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Yesterday, Rev. Julia invited us back into one of Jesus’ deceptively simple stories: two people go to the Temple to pray. One is a Pharisee. The other is a tax collector. We know how we’re supposed to read the story. The Pharisee is self-righteous. The tax collector is humble. Don’t be like the Pharisee. Be like the tax collector.

Except Jesus’ parables have a way of setting snares for us. (It's a trap!) Because the moment we congratulate ourselves for not being like the Pharisee, we’ve started praying his prayer: “God, thank you that I’m not like him.”

We humans are remarkably good at drawing lines. Righteous and unrighteous. Deserving and undeserving. Faithful and unfaithful. People who have their lives together and people who don’t. People whose mistakes we understand and people whose mistakes we cannot forgive. (And we almost always manage to put ourselves on the correct side of the line!)

But grace has a frustrating habit of crossing the lines we draw.

Years ago, when I preached this passage, I described God as an “alongside” God rather than a “rather than” God. (Rev. Julia captured this with her explanation of the Greek word "para.") I still love that image. We want grace to tell us who is in and who is out, who has earned it and who hasn’t. Jesus keeps revealing a God whose mercy is far more expansive than our categories.

That can be uncomfortable. Grace feels wonderful when it is extended to us. It can feel downright unfair when it is extended to someone we believe should know better, try harder, apologize more sincerely, or finally get their act together. But perhaps that discomfort is part of the invitation.

What if the spiritual life isn’t about figuring out which side of the line we belong on? What if it is about becoming the kind of people who need fewer lines in the first place?

At Central, we talk a lot about radical grace. This is what makes grace radical: it refuses to become another scorecard. It keeps making room. It keeps crossing boundaries. It keeps placing us alongside people we might never have chosen for ourselves.

And thank God for that.

- Pastor Michael