The Virtue Signal [Trinity 11]

 LISTEN AND WATCH HERE.

READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• Genesis 4:1-15
• 1 Corinthians 15:1-10
• St. Luke 18:9-14

To you all who are beloved of God called as saints:

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

 

Today, we once again hear Christ speak to us, saying,

“Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.”

 The modern lingo for what the Pharisee is doing in the parable is called Virtue Signaling. When you virtue signal, you practice publicly expressing opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate your good character or the moral correctness of your position on a particular issue. Usually without actually acting out the said virtue.

 In fact, it's noticeable how often virtue signaling consists of saying you hate things. The Pharisee is exalting himself, while hating his neighbor, without being exalted virtuously. What I mean is, instead of working to exalt his neighbor, the tax collector, and his God, in showing mercy as God would do, he is exalting himself by publicly demonstrating how much better he is than everyone else around him.

 The key to virtue signaling is to find something about your neighbor that you can make abhorrent to everyone else. If you can find some aspect of your neighbor that not everyone shares, something that makes them stand out, then you can seem virtuous over them. Some common things that have been used in history include skin color, ancestry, and health condition.

 If you read all of Luke chapter 18, you find it is full of Jesus pointing out and condemning virtue signaling. At the beginning, there is a judge who did not fear God or respect men. He sits on his judge’s seat and judges his neighbor instead of helping them before they make it to his courtroom. Yet, because God is in charge, not him, he ends up showing mercy to a widow, even though he hates her and just because he’s annoyed.

 Just after the Pharisee and Tax collector parable, Jesus tells the disciples to bring the infants to Him and a rich, young ruler asks Jesus how he can inherit eternal life. What he’s really asking is how it can be clearly seen by everyone around him that he has earned eternal life. We know this, because at the end, he is unwilling to make himself poor, i.e. disgusting to others.

 At the end of the chapter, is the Gospel reading from Quinquagesima. In it, Jesus foretells His death and resurrection for the 3rd time. The disciples did not understand, so Jesus gives a blind man his sight back. Before that, the blind man sat there for decades with no one helping him. How could they? Regardless, he was neglected by all good virtue signalers.

 But you don’t need melanin, a yellow badge, or a mask to alienate and shun your neighbor, it just comes naturally, in your sin. Your drive to be better drives you to step on those who get in your way, but you keep the moral high ground by just saying so. Changing your profile picture on FaceBook is virtue signaling. Making sure you’re a part of the right social club, is virtue signaling. Relying on your last name, is virtue signaling.

 Now, be reminded of the Gospel I preached to you, which you received, and by which you are being saved. Virtue is not just for signaling. It is not just for life. It is for pointing to Christ and what He has done for you. 

 For the sinner, God takes on two roles. The first role is the Pharisee. God is the Virtue Signaler par excellence. He sets the stage and makes the rules. If He says “fast twice a week” or “give tithes”, then you better believe those things need to be done. Does doing them make you superior? No. Doing them is your duty. It is the LEAST you can do.

 Regardless, they are law. Fast, give offerings, do not extort, be just, and no adultery. This is easy enough and should be. This is how to combat virtue signaling. But it does not increase your virtue; your standing in other’s eyes. This is God’s Law. It is holy, but in your sin, you will never achieve that holiness, that virtue by following it.

 so it is that God took on a second role. The role of the Tax Collector. How can that be God, you demand? It can be God the same way that Abel’s blood can cry out to God from the ground and plead for mercy for his murderous brother. In the role of Tax Collector, God, in Christ, cries out for mercy on the cross and is justified by the Father.

 Jesus takes excellence one step further than the Pharisee, the Tax Collector, and the Virtue Signaler, in that His fasting, tithing, and virtue is godliness itself. His cries for mercy are for others, not Himself. His signaling is not to exalt Himself, but to exalt His neighbors, all of them, to His level.

 You are not gross. You are not a demon, an outcast. You are not unloved and someone to be avoided. That is sin, the world, and the devil talking. God has no problem eating and drinking with sinners, infected or otherwise, or even corpses. 

 The signal that Jesus sets up is His cross, on which He purchases you from your undesirable sinful self. He sets up heavenly virtue in being the Humble One, not the Tax Collector. As the Humble God, Jesus offers His spotless life to you, suffering and dying, in order that you live beside Him for eternity.

 In Christ, true virtue is shown, not the pale virtue we work out for ourselves here. Not only did He set up the Law and all virtues, but He also perfected them on the cross. this reveals that there is only real virtue in Christ, Who is both God and man.

 As God, Jesus is the only one able to be virtuous. You cannot be virtuous unless you are God, Who’s virtues they are. This allows Him to give to God holy things, where we cannot. This is how God remains holy: He makes the Law and then ends the Law. He becomes the virtuous ransom for all and overcomes death and the devil for us.

 As man, Jesus reveals what true virtue is for us once again, but on our level, and shows us that it is possible for us to find true virtue in this life. Virtue where we don’t just have to shout it at everyone else, but we get to act it out in all godliness.

 Not because we deserve it, anymore than the Pharisee or Tax Collector, and not because our virtue is what God wants. But because we failed to keep it, Christ kept it for us, and then gave us all the credit for being virtuous for all eternity.

 Jesus says at the beginning of this chapter of the Gospel (18:1) that He is telling us all this so that we pray and not lose heart. That we will be heard like the widow and given justice even in front of a God Who seems impossible to please. That we will go to our own houses justified in Christ, like the Tax Collector. That we will be brought into the Kingdom as children, inherit eternal life, and be rescued from death like the Blind Man at the end of the chapter.

 Do not lose hope. Though your virtue, false or otherwise, will not save you, Jesus has and continues to. Though your attempts at purity and righteousness fail miserably, Christ gives the greater forgiveness of sins and covers all your iniquities. 

Do not lose hope. Your virtue is God Himself: Jesus Christ. Your rescue and deliverance from this world’s troubles and pains stands close and weds Himself to you, baptizing you into Himself and feeding you His own Body and Blood. As He once traversed His own life and death, now He goes many more times over for each and every one of you. 

 You will not be separated from this love, so do not fear what man can do to you. Instead trust in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection, which surpasses any virtue ever imagined.