Historic First Lutheran Church of Pasadena

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Our opening prayer this morning is a simple one. It’s the prayer first spoken by the tax collector in our Gospel today: “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” That’s the prayer I’d like you to join me in praying this morning as our opening – all hands folded, all eyes closed, all heads bowed as we together pray, “God, have mercy on me a sinner.”

That was not only the prayer of the tax collector in our Gospel today. That was not only the prayer of St. Paul during his conversion experience and successive life fighting the good fight of faith [2 Timothy 4:6-18]. That was not only the prayer of Adam and Eve after they doubted the words of God and fell prey to the temptations of the devil [Genesis 3]. That was not only the prayer of Cain after he murdered his brother Abel [Genesis 4:1-15]. That is also your prayer and my prayer every single day of our lives.

It didn’t take long for things to go wrong, did it? It didn’t take long for things to go very, very wrong. In Genesis 1 and 2, we read the account of the creation of the world, our all-powerful God thinking up one part of His creation after another, simply saying “Let there be” and there was. In Genesis 3, we see the crowning achievement of God’s creation – His human creatures, Adam and Eve, made by His own hands, in His own image, freely exercising their God-given free will, eating that delectable fruit and realizing in a split second what a “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day” they had brought upon themselves for that moment of freedom to decide that they supposedly knew better than God. In Genesis 4, Eve gives birth to two sons, named Cain and Abel. Like every parent discovers, those two sons grew up much too quickly and entered their desired professions – Cain as a farmer; Abel as a rancher. Sibling rivalry and jealously has rarely been more evident than when Cain murdered his brother Abel and then, like his parents before him, immediately realized how far he had fallen from God.

I think we’re all familiar with the account of Cain and Abel, but I’m not sure we’re all familiar with all the story of Cain and Abel. I think we often stop after Cain asks God if he is his brother’s keeper and God responds with those incredibly gory words, “Your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground” [Genesis 4:10]. That’s the thing of which horror movies are made. Most of us probably close the Bible right there, condemning Cain as a murderer, figuring he deserved whatever he had coming.

What most of us often miss in the account of Cain and Abel is Cain’s fear. He may not be truly remorseful yet. He hadn’t yet faced his parents with the news of what he had done, but he had faced God. He had heard God’s anger and condemnation. He heard the punishment pronounced against him as his parents had earlier heard pronounced against them. When you break God’s rules and destroy God’s creation, there’s a price to pay. Like his parents before him, Cain’s sentence from God was to be driven from the place he called home, to become a restless wanderer on the earth [Genesis 4:12]. That’s when we see Cain’s fear, fear that was motivated by the realization that people would soon know what he had done and that people would likely seek to right the wrong by murdering Cain himself. I don’t know if Cain used the words of the tax collector – “God, have mercy on me, a sinner” – but that was obviously what God heard communicated to Him and God did have mercy. Undeserved though it was, God made Cain a marked man – marked not to become target practice for the “Minute Men” militias of the day, but marked with God’s mercy, with God’s incredibly abundant grace and love: “This man – sinner though he is – is Mine. Don’t touch him.” That was the indelible tattoo placed upon Cain: “This man – sinner though he is – is Mine. Don’t touch him.”

Those were also the words discovered by St. Paul after his conversion to Christianity. Don’t fool yourselves. Not everyone was happy when Paul explained his Damascus Road experience and his nighttime visit from Ananias [Acts 9]. Through his conversion to Christianity, the Jewish faith had lost their greatest, most adept, most passionate persecutor of Christianity. Paul may have felt the same fear experienced by Cain, fear that he was a marked man. But Paul was marked by God. God also put that tattoo upon Paul: “This man – sinner though he is – is Mine. Don’t touch him.” That’s why Paul was able to fight the good fight and finish the race and keep the faith and receive the Crown of Righteousness [2 Timothy 4:7-8].

Those words are also the essence of our Gospel today. It’s the reason Jesus was so critical of the Pharisee when he made fun of the tax collector: “O God, I am so thankful I am not like that sinner.” The Pharisee thought that was a good prayer to offer up to God. What he didn’t know was that the tax collector, because of his prayer, similar to the prayers of Adam and Eve and Cain before him, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” had also elicited God’s favor, God’s grace, God’s mercy, God’s love, God’s tattoo: “This man – sinner though he is – is Mine. Don’t touch him.”

Those words are also our words. We often feel that people are out to get us because of our sin. It’s the way the Schuller family and the Crystal Cathedral family must feel right now with all the unkind press they’re receiving following the unfortunate filing of bankruptcy. It’s the way Jerry Falwell and Ted Haggard and Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker must have felt – that everyone’s out to get them because of their sin. And even when none of our sins reach that level of public media attention, let’s face it – our own consciences do just about as effective a job as hearing our lives publicly broadcast for everyone to laugh at. Our consciences try to convince us that others know, that others are judging us, that God has judged us and that God can’t stand to be around us.

That’s only partially true. God can’t stand to be around us. God can’t stand to be around sin. But what our consciences fail to tell us is that same thing that the consciences of Adam and Eve and Cain and St. Paul and the tax collector failed to tell them, the same thing that had to be communicated to each of them, the message that cannot come from within us but which must be declared from outside us, that our God, despite our sins, no matter what they are, loves us, makes us His own, not because we deserve it but because Jesus died our death to give us His perfect life. It’s because of Jesus that God tattoos us with that beautiful Gospel message: “This man, this woman – sinners though they be – are Mine. Hands off. Don’t touch.”

Some time back I watched a television program about tattoos, going back in history all the way to the earliest, crudest tattoos to today’s advanced, sometimes full-body covering. One young man who was interviewed incredibly had the word “LOSER” tattooed right across his forehead in big, bold letters. The interviewer asked him why he would possibly have that tattoo placed on his forehead for all the world to see. The young man just shrugged off the question, stating he really didn’t have a reason. Then they interviewed an old Asian man who was a well-known tattoo artist. They asked him about the man’s “LOSER” tattoo. And the old man, in very broken English, explained, “Before tattoo on body, tattoo in mind.” What he said was that the young man obviously thought of himself as a “LOSER” and that is how he wanted to convey himself to the entire world.

My friends, we also are tattooed. Our self-imposed tattoo might be “LOSER” or, like the tax collector, “SINNER.” God, though, because of Jesus Christ, superimposes the tattoo of His grace and mercy and love upon us: “Sinners though they be, they are Mine.” May God, through the power of His Holy Spirit, tattoo that not only upon our foreheads, but upon our minds.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Pastor Christopher Schaar
Historic First Lutheran Church of Pasadena