Living Words

A Sermon for the Eleventh Sunday after Trinity 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 & St. Luke 18:9-14 by William Klock “Two men went up to the temple to pray,” Jesus said.  The temple was the place where heaven and earth met.  The place where men and women could go to be in the presence of God.  Twice a day the priests would lead the people in prayers, at nine in the morning and at three in the afternoon, but people could go any time to pray and they did.  They still do.  Jews today gather at the Western Wall, not technically the temple, but part of the foundation of the temple complex and all that was left after the Romans brought it all crashing down.  Jews still go there to pray.  Two men climbed the steps to the temple courts to pray.  “One of them,” Jesus said, “was a Pharisee.”  It was perfectly fine to pray at home, but if anyone was going to go and pray at the temple, it would be a Pharisee.  Their “thing” was to live their lives as if they served in the temple.  They weren’t Levites and they weren’t priests,