Humility and Joy

Sermon for the Eleventh Sunday after the Trinity
August 16th, A + D 2026
Our Redeemer and Our Savior’s Lutheran Churches
Custer and Hill City, SD
 Based on Luke 18:9-14

Audio of the Sermon is available HERE. 

   Two men went up into the temple to pray.  We always go up to the temple, to the worship place, even if the room itself where we gather is located in a basement.  If we are approaching the true God, the Almighty Creator, to pray, to worship, to seek His favor, we are, in the cosmic sense, always going up.  We must be going up, because the Lord God is higher and better and simply more than we are. 

   We live in a time of radical egalitarianism; everybody is equal, or so it is said.  Any normal citizen should be able to interact with presidents and generals and kings, without being nervous, no particular courtesies required, because, “the president puts his pants on one leg at a time, just like me.”  In the popular imagination, every person, prince and pauper alike, has an equal voice.  I'm not sure this is actually true, even with earthly leaders.  But it is definitely not so with God. 

   Although the Lord does not normally make Himself visible to us, as He did from time to time with ancient Israel, the reality is that we do encounter Him, for He comes to us.  He comes down to us sinful creatures, whenever two or more gather in His Name, whenever Christians gather around Christ’s gifts in Word and Sacrament.  When we gather for worship in the Name of Jesus, God comes to us.  Therefore, as we approach the Holy God approaching us, the great difference between us and God should certainly influence our behavior.  We poor, fallible creatures must enter the temple of the Lord with deep humility. 

   But we don't want to do that.  Part of this is our popular egalitarian bent.  Plus, we have a hard time taking an invisible God seriously.  Naturally, we live by sight.  “I’ll believe it when I see it!”  And, from what we can see, we human beings are pretty impressive and important.  We are the sovereigns of the natural world, unless you end up alone in the woods with an angry mountain lion or grizzly bear.  But, certainly, we are capable of great things, right?  And, as we see every day on our screens, the most successful people in the world seem to always lack humility.  Pride, self-esteem, and self-promotion are the buzzwords in our culture.  Humility is for losers.  Nice guys finish last, don’t they?

 

   This perspective, so normal, so common, and often true in worldly and human affairs, is eternally wrong.  Pride and self-importance are the great self-deceptions of our human race.  The Lord God opposes the proud.  Indeed, everyone who exalts himself will be humbled.  However, because the Lord God is concerned about our eternity, because God wants a whole bunch of people living with Him forever in paradise, He decided to spend 33 years with us, visibly, to disabuse us of our pride and self-esteem.  God’s Son became a human being, to correct our foolish pride and give us something much better.  God the Father’s eternal Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, laid aside his glory and power for a time, because the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”  He came down from heaven and took on human flesh, in order to give us an example of proper humility, and to save us from our deadly pride of self, so that we can be exalted with Him.   

   It is a common thing to think of Jesus as meek, courteous, and kind. Fact check true.  But at the same time, Jesus is also the Almighty, the Creator and Sustainer of the entire universe, the source of all energy and matter, the great ruler of the cosmos. 

   And yet, he was meek and mild.  And, on top of his example of humility, Jesus gave us many sermons on the same topic, none more important or profound than our gospel today. [Jesus] also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: ¹⁰ “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.

   Unlike today, historically in most cultures, including American culture 50 or 75 years ago, worshiping the true God has been very important to most people.  Today, agnosticism, (professed ignorance of God) or atheism, (the denial of God) are growing.  Spiritual apathy abounds.  But our zeal or lack of zeal for the Lord does not change our nature or God’s reality.  We all need God, apart from whom there is no lasting peace or life.  But our pride gets in the way, especially if we convince ourselves that God does not exist, or that He is at best  unknowable. 

   Although supposedly a man of the true religion, the Pharisee has no humility.  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. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’

    Wow, the nerve of this guy.  Even many pagans, praying to mute idols, display outward humility, bowing their heads to the ground and making a great show of their submission. It´s tempting to think that Jesus is exaggerating.  I do not think I have ever seen someone so overtly egocentric in their prayer.  But we should remember that Jesus was always concerned with the interior, with the faith of the heart, not just the outward appearance. 

   Perhaps we never appear to be so obviously proud and self-satisfied.  Perhaps such words never cross our lips.  But what is in our hearts, in our minds?  It is good to fast in preparation for worship, and to give a tithe, to serve at Church, and avoid sin, as the Pharisee claimed to be doing.  I pray that we all do similar things.  The question is, when we do such good works, are we able to avoid inner pride?  Or, do we begin to think that our works have made us worthy to approach God on our own merit?  “Look at me God, aren’t you so happy to have me?”  “Look at how much I do for You!”  Or at least, “See how much better I am than those people!”

   Sometimes hard-to-explain conflicts erupt in congregations and church bodies, often when someone who has long performed some necessary task for the church now has to share, or completely pass on that task, to someone new.  I sometimes wonder, and pray against the possibility that these odd blow-ups have a pharisaical root.  I worry that the intense emotion relates to a member losing a responsibility that had become their assurance before God.  I fear sometimes that the veteran doer-of-good-things, having lost 100% control of their good deed, is now unsure that God still loves them.  I pray the Lord set all of us free from such Satanic errors.  

   The Pharisee prays with great pride of self.  Jesus goes on to the other man:  But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’  Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

     This tax collector, a Jew working for the Roman rulers, the foreigners who subjugated and occasionally persecuted the Jews, was not despised only by the Pharisees.  In first century Israel, everybody looked down on tax collectors, especially since many of them, like the wee little man Zacchaeus, abused their job.  It was fairly simple for a tax collector to collect more tax from the people than required by the Romans, and so make himself rich.  Many tax collectors deserved the contempt they received. 

 

   But right here we discover the power of humility.  Being humble in the world does not often result in much benefit.  But before the Lord, honest humility, actually confessing the truth about our condition, is a key that unlocks heavenly treasure.  Despite the reality of his life, the tax collector trusted that God is merciful.  By the Word and the Spirit, he believed the promise that the Lord God of Israel wants to forgive sinners.  So, with humility, shame and honesty, he confessed his sin, his need, his unworthiness.  And so, Jesus praises him: I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other.

   What?  How’s that?  How can it be that God forgives repentant sinners, without them doing anything to deserve it?  This is the question that has started most of the errors within the Christian Church for two thousand years.  Where is the justice in giving mercy to bad people, to sinners, without first requiring some previous reform on their part?    

   Jesus.  Jesus Christ is the answer.  The "it can be" of God’s radical mercy is located and revealed in an even deeper humility, the passive, dying humility of God himself.  The answer lies in the cosmic shame that the Author of our parable and the Author of our lives embraced, so that He could fulfill God's justice for us.

   Jesus, the Perfect One, showed humility, the proper humility of a human being, every day of His whole life.  He also taught, as in our parable today, the need for humility and honesty about sin.  But let us not think our humility and honesty do anything; they are simply the necessary reality, the opening of our spiritual eyes to our desperate situation, so that we can also see and receive God’s justice. 

   The justice that makes our forgiveness possible is the justice that Jesus suffered on the Cross.  The wicked justice of the Jews and Romans, and the perfect justice of God against all sinners, eternal justice executed on the Innocent One, who hung there in our place.  

   The Cross is the key.  It is the essence of humiliation, the acceptance by Jesus of the guilt and punishment for all the sins of world, every evil thought word and deed, exterior and interior, of everyone.  Jesus took on Himself the sins of the tax collector, and of the Pharisee, and even of His own executioners, the sinners who with their own hands crucified the Lord of glory.  Father, forgive them for they know not what they are doing.  

 

   It is finished.  Christ Jesus is the One who humbled himself unto death and hell.  That work is done, finished, for you.  And so, since He then rose from the dead, never to die again, in Him you receive mercy, forgiveness, and His righteousness, and His eternal life.  Because Jesus is resurrected, exalted, glorified, ascended and ruling in heaven, right now, you can look forward to a glorious forever. 

   In fact, by faith, we baptized believers are already there in glory, seated with Christ the King, because He has joined Himself to us.  We are His beloved baptized.  So, as long as we continue in the true confession, the confession of our sinfulness and of the divine mercy revealed on the Cross, this faith binds us to Christ Jesus, forever.

   And so, as Luther says in the Large Catechism, “in the Christian church everything is ordered so that daily we can obtain the full forgiveness of sins through the Word and the signs.”   With this turn of phrase, Luther is simply restating the same thing that, through the tax collector, Jesus teaches us today.  The heart of worship and the whole life of the Christian Church is the delivery of the merciful forgiveness of Christ to humble sinners. 

   Humility is never going to be fashionable with the world.  But who cares?  Humility about ourselves and faith in Jesus is the Way of Truth that rescues, that gives life to lost and dying men, women and children.  The humility of the Son of God is our salvation. 

   This changes everything.  Today, we descend from the temple to our homes with joy, because we are justified, declared righteous and beloved, by the Lord.  We have peace and friendship with God.  What a turn-around!  For we were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.  ⁴ But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, ⁵ even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved. 

   Sadly, envy and jealousy are natural to us.  We see the first horrible instance in Cain’s murder of Abel.  Envy, jealousy, wanting what someone else has are motors that drive our society.  Today we especially see this online, in our entertainment, commerce and social media.  Joy in the blessing of another is a rare thing in our world. 

   But, we need not envy the proud and self-promoting world, because we have something much better than self-esteem or earthly fame and wealth.  We are esteemed by God.  We are beloved in the eyes of the Lord Almighty.  Today, in Christ, we are free from the fear of earthly humiliation, whether from poverty, or the contempt of others, or from sickness, weakness, or other earthly failures.  These things may come, will come, in our earthly lives.  But so what?  We already have the life of Christ and all the wealth of God as our inheritance.          

   Therefore, we are also free to live with the humility of Christ, without feeling a need to compete in the world’s success sweepstakes.  You can ignore the world’s endless pride competitions, for they are a sham.  Your pride is Jesus Christ, and so you are free to live with humility and love, not only seeking your own good, but also sharing the love of Christ with your neighbors, even by sharing with them the good news of the great surprise that the Son of God came to serve, and not to be served, and to give his life as a ransom for sinners. 

   Yes, I am a sinner, like everyone else.  Like you.  It’s shameful.  But the Holy Spirit does not let us despair.  You can dare to confess your sinfulness, because in Christ you have full forgiveness.  You are justified.  You live in the mercy of God, revealed in the saving humility of Jesus.  What joy!  Amen.