Confidence unto Death ...

 

I must admit this whole thing with Trump contracting Covid-19 has hit me harder than I expected.  I am no fan of Trump.  I wanted to be.  There was a time I started out that way.  I hoped his brash style, and willingness to be completely devoid of any political skills would carry him into the White House where he would demand “both” political parties to come to the table and compromise, make deals, and get things done.  I had never seen a candidate for President actually answer a question before, without thinking about it, without planning what the right thing to say was, but instead just say what he thought.  Unheard of, unprecedented, it gave me high hopes.  I had hoped that through his wealth he would be obligated to none, and able to do the people’s business, for the benefit of all the people, pulling back both Republican and Democratic extremism into a centrist agenda that would leave our nation the greatest it had ever been.  But that was not to be.  Instead he pursued a strategy as far right as anyone in history.  He catered to his base and centrism was dead upon arrival.  Mea culpa.  But having the President of our country contract a potentially fatal disease is quite another matter.  That just makes me sad.  Does not matter that it is Trump in whom I am so disappointed, only that yet another victim has been struck with a pestilence of these end times.

We are more than 7 million American souls who have thus far been struck with Covid-19.  More than 200,000 Americans dead.  This disease is real, here, in our home.  And the scariest stories I have heard are the ones describing a new term “long haulers” that experience horrific symptoms for long periods of time well after the virus is supposed to have left their systems.  Talk about pre-existing conditions.  The irony of course, is that President Trump exhibited so much confidence where it came to public displays of how to deal with life during the pandemic.  While science, and doctors who specialize in this field, settled on advice of wearing masks to cut down risks, Trump kept right on doing what he thought was appropriate.  Rallies unabated.  The death of Herman Cain after Oklahoma did not give a moment’s pause.  But as it turns out confidence is irrelevant where it comes to battling pandemics.  Practicality matters, confidence does not.  And so many look at this event and think to themselves, he deserved it, for making bad decisions.  Well no one deserves it.  And anyone is at risk from it.  Covid is something that happens to you, often in spite of what you do.  And so the tragedy lingers on.

But for me the analogy of battling a pandemic with an air of self-confidence the world is not meant to shake, is the same tragedy that infects the modern churches of the Christian faith today.  “We” are so certain about what we believe, and equally confident that others are both wrong, and lost because of it.  Certainty in Jesus is admirable, we should all aspire to that.  But that is about “Who” we believe in.  Our confidence extends far past the who, into the what, and the how.  So many Christian denominations have Trumpian confidence about what doctrines they hold to.  They wind up creating walls of division between one Christian faith and another.  These doctrinal walls that divide us become matters of right and wrong, of saved vs lost, and we hold his confidence that we are always on the right side of all of these issues.  As if Jesus loves those less who believe in Him, but carry the wrong interpretations of scripture, and are too proud to let them go.  We begin to assess the love of Jesus as being partial to those who have the other things right as well.  We start to change the basis of salvation from a belief in Jesus, to a belief in Jesus followed by a series of beliefs only our church espouses.  And every church I know is guilty of this, my own perhaps most especially.  We have become Trump battling the pandemic with self-confidence, but for us it is our church battling the pandemic of sin with the self-confidence of certainty in our own wisdom,

Feeling good about your beliefs is not something new.  That plague has been with humanity for a very long time, and appears to be both hereditary and extraordinarily contagious.  Consider for a moment the parable Luke recorded on this topic in chapter eighteen of his gospel letter to his friend about what we believe and why.  Luke records Jesus speaking picking up in verse 9 saying … “And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others:”  Or if you will allow, Jesus speaks this particular parable to every modern Church of the Christian faith today in the decade of the 2020’s.  For who of us does not already trust in ourselves, that we are righteous.  And because we are righteous, we must by definition hate all those who are not like us.  Come to hate those who do not share our faith, or our actions.  We despise sinners of all shapes and varieties.  But most of all we come to despise those who believe in other faiths that claim Jesus, because they refuse to relent what they believe where it differs from our own beliefs.  We do not just divide the body of Christ, we obliterate it into tiny tiny pieces, such that the smallest toe nail is no longer connected to the toe it came from.  And we despise the nail for going its own way, and not coming back to the fold it is from.  And now who is even able to see Jesus in His followers for so many harbor the confidence of Trump, with the extremism of certainty in their own beliefs at the expense of all others.

Jesus addressed this crowd back then, and now as it continues in verse 10 saying … “Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. [verse 11] The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. [verse 12] I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.”  Confidence you see, does not just exist between one faith and another, it can exist between one believer and another within the confines of the same church.  In this parable the faith is a constant, the church is a constant.  But the idea that one could have less “need” of God compared to another still existed.  A plague that has in no way diminished over time or become less potent.  The Pharisee was a church leader.  And the Pharisee deemed himself righteous because of what he did and did not do.  The Pharisee examined his own behavior and determined he was NOT an extortioner.  Interesting he picks this first.  Further the Pharisee’s self-assessment was that he was NOT unjust.  Nor was he an adulterer.  And lastly the Pharisee was not a betrayer of his nation, by submitting himself to Rome and collecting taxes for those who believed only in the pagan gods like the publican does who caught his eye.

By contrast, the Pharisee did what scripture demanded.  He fasted twice a week.  I imagine he was not over-weight with this practice.  And he gave tithes of everything he possessed.  Monetarily, unlike the publicans who were ever known for their greedy cheating ways, the Pharisee gave 10 percent of every single thing he owned, as scripture demands.  Except of course his heart, there was no ten percent offering made there, or any other percentage.  But to the Pharisee, there was no need of that.  He was righteous because of what he did, of how he lived, his heart was his own.  Sympathy never entered his thinking.  Imagine if he instead would have seen his publican brother enter the Temple, and had run to his side to encourage him, welcome him, open his heart and his home to him.  Perhaps his prayer would have been totally different.  Perhaps it might have been something like … “I thank you Lord for my publican brother who I love so much.  Thank you for bringing him here today to commune with you at your side, and for giving me the opportunity to share that communion with him, and perhaps have the two of us go out into the community to find those in need, who we can continue to lift your name up to, meet their needs, and find joy in the serving.”  Imagine the chance for sharing that was lost in this encounter as Jesus described it.  Imagine the opportunity in this world, at that moment, that was lost to love someone who so clearly needed it.  Publicans were shunned by society, by the average believers, let alone by church leadership.  What if this Pharisee had been willing to stand alone to show a love all of us should aspire to.  Could his prayer not have changed to follow suit?  But that is not what happened as Jesus explains it.

Jesus continues with the prayer of the publican picking back up in verse 13 saying … “And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.”  You see the publican too measured his own life by how he lived, by what he did.  He was convicted of his own sin.  He knew he cheated.  He knew his thoughts ran into impurity and whether he failed in body, he failed in his mind ahead of it.  He knew he had robbed his fellow citizens because he could, and because he wanted to.  He should not be in Temple.  He was not worthy.  But then, none of us are worthy.  All of us have sinned and come short.  At least the publican knew he sinned.  His guilt and his shame keeps him looking down at the earth, rather than up to heaven.  He smites his own chest in great pain as his heart aches within him over who he has become.  He does not know the way out.  He is trapped in his evil with no hope of escape.  He is hooked.  He is addicted.  But despite his chains he cries out for mercy from a loving God.  He asks for forgiveness He does not deserve.  He has no confidence at all in righteousness, but offers only abject humility for what he knows he does not deserve.  He has no idea what Trumpism might be, whereas the Pharisee has adopted it fully without ever knowing its name.

Jesus continues in verse 14 saying … “I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.”  And here Jesus is speaking, but NOT to Trump.  Jesus is speaking to every church leader, and church member across the whole of North America.  It is you who exalt yourselves with confidence unto death.  It is you who fail to see how love should motivate both your prayers and your actions.  Tear down those dividing walls of certainty and embrace the sharing of love with anyone in need.  Stop exalting yourselves and start searching for your own humility, in order that you might serve, and desire to serve.  But Jesus is also speaking to another audience.  An audience made up of drug addicts, and hookers.  An audience who has broken the covenants of marriage and ruined the lives of many.  An audience that knows they are unworthy, because they know they are cheaters hopelessly addicted to who they have become.  Yet still smiting their breast and searching for a freedom only God can bring.  Freedom is coming.  God can right in you what you have wronged.  God can take that humble ask and make it something better.  Not because we will ever deserve it, but because He loves us just that much.

Trump did not get Covid because he deserved it.  Covid happens to both the righteous and the unrighteous, it is a pestilence that does not discriminate.  It is our confidence that leads us unto death.  It can be our humility that can lead us back to His throne, and a sense of our unworthiness.  Break down dividing walls and embrace a common love for Jesus, allowing Jesus to lead in all things.  If there must be confidence let it be in Jesus Christ alone.  Let it be in transformative love that saves.  All else is noise, and distraction.  You do not sin because the devil made you do it.  You sin because you have allowed sin to grow within you until it is well past your control.  You inherited your weakness from generations that lived before.  And the motives that now define who you are, are beyond your confidence to shake.  It is time to find freedom.  Freedom that only Jesus brings.  And Jesus longs to bring it.