Beyond Tolerance

Beyond Tolerance

Luke 18:9-14

One of the most profound experiences of being a parent of multiple children is that they are just, plain different. They have different interests and aptitudes. They respond differently to the world around them. They have different strengths and different weaknesses. They are simply not the same. Didn’t we realize this truth from the first moment that we held them?

One of the running questions of parenting is how much time will I waste trying to get them to be who I want them to be. Shouldn’t they owe me as much? I feed them. I house them. Isn’t it just common decency that would make them feel obliged to please me? God, I hope not! One version of me—a total piece of work in my own right—is probably more than enough for the world. There’s no need to start cloning myself.

One of the other running questions is how long it will take me to begin to see that when I stop trying to control them, I get to start learning about them. I get to be a part of them discovering who they are and how they want to grow. I get to connect and ask questions and maybe even provide some kind of feedback on the times when they get things right and the times when they seem to be getting in their own way. Still, though, it is in the knowing, not the shaping, that the real power of parenting rests. If we are willing to listen and ask questions and then listen some more, we may get to know our children better than we come to know anyone else.

Of course, it seems hardly worth saying that in such parenting, the questions of which kid is better or which kid is “normal” or which kid we love more aren’t even on the table. They are who they are. We need to learn who they are. We need to love them for who they are. We need to encourage them to spend as little time as possible trying to be someone other than who they are. However, underlying all of this is the plain truth that with our children, we come as close as we will ever come to loving unconditionally. That love leads us to want them to have the chance to blossom and grow, to become even more of who they are in this world.

This unconditional love, which is not about control or manipulation but is about acceptance and encouragement and growth is not only what parenting is all about. I think such unconditional love is what God is all about, too. Understand…we love our children unconditionally. Of course, that doesn’t mean we aren’t disappointed along the way with choices that they make. That doesn’t mean that we don’t get angry and frustrated along the way. We feel everything that one person can feel in relationship to another person when we care. What is not in play, though, is whether we love that person or whether they have somehow earned that love. If you can get that as a parent, then you should be able to get that about God. Nothing can separate you from the love of your parent (which you know to the degree that you are able to take that in and to the degree to which your parents are able to love that way.) That parent’s love or your love as a parent is just a glimpse of how God loves each and every human being, every day, all the time.

Let me say this again clearly…The fact that we are loved like this by our parents or by God or that we love like this as a parent doesn’t mean that we like everything we see. Our parents and our God suffer with us through our worst moments. We suffer with our children. It’s just that no matter what else we are feeling, we still love and God still loves.

This is a radical truth in a conditional, transactional world. We pay each other to care and tip each other if we do an extra good job. We employ people and are loyal trusted employees, until something or someone better pops up. People are always doing the math and trying to figure out what’s in it for them if they do x, y, or z. This is what makes the truth of being loved unconditionally so radical. “I have your back, no matter what!” “We are in this together, no matter what!” “You don’t have to prove a thing.” If you were lucky enough to have a parent who loved you like that then you know what I mean. If you’ve ever opened your heart to a God who loves you like that…well…that has the potential to change everything.

One of the hardest things to do is to take unconditional love to heart if you think you’ve got a leg to stand on. Maybe you know you are loved. However, you think that maybe you’re loved for what you’ve accomplished. Although it seems like it would be a secure feeling to be able to point to what makes me lovable and reason that when I’m loved I”m just getting what I’m owed, the opposite is often the case. Like the kid who has never received anything less than an “A” or the athlete who is having a perfect season, I never get to learn who will stand with me when I fail. I just have to keep running from failure and standing on my next “A” or my next “W.” I remember a friend of mine who had never made any major mistakes in her life who one day made a real whopper. After a while, what she felt was relieved. The world had not collapsed. Then, she felt amazed that the people who loved her still loved her.

This is the empathy that we should feel for the Pharisee in our text. The Pharisee is the kid with the 4.00 GPA, the athlete with the perfect record. But the hell of that situation is that he has to make sure that everyone knows these things. He poses in the temple where everyone can see him. He prays in pious voice that is loud enough for everyone to hear. And, essentially, what he prays is, “Thank you, God, for making me better than everyone else! He mentions robbers and crooks and adulterers, who presumably wouldn’t be hanging out in the temple. Then, he drives the point home by pointing out that he’s also better than that tax collector who just happens to be hiding out in the corner over there. (Yikes…that poor tax collector!) And just to seal the deal, he mentions that he fasts twice a week and gives God 10% of all his money—pre-tax!

How painful is that? Here is someone who is loved unconditionally. He is a child of God. But he is doing everything he can to point out why the God who already loves him really has to love him, especially has to love him more than any of God’s other children. There aren’t too many loving parents in this world whose dream is to have their child draw close to them by talking smack about the other kids, right? And isn’t it just about the most cringeworthy thing imaginable to love someone and then have that person try to prove why we should love them? Haven’t we all done that, though, at some point? Can’t we love the Pharisee and cringe on his behalf?

And what of this tax collector? Well, he also happens to be God’s child and loved unconditionally which is a good thing because he knows that he doesn’t have a leg to stand on at all. He’s made a good living and probably has some nice stuff but he’s made that living by cheating other people. There was the tax that someone owed. Then, there was the extra tax which he got to collect and pocket. Just go ahead and try to find something in there to point to and feel proud about. Yet, for whatever reason, instead of defending himself, the tax collector just sees that the only chance he has is if God is merciful, if God loves unconditionally.

In our translation, the ending is really pretty wonderful. Jesus says that the tax man is the one who is right with God. The Pharisee seems like he’s done all the right things but he doesn’t realize that none of that matters if it is done for selfish reasons. Those acts just become selfish acts. The tax collector has also done an awful lot of selfish things but he has come to see how hollow those actions are. The difference is that the tax collector might actually choose to act differently because of God’s love while the Pharisee will just keep doing what he’s doing and thinking about how God owes him. Our text says, “If you walk around with your nose in the air, you’re going to end up flat on your face, but if you are content to be simply yourself, you will become more than yourself.”

To put the matter differently, if you realize that you are loved unconditionally, you may actually do your best to become someone who loves others unconditionally. If you are loved for who you are, then you may find yourself compelled to love others for who they are. If in your worst moment, you’ve been loved rather than judged, you may have to give up the “gotchas!” If the things that make you different are no impediment to you being loved, then someone else’s differences—even the one’s that make you a little uncomfortable—may need to be the barriers that you overcome.

Let’s make this point really concrete…If the only proper and grateful response to discovering that you are loved unconditionally is for you to love unconditionally, then you better get ready to love a Pharisee who can be a bit annoying and the tax collector whom you are pretty sure cheated you last week. You better get ready to see that our job is not only not to reject others for being different, it is also not just to tolerate those differences. We have to go beyond tolerance. We have to learn to love…

We have to learn to love someone of a different faith or different culture or who speaks a different language, asking ourselves how the face of God is reflected in their faces.

We have to learn to love someone who loves differently than we love—whether they are gay or straight or lesbian or transgendered, asking ourselves what we have to learn from one another not about who to love but how to love another human being.

We have to learn to love folks with whom we disagree politically, pushing past the rhetoric that divides us to find the values around which we can unite, asking ourselves what we can learn from one another.

We have to greet every living, breathing human being as a child of God, fully deserving of our respect and our empathy and our compassion.