Luke 18:9-14; 1 Corinthians 15:1-10; Genesis 4:1-15
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus told the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector “to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated others with contempt.” This is a parable of disordered love, of loving the right things in the wrong way. Dante Alighieri, the 14th century Italian poet, wrote of this in The Divine Comedy, specifically in Book One, The Inferno. Disordered love is how Dante describes sin. He assumes that mankind, created in God’s image, was created to love like God. Thus, when we sin, it is not that we don’t love – that’s impossible – but it’s that we love the right things in the wrong way. Take lust for example. Lust is a disordered form of love. When we have lust we have a disordered love for the body, beauty, and sexual intercourse, all of which God created as very good and to be desired, in the right way. Similarly, what is avarice or greed, but a disordered love of the good things God gives to us. Both sins are idolatry, a sin against the First Commandment, because we have loved something or someone before and more than we have loved God.
Trust in ourselves that we are righteous is also disordered love. Our fear, love, and trust are to be in the LORD above all else, even ourselves. That also is a transgression of the First Commandment. God is the creator of all things. God is our creator. He is good and just and righteous, and He is the source, origin, and creator of all things. Therefore, everything that is is in relation to God. If something or someone is good, that goodness must be measured in relation to God’s goodness. Before the Fall, our first parents Adam and Eve were good. God made them to be good, declared them to be good, and they truly were good. All their thoughts and deeds, even their free will, was in alignment with God’s good thoughts, word, and will. The serpent’s temptation was to think and to act according to a different word and will. A different word and will. Take note of that! God created Adam and Eve and gave them free will, but what would it mean for them to exercise it? It would mean that they had thought and acted according to a word and a will that was not God’s. Truly, that was the essence of their fall into sin. Until the serpent asked, “Did God really say?” Adam and Eve had never contemplated anything other than that which was of God.
Then their eyes truly were opened to both good and evil, for what is evil but opposition to good, and what is sin but a disordered love of that which is good. What their eyes were open to were thoughts, words, and deeds that were not God’s thoughts, words, and deeds. They became aware of their own will, which was not God’s will. They began to resent God and to believe that He was holding out of them something good. They thought evil of God, for they now thought Him capable of not being good, capable of not loving them. That is what sin does. Sin corrupts our reason and our senses so that we cannot perceive things as they are, so that we put the worst construction on things and people and our love for them grows cold as our resentment grows hot. Our love becomes disordered, misdirected, twisted, and curved inward on ourselves. We were created to receive the love of God and to love Him in return through our love of others. But sin has so corrupted us that we cannot rightly love God, and so we cannot rightly love our brothers and sisters and our neighbors.
Genesis chapter three records our first parents’ fall into sin. Genesis chapter four records the fruit of that sin, resentment, jealousy, anger, hatred, and murder. Adam and Eve’s firstborn son Cain murdered his younger brother Abel. Both men had offered appropriate sacrifices to the LORD. Cain offered the first fruits of his harvest and Abel offered the first of his flock. As the story goes, the LORD favored Abel’s sacrifice but not Cain’s. No reason for this is stated, but it becomes obvious in Cain’s reaction. Cain became sullen and resentful, jealous and angry towards God and towards his brother Abel. It is the preacher to the Hebrews who informs us that the LORD accepted Abel’s sacrifice because it was offered in faith and love but rejected Cain’s because it was not offered in faith and love. This is clear in the LORD’s words to Cain: “The LORD said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.’” Why was Cain concerned about how the LORD felt about his brother’s sacrifice in the first place? If he obeyed the word and the command of the LORD, what had he to be concerned with? Should he not have rejoiced with his brother that the LORD so favored his sacrifice? You see, bitterness, resentment, and disordered love were already long at play in Cain’s heart and mind even before he made his sacrifice, and this was the reason the LORD had no regard for his sacrifice. Cain resented the LORD and his brother. He convinced himself that he was being treated unfairly and unjustly. Cain’s self-righteousness blinded him to the LORD’s goodness, justice, and righteousness so that he judged his brother unworthy of God’s favor and worthy of death, and he judged the LORD’s justice and righteousness and found it wanting.
Jesus told the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector “to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated others with contempt.” This is a parable of disordered love, of loving the right things in the wrong way. The Pharisee feigned to love the LORD so much that he boasted about it, “I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get,” never mind the fact that these things were required under the Law of Moses. Like Cain, the Pharisee did not offer these sacrifices in faith and love for the LORD but out of a sense of obligation, and he took pride in that he fulfilled the Law and considered himself justified before God because of it. As Jesus teaches concerning works of the Law, “So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.’” Even worse than the Pharisee’s self-righteousness, however, was his lack of love and utter contempt for those he deemed beneath him and to be sinners, like the tax collector in Jesus’ parable. “The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.’” Just as Cain did not offer his sacrifice out of faith and love for the LORD, so the Pharisee did not offer his tithes and prayers out of faith and love for the LORD but out of a sense of obligation believing that he merited the LORD’s favor. Consequently, because their love of God was disordered, they did not and could not love their brother and neighbor.
In contrast, the tax collector did not approach the front of the temple or raise his head before the LORD and the assembled worshippers, but he prostrated himself in the back and would not look up at all. He did not boast of his tithes and prayers, nor was he concerned about what anyone else was offering or how they were received by the LORD, but he emptied himself, confessed his sins, and plead for mercy trusting that the LORD is good, just, righteous, and above all loving and merciful and forgiving. And as Abel’s blood cried from the ground for justice, so Jesus says that it was the tax collector who went home justified that day. Because he knew and confessed that he didn’t deserve it, the tax collector was in a position to receive all good things from the LORD. For, only sinners can be forgiven, and only the dead can be raised to new and everlasting life in Jesus. If we do not love our brother whom we have seen, we cannot love God whom we have not seen. And if we do not put our fear, love, and trust in God above all things, we will have no love for anyone at all, but will fall into disordered love, loving the right things in the wrong way, which is sin and leads only to death and damnation away from the love of God and men somewhere east of Eden.
Self-righteousness is a sin that is a fruit of disordered love, loving the right things in the wrong way. Such disordered love threatens to cut us off from God and from those He has given us to love, our spouses and children, our extended family, friends, and neighbors, and each other in this congregation. We are all guilty of self-righteousness and countless other fruits of disordered love. But the God of love is present here today and every time we gather to receive His gifts to wash us clean in the blood of Jesus, God’s greatest gift of love for all the world, and to restore us to a right relationship, a relationship of love, with Him and our neighbor once again. That is why we are here. That is why we will gather here again next week and every LORD’s Day until He comes again. We are like the tax collector in Jesus’ parable. We do not gather here to boast before the LORD of our sacrifices and good works, but we gather here to receive from the LORD His love, mercy, grace, and forgiveness so that the fruit and works we bear in our lives, words, and deeds will be His fruit and His works of love towards others to the glory of God. Our Divine Service is not our service of God, but it is God’s service of us. Here in this place where two or three are gathered in His Name to receive His gifts is where He forgives, restores, and renews us, and from whence He sends us to be a gift of love to all the world. We, the Church of Jesus Christ, are how God so loves the world.
Interestingly, the lowest level of Dante’s Inferno, hell, is where Lucifer resides for all eternity. You might be surprised to learn that it is not a place of fire and heat, but it is frigid cold and in its very center Lucifer is frozen in ice up to his chest, for disordered love is not full of the fiery heat of God’s love, but it is curved in on itself, always resentful, dissatisfied, discontent, unloving and unmerciful, cold and lifeless, dead as ice. The antidote to this is the love of God poured out in Jesus Christ. That LOVE is present for you here and now. Come and receive God’s gift of love, the only thing in this dying world that can enliven you to live and love.
In the + Name of Jesus. Amen.
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