Recorded Sermon

One afternoon a carpet layer had just finished installing carpet for a woman. He stepped out for a smoke, only to realize that he had lost his cigarettes. After a quick but fruitless search, he noticed that in the middle of the room, under the carpet that he had just installed, was a bump. His cigarettes!

“No sense pulling up the entire floor for one pack of smokes,” the carpet layer said to himself. So, he got out his mallet and flattened the bump.

Not long after, as he was cleaning up, the woman came in. “Here,” she said, handing him his pack of cigarettes. “I found them in the hallway. Now,” she said, “if only I could find my parakeet.”

Oops.

My bad.

Animal lovers — I want to assure you: No animals were harmed in the making of this sermon.

Sometimes we know when we’ve made a mistake. Sometimes we don’t. It’s the ones we don’t see that can really bite us. In the magazine mental_floss (March-April 2007) is a list of the 20 greatest mistakes in history. They include:

The mistake that burned down London. On the night of September 1, 1666, the oven of the royal baker to the king of England sparked a fire. It was not a spectacular fire, and it seemed like no big deal at first, but it burned for five days. In the end, it wiped out 13,000 homes and leveled 80 percent of the city.

The mistake that sobered America up. Prohibition in the United States lasted from 1920 to 1933, and during this period it was illegal to manufacture, transport, and sell alcoholic beverages. It seemed like a great idea at the time — outlaw liquor, and you eliminate a number of alcohol-related social ills. But Americans like to have a drink or two, and Prohibition opened our eyes to the ways in which organized crime will meet this demand in violent and destructive ways.

The mistake that killed John Wayne. Much of the filming for the movie “The Conqueror” was done in Utah’s Snow Canyon, which is located about 150 miles downwind from a nuclear testing facility. At least 91 of the 220 people who worked on the movie contracted cancer, and more then half of them died — including John Wayne.

A spark jumps out of an oven, and a baker fails to snuff it. A well-intentioned ban is placed on alcohol. A movie is filmed downwind from a nuke facility. These are small oversights, errors, and miscalculations that we do not tend to see as major mistakes.

But secret problems can hurt us. They can quickly get out of control and kill us. They should drive us to our knees, cause us to do some searching self-examination, and lead us to confess what the Bible calls our “hidden faults” (Psalm 19:12).

In other words, they should cause us to admit to God, “My bad.”

Jesus tells the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, addressing it to people who feel self-righteous, and regard others with contempt (Luke 18:9). In other words, he is speaking to me, to you, to all of us — average people who tend to see themselves as better than average. Studies show that nine in ten managers rate themselves as superior to their average colleagues, as do nine in ten college professors. According to professor of psychology David Myers, most drivers — even those who have been hospitalized after accidents — believe themselves to be safer and more skilled than the average driver. There is “one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background,” notes humorist Dave Barry. “Deep down inside, we all believe that we are above average drivers.”

Jesus says that two men go up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and one a tax collector (v. 10). The natural assumption made by anyone hearing this story is that the Pharisee is the devout person — the good driver! The tax collector, on the other hand, is the sinner, the bad driver.

Sure enough, the Pharisee steps away from the crowd in order to maintain his purity before God, and launches into a list of all his religious accomplishments: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income” (vv. 11-12). He does everything right, according the standards of the day, obeying all the religious rules of the road. In terms of keeping God’s commandments, he is way above average.

Then the tax collector bows his head, beats his breast, and says, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” (v. 13). He is feeling so ashamed that he cannot even raise his hands and look up to heaven, which is the standard position for first-century prayer. The tax collector doesn’t make any boasts or excuses — he simply asks for God’s mercy.

There is no reason to assume that this tax collector is a particularly spectacular sinner. If he were a thief, a rogue, or an adulterer, Jesus would say so. It’s much more likely that he is confessing a set of secret, hidden faults — a collection of oversights, errors, and miscalculations that only he would know.

So the above-average Pharisee boasts, while the sin-sick tax collector says, “My bad.”

They both make a connection with God, right?

Wrong!

In a surprising twist, Jesus concludes the parable by saying, “I tell you, this [tax collector] went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted” (v. 14). The tax collector restores his relationship with God by asking for forgiveness, while the Pharisee moves farther away from God by boasting of his righteousness.

This is not what the hearers of the parable expect. They have been taught that good behavior draws you closer to God, while bad behavior drives you away. But Jesus is insisting that unless we are aware of our secret faults, and humble enough to know that we need forgiveness, we are going to discover that our minor mistakes can get out of control and destroy us.

It is always better to say “My bad” than to boast “Me good.”

Think again of the historical mistakes that seemed so small at first, but then caused enormous problems. Prohibition may have been a noble idea, and a spark from a baker’s oven may have seemed like no big deal, but both turned out to be huge problems. In the same way, the Pharisee’s fasting and tithing seemed noble at first, and his pride in his good behavior seemed to be a minor mistake, but together these factors created a disaster. Without humility, there was no way for him to be right with God! When you trust God, you get God. But when you trust only yourself, you get … only yourself.

So, what are the mistakes we make, sometimes without knowing it? It is time for us to do some searching self-examination, confess our hidden faults, and say to God, “My bad.”

One mistake that can really bite us is our failure to see the image of God in the people around us. When I step into the Metro, I tend to see differences — different skin colors, hairstyles, tattoos, piercings, body shapes, clothing choices, levels of personal hygiene. Some of these differences make me uncomfortable and I step back, just like the Pharisee moved away from the crowd, not wanting to be close to certain people. But these differences are all superficial, and most don’t reflect the true nature of a person. The really deep truth about a crowd of people in a subway car is that they are children of God, created in the image and likeness of God. That is what I ought to be looking at.

How would our current immigration debate be transformed if the very first thing we saw in each other was the image and likeness of God?

Another mistake is to judge others more harshly than we judge ourselves. So many times, I have felt my temperature rising as the line at the grocery store moves at a glacial pace, and then, when I get to the register, the clerk messes up my transaction. I want to lash out, saying, “Pay attention and get it right!” I am quick to judge others, but slow to judge myself — in my own daily work, I go easy on myself because I know how hard it is to focus when I am ill or tired or distracted by a personal problem. Like the Pharisee in the parable, I see sin in thieves, rogues, and adulterers, but not in myself.

How would political debates in our country be changed if we were more critical of ourselves than we were of our opponents?

Finally, we err when we are not honest with God — or honest with ourselves — about our need for forgiveness. The tax collector saw himself clearly, and he confessed his sinfulness, saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” (v. 13). This is a prayer that each of us can say, because each of us has an ongoing relationship with at least one of the seven deadly sins — lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. Each of us needs to be forgiven, whether we acknowledge it or not, just as the Pharisee needed to be cleansed of the sin of pride when he said, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people” (v. 11). It’s time to get honest — honest with God, and honest with ourselves. We cannot go home justified, restored to right relationship with God and one another, unless we admit that we need to be forgiven.

The opportunity comes to us here, just as it came to the Pharisee and the tax collector in the temple — the opportunity to see our mistakes, confess our hidden faults, and ask for the gift of forgiveness. When we do, we are forgiven. That's the good news for today.

It all begins with two words, honestly spoken: “My bad.” Amen.

Sources:
Koerth-Baker, Maggie. “The 20 greatest mistaikes in history,” mental_floss, March-April 2007, 40-53.
Myers, David G. Intuition: Its Powers and Perils (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 95.