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.

We don't use the word "righteous" very often in day to day speech, but in Christianity it is a critical vocabulary word. Psalm 1:6 says, "The LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish." In other words, the righteous go to heaven, and the wicked go to hell. So if you want to be sure of your salvation, then you need to ask, "How do I become righteous in God's sight? What can cause God to consider me righteous?"

Notice that I didn't connect the righteousness that saves to ourselves, but to God. Yet the most common way we use the word "righteous" is with the modifier "self-" in front of it: "self-righteous." That's an insult we might hurl at others who think they're better than everyone else. In the Gospel reading today Jesus told the parable of the Pharisee and tax collector "to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt." Well that's good news! If Jesus only directed the parable to self-righteous sinners who treat others with contempt, I can just stop the sermon right here, since we aren't guilty of self-righteousness, are we? And we're all truly righteous, not just righteous in our own sight, right?

Hardly. Examine your heart. We all like to think that we are righteous and holy in ourselves, by our works or virtues or possessions. We like to think that there is something valuable in us that makes us loveable to God. We all treat others with contempt in our minds, even if we don't treat them that way with our hands or lips. And our self-righteousness and contempt are shown by the way we compare ourselves to others, like the Pharisee in Christ's parable.

The Pharisee went to the Temple to pray. This in itself was a fine thing to do, and there were two traditional times each day when people would go to the Temple for prayer: at 9 a.m. and 3 p.m., the times when the daily sacrifices to God were made—the sacrifices that God had instructed Israel to perform, through which He would forgive their sins and be gracious to them. And the Lord had promised Israel that He would hear the prayers of His people made at the Temple. So the people actually gathered together for public worship at those times, and would often offer individual prayers in addition to corporate ones.

However, the Pharisee didn't really go up to pray, but to be seen, to compare himself to others, and to boast. First, the Pharisee stood by himself in a very noticeable way, set apart from everyone else so that people would look at him and be impressed. Then the Pharisee prayed, if you can call it that: "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." The first thing he does is compare himself to others and treat them with contempt—he considers himself a righteous man compared to lawbreakers, those who publicly sin against the Ten Commandments. Then he goes on to list positive things that he does—fasting twice a week (when most people fasted at most once a week) and tithing on not only his income put also on everything he got—that is, he gave a tithe to God on everything he purchased. The reason he would do this is that he could assume pretty surely that the people selling him the merchandise hadn't tithed, so he didn't want to take part in robbing the Lord of what was required in God's Law.

Now before I start pointing out what was wrong with the Pharisee's prayer, let me make it clear that Jesus doesn't condemn him for obeying the Ten Commandments and for being self-disciplined and generous. The outward righteousness of this Pharisee was useful and good for society, and is worth imitating. The Pharisee was righteous in an outward way, and it's true that there is nothing good about being an extortionist, adulterer, thief, gossip, murderer, or any sort of lawbreaker. Likewise, fasting can be a valuable spiritual practice, as Jesus encourages it in the Sermon on the Mount and our Small Catechism says that "fasting and bodily preparation are certainly fine outward training" as we prepare to go to Holy Communion. And giving generously to the Lord by supporting His Church is commendable, for God loves a cheerful giver. The New Testament doesn't require a tithe, but God does expect Christians to give firstfruits to Him, not leftovers. And if we were to tithe on everything we purchase, like the Pharisee did, there's no telling how much our church would be able to provide to outside mission organizations beyond what we need to support our congregation's budget.

So the Pharisee was an outwardly good and righteous man, and he should have thanked God that he had been blessed with such piety and discipline. We should thank the Lord for every good gift, opportunity, and ability that He has given us, for these are fruits of the Holy Spirit. We also should give thanks to the Lord for all the blessings He showers down upon others. There is no excuse for laziness on our part, or failure to obey God's Ten Commandments. There is no virtue in sin.

But the problem with the Pharisee's "prayer" is that he wasn't really giving thanks; he considered that he possessed all the things he was talking about by his own efforts, so his prayer wasn't thanking God for gifts received; rather, he was using that speech as an opportunity to compare himself to others, look down on them with contempt, and declare himself righteous before God and man. And there is some of that Pharisaical attitude in all of us. So we need to learn from this parable to seek out, find, and attack the Pharisee inside our sinful hearts.

Let's examine ourselves. In order to boost our self-esteem, don't we often compare ourselves to others and find it necessary to see them as less than we are? Perhaps we look down on people of a different class or color, or we're pleased when our car or house is nicer than someone else's. When things go wrong in our lives, we find a sick comfort in the fact that others are still worse off than we are. No matter how lazy or negligent we are in certain ways, we can always name someone lazier or more negligent, someone we can look down on. We crave some excellence in ourselves that would raise us above others, and then we focus on that particular superiority so we can ignore our vices. We are stronger, or smarter, or more musical. If we find that someone is better than we are at something, we quickly think up things we can do better than them. "So and so may be better liked, but I make more money." "Their children are much better behaved, but ours are smarter." Another comparison we make is to consider ourselves indispensable versus others around us. "I work harder than anyone else and hold this place together." "Without my contributions and volunteering, the church surely couldn't function."

All this sizing up of ourselves we should recognize as sinful pride. If you are particularly good at something, or have a splendid virtue, then sincerely thank God for that gift, but why are you boasting as if you made yourself this way? Didn't God give you your body and life and all that you have? Even the strength to get out of bed each day? And I hate to burst your bubble, but what about all those times you haven't done so well in keeping the commandments, when you haven't been generous or self-disciplined? What about all your vices?

Even if you can fool yourself and other people into thinking you're righteous, here is the kicker: you can't hide your sins from God, and that is what damned the Pharisee: he thought either that he had no sins or that he could cover them up with his good deeds. But he wasn't really facing up to God, but was comparing himself to others. And "The true realization of sin does not come as we compare ourselves with other people. It comes in the presence of God, the living, personal, holy God. When we stand before God with every deceit and pretense stripped off, we see what we amount to." (Norman Nagel) And standing in the light of God's judgment, we can see that the Pharisee's kind of outward righteousness, and our righteous deeds, aren't the kind of righteousness that can get us right with God. So repent.

Instead, we need a righteousness that covers all of our sins and truly fulfills all of God's righteous Laws, and that is not something we can achieve on our own. So if we want to be right with God, we can't be like the Pharisee in his self-righteousness, but instead like the tax collector in his humility, repentance, and trust in God. Jesus tells us that he didn't go up to the front of the Temple to be seen by all; he was embarrassed to even be seen, so he stayed far in the back. The tax collector didn't shout up to God his virtues like the Pharisee, but he wouldn't even look up to heaven out of guilt and shame. And he didn't raise his hands in the air, presenting his good works to God, but he beat his breast out of grief over his sins. And as he continued to beat his breast, he prayed, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!"

But that translation doesn't quite get at what the tax collector is praying for. The ESV and KJV both translate this phrase exactly the same: "God be merciful to me a sinner!" That captures the basic sense of what the tax collector is praying for, but the Greek word in that phrase means more. The phrase can be translated this way: "God be propitiated toward me, the sinner!" Or else, "God, make an atonement for me, the sinner!"

The tax collector identifies himself as "the sinner," like St. Paul does when he calls himself "chief of sinners," or as we call ourselves in the hymn, "chief of sinners." The tax collector realizes that his sins of thought, word, and deed against God are so great that he is in a hopeless situation; he will be damned unless God shows mercy. And so the tax collector prays that God would show mercy in a specific way: by giving a propitiation or an atonement for his sins.

A propitiation is something that satisfies the anger of another person; an atonement is something that answers for guilt and reconciles two parties. The tax collector was praying that God's anger against his sin would be turned away by a propitiation, by an atonement. And the answer to his prayer was found in the sacrifices being offered at the Temple. God provided those sacrifices as means of delivering forgiveness to the people of Israel, and the tax collector's prayer was answered by the forgiveness accomplished by those sacrifices that God Himself had appointed. The tax collector received that forgiveness by faith; he was sorry for his sins and trusted God's promises about the sacrifices for the forgiveness of sins, and so this man went home declared righteous and saved by God, while the Pharisee went home unrighteous and damned. And so the righteousness that saved the tax collector wasn't his own works or virtues, but it was the righteousness that God Himself had accomplished by His Word and sacrificial system. The only kind of righteousness that can save sinners is the righteousness of God, a gift from God.

The tax collector lived under the Old Testament, while the Temple and its sacrificial system were in place. But Jesus tells this parable to His disciples, those who live in the light of His perfect life, suffering, death, and resurrection, and we know where the ultimate righteousness of God for Jews and Gentiles is found: in Jesus Himself. 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, the only-begotten Son of God made flesh, 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" (Hebrews 2:17). He humbled Himself in 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" (1 John 2:1-2).

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 is the righteousness of God that saves; in Christ 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 with our own righteousness, but with the humble prayer, "O God, be propitiated to me, the sinner, for the sake of Jesus Christ."

And God is propitiated toward you, because He has achieved atonement for all your sins in Jesus Christ and He promises to be merciful to all who trust in Christ's atonement. 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 to you: "You are my righteous child because I have adopted you in Holy Baptism. Every time you confess your sins, in Absolution I declare you righteous and holy for the sake of Jesus. And now come, my righteous child, to My table, and eat of the sacrificial Lamb, the true body and blood of Jesus given and shed for all of your sins." And in Christ and His righteousness you have the righteousness that puts you at peace with God and grants you everlasting life in heaven. 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.