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For the last several years, I have consistently returned to the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer during the Advent Season.
I do this because, as he sat in a Nazi prison, he seemed to embody the essence of what Advent is all about.
There was a helplessness in his situation that he saw as a parallel to Advent… Just prior to the Advent season of 1943, he wrote his best friend Eberhard Bethge:
“Life in a prison cell may well be compared to Advent. One waits, hopes, and does this, that, or the other—things that are really of no consequence—the door is shut, and can only be opened from the outside.”1
The same Advent season, he also wrote to his fiancée, Maria:
I think we’re going to have an exceptionally good Christmas. The very fact that every outward circumstance precludes our making provision for it will show whether we can be content with what is truly essential. I used to be very fond of thinking up and buying presents, but now that we have nothing to give, the gift God gave us in the birth of Christ will seem all the more glorious; the emptier our hands, the better we understand what Luther meant by his dying words: “We’re beggars; it’s true.” The poorer our quarters, the more clearly we perceive that our hearts should be Christ’s home on earth.2
We are on week three of Advent during which we have been examining how to wait well. How to have a good posture as we wait for the return of Jesus the Messiah.
God’s people haven’t waited very well historically. Many stories could be told about the impatience of the Israelites as they waited for promises to be fulfilled.
It is easy to read those stories and shake our heads in disbelief. Yet, the stories are a mirror. They are a reflection of fallen humanity.
So, as we examine the posture of Advent, we have an opportunity to make some shifts toward maturity. And, one of these shifts is in our own view of ourselves.
So far, the postures we have looked at are thanksgiving and patience.
Today is the posture of humility. The importance of this posture cannot be overstated. I have become convinced that it is impossible to follow Jesus into God’s kingdom without a posture of humility.
In our passage today, which is a parable told by Jesus, we see a contrast between a proud man and a humble man. In your Bible, the parable might be called The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector.
I like to think of it as the parable of the two postures, or two prayers, which is actually saying pretty much the same thing.
How we pray is often a reflection of our posture, how we carry ourselves. Jesus makes this connection frequently in his teaching.
How we pray reflects how we carry ourselves through life. This is why praying the Psalms and other prescribed prayers is a helpful way of shaping us.
The two men in the parable we are looking at represent two types of people who were constantly following Jesus around.
When you read the Gospels and pay close attention, you will notice that Jesus always seemed to have people following him around.
Some wanted to learn from him. Some wanted to silence him. Some wanted to exploit him. The point is, not all who follow Jesus are truly his disciples.
The difference is humility. And in this parable, the difference is illustrated by Jesus in how they prayed.
As I read this passage, consider the contrast between the two men in the parable.
Read Luke 18:9–14
Pay close attention to a key detail right at the beginning. Who is Jesus talking to?
To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable…
This is the audience. They are identified only by their character. They were self-righteous and looked down on everyone else.
Having become convinced of their own righteousness, they have come to depend on themselves. They are self-possessed, able, at least in their own minds, to live honourably before God without the need for his mercy.
And, they look down on others. Their concerns with holiness produced an exclusivity, an elitism, which excluded others from their circles.
We might be tempted to think that Luke has in mind the religious leaders and Pharisees, as they have repeatedly been ones identified by Jesus as people of this particular character.
But, we need to be careful with that assumption because it will cause us to miss the very subtle lesson in becoming humble.
The sneaky thing about humility is that it tends to slip through our fingers the moment we pay attention to it.
This is because the way we most often evaluate our own virtues such as humility is in comparison with others. And, if you haven’t already caught it, this is exactly the warning Jesus is presenting in the parable.
Listen again to the prayer of the Pharisee:
‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’
In his mind is a spectrum of holiness. On one end is a disciplined and generous life. On the other end is theft, evil, adultery, and whatever the life of a tax collector looks like.
He sees himself as being on the right end of the spectrum. Hold that image in your mind when you think about the tax collector’s prayer:
He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
The tax collector has a different vision of holiness. There is himself and there is divine holiness.
He can’t even bring himself to look up to the sky, for he sees himself as unworthy. His only hope is the mercy of God.
The tax collector had the correct vision of holiness. It is not a spectrum of human practices that make a person holy or unholy. The chasm between the two is far greater than that.
If you go all the way back to God’s establishment of the nation of Israel in Genesis and Exodus, we know that God declared them a holy nation before they were even given any instructions on how to live as his people.
And, for those who trust Jesus, holiness comes from the renewal of our humanity in his death and resurrection.
It is not what we do that makes us holy. We cannot do enough. God stamps us with holiness and then tells us to live out that holiness with the power of the Holy Spirit.
And this is why humility is required. Only a humble person will stop trying to earn their way into God’s favour. Only a humble person will accept the greatest gift at absolutely no cost.
The main question I want you to think about this week is, what do you think is in it for you when Christ returns?
The exploration of this question will require you to be very honest with yourself.
The purpose of this question is to get you to think of this life as an opportunity to make the most of the gift of God’s mercy, instead of living with anxiety of never doing enough, measuring up, proving yourself, or leaving a legacy.
What you are waiting for upon Christ’s return will determine how you live each and every day. With a humble posture, we are kept from believing that all we have and all we are is that there is.
Think about the parable of the two prayers. The Pharisee’s prayer was basically, “Thank you God, that I am so great!”
He has no doubt that he is righteous because he does all the right things. His problem is that his vision of righteousness is too low. It falls short. His imagination for what is possible is limited.
Sure, he has attained a high degree of righteousness by some standard. But, it’s the wrong standard.
The tax collector’s prayer was, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”
He imagines the possibility of being in God’s favour and yet knows that if it requires him to measure up, he falls far short.
The pride of the Pharisee prevents him from seeing beyond himself. He only sees and knows what is possible in his own strength.
The humility of the tax collector allows him to ask for more than he deserves, which is the mercy of God.
The proud do not think to ask for mercy because they think mercy is only for sinners. And the proud believe they have overcome sin.
The humble ask for mercy because they see the impossibility of God’s righteous standard.
In this way, humility enables us to see beyond our circumstances. Not in terms of what is possible on our own strength, but far beyond that.
It doesn’t mean a humble person gives up putting in effort to be holy. The humble person knows that his own efforts will always only be an unworthy offering of gratitude and sacrifice to God.
Whatever good works we do are not to earn us anything but as a response to all that God is offering to us.
The only way to truly wait well for Jesus is with a posture of humility. Ask him to help you up out of the mess you make of yourself.
The beautiful thing about God is that he comes to us, in our mess, and picks us up.
There’s a song that we’ve been singing throughout advent, which is the tune of Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing, but with different words.
I asked for this song to be our closing song today because it so profoundly touches on the theme of humility.
Come now see the Lord of Heaven In a lowly manger laid King deserving of a throne room Born a poor powerless babe
Oh the mystery oh the wonder Somehow God is one of us Such is greatness in His kingdom He descended to our dust
Just before we sing that song, I want to close with a passage from a Dietrich Bonhoeffer Advent devotional called God is in the Manger.
The only ones who can wait are people who carry restlessness around with them and people who look up with reverence to the greatest in the world. Thus Advent can be celebrated only by those whose souls give them no peace, who know that they are poor and incomplete, and who sense something of the greatness that is supposed to come, before which they can only bow in humble timidity, waiting until he inclines himself toward us—the Holy One himself, God in the child in the manger. God is coming; the Lord Jesus is coming; Christmas is coming. Rejoice, O Christendom!3