The famous actor Gregory Peck was once standing in line with a friend, waiting for a table in a crowded Los Angeles restaurant. They had been waiting for some time, the diners seemed to be taking their time eating and new tables weren't opening up very fast. They weren't even that close to the front of the line. Peck's friend became impatient, and he said to Gregory Peck, "Why don't you tell the maitre d' who you are?" Gregory Peck responded with great wisdom. "No," he said, "if you have to tell them who you are, then you aren't."

That's a lesson that the Pharisee in our gospel reading apparently had never learned. His prayer, if it can be called that, is largely an advertisement for himself. He's selling himself to God. Little wonder that Luke describes him in the way he does, "The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself." That's a very apt description, isn't it -- he prayed with himself. He would have done better had he had Gregory Peck there to whisper in his ear that if he had to remind God who he was, then he wasn't.

The tax collector, on the other hand, didn't have to tell God who he was. He knew who he was and he knew that God knew who he was. His prayer is not an exercise in self-promotion, but a confession and a plea for mercy. He is not selling himself, but opening himself. And Jesus says, "It is this man who went home justified." To be justified means to be declared "not guilty." It means to be declared right. The tax collector is declared to be in the right relationship to God while the Pharisee, who is so certain of his own righteousness, is shown to be in the wrong relationship with God. He is not justified before the bar of God's justice which is the court of ultimate consequence.

We hasten to add, however, that this does not mean that the Pharisee was a bad person and the tax collector really a good person. There's no suggestion of that in this parable. The Pharisee was probably every bit as good and moral and generous as he claimed to be. When he gives that little speech about how he fasts and tithes and gives alms and prays frequently, he's not guilty of false advertising. There's no suggestion that he's a hypocrite -- pretending to be something he isn't. In fact, the Pharisees enjoyed great respect among the people of Israel because of the high standards of their morality, their ethics, and their piety. Nor is there any suggestion that the tax collector was really a good guy at heart -- something akin to the Hollywood version of the prostitute with the heart of gold or the thief who robs only from the rich in order to give to the poor. The tax collector was very likely every bit as bad as his reputation made him out to be. If he hadn't been crooked, he wouldn't have been a tax collector in the first place, for the Romans couldn't get honest people to be their lackeys. The only people who would serve as tax collectors were people who were interested in enriching themselves with little concern for how they did it. The contrast in the parable is not between the real, but hidden, goodness of the tax collector and the real, but hidden, hypocrisy of the Pharisee. Such a construction misses the point. If that were the case, it would not be at all hard to understand why it is the tax collector and not the Pharisee who is declared to be righteous and who goes home justified.

No, this parable is much more radical than that, and it is so because the gospel is radical. It goes to the root of the problem of human sinfulness and alienation from God. The gospel that Jesus proclaims in this parable is radical in at least three aspects: first, the parable tells us that God knows us as we really are; second, that God accepts us as we are; and third, that though God accepts us as we are, he never leaves us as we are.

The first of those three aspects of the gospel is familiar to us, though we may not live in awareness of it all the time. God knows who we are. We don't have to do a snow-job on God and sell ourselves to him. Like the line in the Christmas song about Santa Claus, "he knows if you've been bad or good," God knows us. But God's knowledge of us goes much deeper than that. He knows not only our actions, but our motives, our intentions, our deepest and most intimate secrets, he even knows what is in the depths of our unconscious minds. The psalmist said it well when he said, "While I was in my mother's womb, while I was being created in secret, behold, O Lord, you knew me altogether" (Psalm 139:13, 15).

Such knowledge can be a frightening thing if we operate on the "God rewards the good and punishes the bad" philosophy. If that is the way things work, then I'm in trouble, because I've got things inside me that I wouldn't want anyone else to know. There are parts of me that are too private, too painful, too intimate to share with anyone. So if I think that my acceptance by God depends on him not knowing about who I really am inside, then I'm lost. That's why the news that God knows exactly who I am, better than I know myself, is such a liberating piece of good news. I don't have to pretend. I am who God knows me to be. I don't have to be afraid of him finding out something I'm ashamed of, I don't have to close off part of my life to him; he knows me with a knowledge that is deep and wonderful and intimate and infinite. Paul reminds us that when our time comes to finally stand in God's presence our own knowledge will be full and complete: "One day," he says, "I shall know, even as I am fully known" (1 Corinthians 13:12). What a wonderful prospect! So if you've got something to hide, don't bother. God already knows more about you than you will ever know until that day when he grants you fullness of knowledge and that will be heaven.

But close on the heels of this truth, comes the next part. God not only knows who I am, but he accepts me as I am. I say this is radical because it goes right against the grain of the way most of us think. If something good happens to somebody we know, we say, "Well, you must be living right," meaning that their goodness has been rewarded. When something bad happens to us, we immediately begin to wonder what we've done to cause God to punish us. It is normal for us to think that God blesses those who are good and punishes those who are bad. That's the way we would do it if we were God, and we project our own ideas of justice and reward and punishment onto God. The only problem with that is that God doesn't quite fit our expectations of him.

As Karl Barth, the great theologian, would say, "God is God." He is not an idol created in our image. God is God. God acts as God acts. And Jesus says in this parable that God is a God who justifies the ungodly. He declares sinners to be in right relation to himself. He declares them not guilty. By human standards of justice, this is positively scandalous. God justifies the ungodly? Why? Because they are ungodly? No! God hates their ungodliness. Then why does he justify them? Because they trust in him for their justification, and that is the right or righteous thing to do. To throw oneself on the mercy of God is the right thing to do and God declares us righteous when we do it. That is the meaning of having faith or believing -- having faith in God, believing that God will act like God and have mercy on us. The problem most of us have is that we don't act like God, and therefore, we are scandalized when God acts like God.

Samuel Colgate, the founder of the Colgate business empire, was a devout Christian, and he told of an incident that took place in the church he attended. During an evangelistic service, an invitation was given at the close of the sermon for all those who wished to turn their lives over to Christ and be forgiven. One of the first persons to walk down the aisle and kneel at the altar was a well-known prostitute. She knelt in very real repentance, she wept, she asked God to forgive her, and meanwhile the rest of the congregation looked on approvingly at what she was doing. Then she stood and testified that she believed God had forgiven her for her past life, and she now wanted to become a member of the church. For a few moments, the silence was deafening.

Finally, Samuel Colgate arose and said, "I guess we blundered when we prayed that the Lord would save sinners. We forgot to specify what kind of sinners. We'd better ask him to forgive us for this oversight. The Holy Spirit has touched this woman and made her truly repentant, but the Lord apparently doesn't understand that she's not the type we want him to rescue. We'd better spell it out for him just which sinners we had in mind." Immediately, a motion was made and unanimously approved that the woman be accepted into membership in the congregation.

God accepts us as we are. There's not a sin too black, not a deed too awful, not a thought too horrible for him to forgive. What cuts us off from his forgiveness and the freedom such forgiveness brings is our thinking that we have to justify ourselves. Trusting in our own righteousness does not bring God's verdict of not guilty. Trusting in God's righteousness does.

But if we say that God justifies the ungodly, doesn't that appear to condone bad or sinful behavior? If God doesn't require us to change before he accepts us, then what's the use of being good at all? Why not sin boldly and have a good time? After all, the scriptures say that there is pleasure in sin, for a time. Ah, but here the third truth comes into play. God knows who we are; he accepts us as we are; but he never leaves us as we are. When God justifies us on the basis of our faith in him, he also transforms us and makes us better than we are.

The theological or biblical term for God's forgiving and claiming work in us is justification. The word for God's cleansing and purifying within us is sanctification. God starts with us just where he find us, whether in the palace or the pig sty, but he never leaves us there. For God's purpose is not just to rescue us from hell but to get us ready for heaven. So he's in the business of making us holy, or to put it as the writer of Ephesians 4:15 does, helping us "to grow up in every way into Christ who is our head." Maturity in Christ, spiritual adulthood, perfection in love -- these are all ways to describe God's work in our lives subsequent to the moment when he justifies us, or declares us righteous.

This sanctifying work of God's spirit within us, does not turn us into stained-glass saints, people who walk around piously with their hands folded in prayer all day. God's work within us is the most practical, down-to-earth (or perhaps we should say up-to-heaven) work imaginable. When we open our lives to his gracious presence, when we no longer trust in our own morality or good behavior or willpower, we find the most amazing things beginning to happen. As we experience more of God's love for us, we find ourselves becoming more loving toward others. People with bad tempers find that God's spirit within them enables them to control their temper. People with enslaving habits like alcoholism or addiction to gambling, find a resource that is beyond themselves and a source of strength to overcome those diseases of the soul. People with too much love of money and material things find that their values begin to change. People with deep insecurities and low self-esteem begin to see themselves and love themselves as God loves them and sees them.

This doesn't all happen at once, of course. Discipleship, sanctification, spiritual maturity, whatever you want to call it, is a life-long process. It's a journey. We don't become saints overnight, but we do become. That's the nature of the Christian life -- becoming conformed to the image of Christ.

The transforming work of the Holy Spirit in the life of a believer was the chief theme of John Wesley's life and work, and a distinctive contribution the Methodists make to the rest of the church. Wesley had a four-fold dictum: "All people need to be saved from sin; all people can be saved from sin; all people can know they are saved from sin; and all people can be saved to the uttermost." It is that latter that Wesley particularly emphasized. He called it "going on to perfection." He didn't mean a sinless kind of moral perfection, not a perfection in knowledge, but a perfection in love. The single identifying mark of the Holy Spirit's work in our lives is love. Do we love God and do we love one another? That's the test of our sanctification.

Wesley was always deeply disturbed when he saw Christians who were more like the Pharisee than the tax collector -- people who trusted in their own righteousness, and consequently, showed little evidence of the growing presence of God's love in their lives. Once while he was preaching, he noticed a lady in the congregation who was known for her critical attitudes toward others. All through the service she stared at his tie, with a frown on her face. At the end of the service, she came up to him and said very sharply, "Mr. Wesley, the strings on your bow tie are much too long. It offends me." Wesley immediately asked for a pair of scissors, and when someone handed them to him, he gave them to the woman and said, "Then by all means, trim it to your satisfaction." She did so, clipping off an inch or so from each side. "Are you sure they're all right now," he asked, and she replied, "Yes, that's much better."

"Then let me have the scissors for a moment," Wesley said, "for I'm sure you won't mind a bit of correction either. I do not wish to be cruel, madam, but your tongue offends me -- it is too long. Please stick it out so that I may trim some of it off." Needless to say, this critic got the point.

Now God may not take a pair of scissors to our tongue, but for some of us, that may be the part of us where he chooses to begin his sanctifying work, for it is one of the things by which we give most offense and sin against love. But whether it's our tongue or our ambition or our lust or our prejudice or our materialism or our pride or our self-righteousness, or whatever else our besetting sin may be, God will not be content until Christ's image is perfectly formed in us, and that is why he will never leave us as he finds us. Like a dentist who will insist on pulling the tooth with the abscess in it, rather than merely giving us some pain-killer, God will insist on removing the abscesses from our souls. We do not have to remove them to make ourselves acceptable to him; he accepts us warts and all, as the saying goes. But he will insist on giving us the full treatment, causing us a lesser pain in order to spare us an infinitely greater one -- the pain of a life without him.

What aspect of the gospel speaks most to your needs? Is it the fact that God knows you, and knows you intimately and fully? If so, then accept the freedom that God offers you. Open yourself to him, confess who you are to him, and you will find him gracious. Perhaps it is the second aspect which speaks most keenly to you -- that God accepts you as you are and declares us righteous on the basis of your trust in him. That too is liberating. Not only do you not have to hide your real self, but you do not have to make yourself good. Accept his love. Accept his forgiveness which he offers you in Christ. Accept his claim upon you. Accept your adoption into the family of God. Or maybe you've experienced that much of the gospel -- the knowledge that you are loved and accepted and justified -- but you have not experienced the transforming work of the Spirit in your life, because you have not understood or because you have not been open to allow him to work. If so, then open yourself to the Spirit as fully as you are consciously capable of doing; give him the freedom to cleanse away all that is incompatible with the love of Christ, accept his discipline, commit yourself to "going in for the full treatment."

This, too, is a work of faith, a matter of trust, for we do not make ourselves holy. It is God who makes us like Christ. We will not have better morals or better ethics or more willpower when we decide to. We will have them when we allow God to change our inner nature into conformity with the nature of Christ. When Christ is formed in us, then we will be better people with better behavior. So our salvation from God's knowledge of us in our mother's wombs to our perfected knowledge of ourselves and of him in heaven is the work of his grace and the product of faith. From beginning to end, we are saved by God's grace.