, most of whom also hadn’t bathed in weeks. One time a reporter asked Gandhi why he did that, why he rode third class. Gandhi replied, “Because there is no fourth class.”[1]

Why did Gandhi do that? It wasn’t because he was cheap. It wasn’t because he was trying to save money. Because there were many people in India who would have gladly paid the fare for Gandhi to ride in the comfort of first class. No, Gandhi chose to ride third class because he knew it was there he would come into contact with the common people of India, the people he was dedicating his life trying to help. He chose to ride third class because he didn’t want to allow himself to become separated from the people that he cared about.

In the parable that we just listened to from the Gospel of Luke, we met two people – a Pharisee and a tax collector – who, in different ways, found themselves separated from those around them. In the case of the Pharisee, he thought that separation was a great thing. You see, the Pharisees were a religious group in Jesus’ day who were very, very serious about trying to live their lives the way that God wanted them to. Pharisees didn’t just show up in church on Christmas and Easter. No, when it came to their faith, they went all out. They studied the Bible, they prayed, they fasted, they gave – they did it all.

And what’s more, the Pharisees went out of their way to separate themselves from those who didn’t follow in God’s ways. In fact, the word “Pharisee” means “separated one.” And their basic reason for doing that, for separating themselves like that, was because they didn’t want to run the risk of being contaminated by the sins that other people committed. And so that’s why in this parable, when the Pharisee entered the temple, he intentionally stood off by himself to pray.

And as he did that, as he stood separate from everyone else in the temple, he thanked God that he was separate. In essence, he prayed, “Dear God, thank you for making me the special person that I am. I do good things. I follow your law. And I’m so thankful that I’m not like other people, that I’m not like all the other people around me, who are thieves and adulterers. And most of all, I thank you that I’m not like that tax collector over there.”

That desire for people to want to separate themselves from those that they consider to be unclean or unworthy goes back a long way. For instance, back in ancient Greece, in the city of Athens, once each year all the citizens would gather together to decide who, if anyone, needed to be banished for the good of the city. The thinking was that if something bad was happening to the city it was probably because of some sin that someone had committed. And so all the citizens would be given a sea shell or a piece of broken pottery, and they were asked to write on it the name of one person they thought should be forced to leave the city. And if a majority of those ballots named the same person, that person was then forced to leave and separate himself from the rest of the community.[2]

Engaging in that kind of separation, though, thinking that we’re right and perfect and that certain other people need to be separated from us and eliminated from our presence so that we can maintain our purity – that can have a very deadly effect. After all, it was that kind of desire for separation that led to the deaths of more than six million Jewish people during the Holocaust. The German leaders convinced their people that in order to maintain their national pride and their racial purity, they had no choice but to separate out and exterminate the Jews who were in their midst, because according to the German leaders, the Jews were inferior, they were a source of possible “contamination.”

Or more recently, in the 1990s over in African country of Rwanda, the leaders of the Hutu tribe succeeded in getting their people to believe that members of the neighboring tribe, the Tutsis, were “subhuman” and that they needed to do everything in their power to separate them out. And the result of that way of thinking, of course, was that members of the Hutu tribe proceeded to kill hundreds of thousands of their neighbors.

And at times I can’t help but wonder if we’re not that far from engaging in those same kinds of atrocities in our day when it comes to people who are coming into this country from Mexico. When I listen to some of the talk radio shows, and when I read some of the articles that certain people are writing in newspapers, a message I keep hearing over and over again is: “The United States is meant to be a pure country. And if people are different from us in some way, they need to be kept separate from us – no matter what it takes.” And I would predict, although I really hope that I’m wrong, but at some point in the not too distant future we’re going to be hearing about people in this country taking matters into their own hands and killing people because they’re Hispanic. And if we think that sort of thing couldn’t happen here, we’re just kidding ourselves. Because as history shows us, that desire to be separate from other people that we disapprove of can be a powerful force that can lead people to engage in all kinds of unspeakable, horrible acts.

But here in this parable, while the Pharisee was celebrating the way that he separated himself from others, the tax collector, as he was praying, was grieving about the separation that he was experiencing his life. On one level, the tax collector was grieving about the separation that he felt between himself and God because of his sins. And on another level, the tax collector no doubt was also grieving about the separation that he felt between himself and the people around him. You see, a tax collector was not a well-liked person. He was in a position where he was able to take advantage of his neighbors and extort as much tax money from them as he could get his hands on.

But at the end of the parable, Jesus announced that it was the tax collector who went home justified, who went home forgiven. And I believe the reason God looked with favor on the tax collector, and not on the Pharisee, was because it was the tax collector who realized that separation from others is not a good thing. Instead, the goal that God has for us, and the reason Jesus came into the world, is to help us become more connected not only to God, but also to each other.

A week or so ago in the news they reported that conservative, white Vice President Dick Cheney and liberal, black Senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama are related to each other. They’re something like eighth cousins once removed. I think that’s a great modern-day parable. Because it shows us that no matter how different someone else may seem – no matter how different their skin color, no matter how different their politics, no matter how different where they came from – ultimately we are all related to each other. And ultimately it’s God’s great desire that we come to realize that, and learn not to separate ourselves from each other, but learn how to live our lives in connection with each other, in relationship with each other.

So many churches today advertise themselves by boldly declaring what kinds of people they disapprove of. So many churches today advertise themselves by boldly declaring what kinds of people they wouldn’t let in the front door of their buildings. But if we take this parable seriously, as I think we’re supposed to, it would seem to me that it’s not our job to judge other people and try to separate ourselves from them. No, our job is to look to Jesus and to trust that by the power of his amazing grace, we can tear down the walls that divide us, and we can come together to live as the one people that God has made us to be.