Grace, mercy and peace be unto you from God, our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Our text is the Holy Gospel reading which has already been read.

Dear brothers and sisters in our Lord Jesus Christ, you've probably heard the saying, "There's no 'I' in 'team.'" True enough, but I've always enjoyed the humorous response, "Sure, there's no 'I' in 'team,' but you can't spell 'team' without 'm' and 'e'-me." The same is true of "humble." As we learn from the parable Jesus tells about the Pharisee and the tax collector, there's no "I" in humble, but it must have "m" and "e" in it.

Humble has no "I," but what does have an "I" is "self-righteous." And that sums up the Pharisee, which appropriately has an "I" in it as well. Jesus told His parable "to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt." Their disease was self-righteousness toward God, which means that they put their confidence in their own works and morality and expected God to declare them righteous and holy because of what they had done, rather than because of God's grace and mercy. And one of the symptoms of self-righteousness is to treat other people with contempt-considering oneself more valuable than others in the sight of both God and man, and considering sinners to be worthless, unworthy of compassion or prayer or help.

In the parable the Pharisee's self-righteous "I" was on full display when he went up to the temple to pray. He stood in a prominent place where he could be seen by all and prayed (if we can even call it a prayer), "God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust [evildoers], adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get." "I, I, I, I, I"-five first person subject pronouns packed into two sentences. The Pharisee was the subject of all his own sentences, which contained a load of self-confident, self-righteous self-promotion and not one ounce of humility. He completely ignored his own sins and did not confess them, and he showed utter contempt for sinners, even for repentant ones like the tax collector who had been caught up in sin but were heartbroken over their guilt and sincerely wanted to be set free from it by God's mercy.

On the other hand, the tax collector stood far off, away from the crowd, and out of shame for his sins against his heavenly Father and out of humility before God who judges the living and the dead, the man would not even lift his eyes to the heavens, but beat his breast, saying, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" There was no "I" in this humble tax collector's prayer, but there was "me": "God, be merciful to me, a sinner." The tax collector was not the subject of his own prayer, but rather the object. He prayed, "God [the subject], be merciful to me, the sinner [the object]." No self-confident, self-righteous self-promotion going on there, but we see the picture of a profoundly humble man, facing up to God for his sins and begging for forgiveness. Clearly the tax collector is the one we should imitate.

But there is more to the tax collector's prayer than meets the eye. Both the King James and English Standard Versions translate his prayer as "Be merciful to me," and that certainly captures part of the meaning, but that translation doesn't quite convey what the tax collector was begging for. The Greek word used by Jesus in the parable on the lips of the tax collector is not Bible's usual word for "be merciful," but it more literally is "be propitiated." That's not a word we use a lot, but in the New Testament, to propitiate means to win God's favor by an atoning sacrifice and by that atonement to grant forgiveness, reconciliation, cleansing, and peace to someone. And so the tax collector's prayer was a request for God to look not at his sins, but instead to look at a propitiating sacrifice, and on that basis, to have mercy and forgive him.

Now to understand the tax collector's prayer for propitiation, we have to remember where the Pharisee and the tax collector were praying. They were at the temple in Jerusalem, and that was where the Lord had promised Israel that He would be located in a special way so that He could be accessible to them. He dwelled between the cherubim above the mercy seat in the Holy of Holies. And the temple was the place God told Israel to offer sacrifices to atone for their sin, both with daily sacrifices and annually on the Day of Atonement. The temple also was the place God promised to hear Israel's prayers, as He said to Solomon right after the temple was dedicated. God said, "If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayer that is made in this place", that is, in the temple.

And so when the tax collector prayed at the temple for God to "be propitiated" toward him, he was not basing his request for God's mercy on his own humility or repentance, but he was pointing away from himself and pointing to God's promises to make atonement for the sin of his people through the sacrifices offered at the temple. To put it simply, the tax collector believed that God had taken care of atoning for his sins and would forgive them because of His promises. And the tax collector believed God's promise to answer His people's repentant prayers with forgiveness.

And so Jesus says, "I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other." The tax collector was declared righteous and saved by God on the basis of God's promises to forgive those who trusted in His Word, the very Word that was bound up in the sacrifices offered at the temple. The tax collector's prayer was not what moved God to justify the tax collector, but rather God's Word and merciful promises did that, and the tax collector simply believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. The prayer of the tax collector was the exercise of the man's faith in God's presence and promises at the temple. And the reason the tax collector was so humble about his prayer was that he realized that he was completely helpless before God, completely dependent on the Lord's propitiation and mercy. And so Jesus goes on to sum up the parable by saying, "For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted."

But with that saying, Jesus takes the parable to the next level and shows that He is the key to it all. The Old Testament temple and sacrifices had their place in God's plan of salvation, but they were coming to an end because the Christ had come. Jesus is the One who humbled Himself for us sinners to propitiate God the Father, and then God the Father exalted Him in glory. As St. Paul tells us in Philippians 2: "Christ Jesus…though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father".

Jesus humbled Himself to the point of dying on the cross to be the atoning, propitiating sacrifice for the sin of the world. He took on our flesh to bear our sin, as the letter to the Hebrews says, "He had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people". He humbled Himself with His suffering and death, and then the Father showed His pleasure with His Son's sacrifice by exalting Jesus to His right hand, to be our great high priest forever. And as St. John tells us in his First Epistle, "My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world".

When Jesus died, the curtain in the temple tore from top to bottom, signaling that ever since Christ's sacrificial death, the Jerusalem temple is not the location of God's propitiating sacrifice for us, nor are we to offer our prayers there, but now the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ is the Temple of God and the location of the sacrifice that has saved us. In Him alone are we are declared righteous and acceptable in God's presence. And so we poor, miserable sinners, like the humble tax collector, do not come before God in prayer exalting ourselves with "I," but rather, with a humble "me": "O God, be propitiated to me, a sinner." We do not point to ourselves and our own righteousness as a Pharisee would, but we point to Jesus. We can flip the Pharisee's prayer around and point to Jesus as our righteousness: "O God, Jesus was like no other man, for He had no sin; He did not extort; He committed no injustice; He was never dishonest. He showed contempt for no man. He fasted in the wilderness for forty days and yet did not fall for the devil's traps. He gave not just ten percent of Himself, but He offered up His life as a ransom for the masses. He is the one who has answered for all of my sins on the cross; He has turned away Your wrath against me by His precious blood and innocent suffering and death." And then we add the humble prayer of the tax collector: "Therefore, O God, be propitiated to me, a sinner!"

And God is propitiated to you, because He has achieved that in Jesus Christ and He promises to be merciful to all who trust in Christ's atonement. In fact, like the tax collector, your humble, contrite prayer is not what moves God to forgive, but rather the propitiating sacrifice of Jesus that has made atonement for all of our sins is why He shows you mercy. Your prayer for forgiveness is simply the exercise of your faith in God's promises, and so you don't have to worry about your prayers being long enough or pious enough. Just consider the prayer Jesus gave us: "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." Because of Jesus, you can be assured that the answer to your prayer for forgiveness is always going to be met with the Lord's grace and mercy: "Yes! Yes!" He says. "I forgive you all of your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Come to My table, and eat of the sacrificial Lamb, the true body and blood of Jesus given and shed for all of your sins. Each day remember the Baptism in which you were humbled with Christ in death and exalted to God's right hand in His resurrection."

There is no "I" in humble, so saving faith will never boast of our works or trust in ourselves as the condemned Pharisee did. But we may boast in the Lord Jesus and His righteousness, as St. Paul tells us, "Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord". And so our boasting goes something like this: "My sins against God have earned me nothing but hell and punishment, but in the Lord Jesus Christ, God has been merciful to me and has forgiven all my sins." And I tell you, such a one who humbles himself before God and trusts in Christ goes to his home justified. In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

And the peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting. Amen.