Proper 25 Year C

Another Oldie. October 27th

Link to the readings is found here.

            Upon hearing this Gospel passage, I think many of us think, "Thank God I am not like that Pharisee" thus making us just like that Pharisee. It's hard to avoid that pit-fall. We certainly don't pray like that Pharisee, we use form 6 in the Book of Common Prayer found on page 392. And you know, we do a lot around here. You might serve on the vestry, or the budget committee, or maybe you are an usher, or a reader. Perhaps you are the person who almost single-handedly puts on coffee hour each week. And I bet you contribute regularly. I bet you are a pledger. We are going to hear an awful lot about pledging and generosity in the coming month during our stewardship campaign. But this is a very good thing about the Pharisee. The actions of the Pharisee, like our actions here to support our congregation, are good action. We need the good actions of all of us in order to grow, and to thrive. I want to examine both the prayers and the characters of the Pharisee and the tax collector in order to discover how we might keep up our good works and still find the ability to be humble in them.

            There is no doubt that the Pharisee's actions are good. In fact, all of the ways that the Pharisee describes himself he seems like a pretty good guy. And it is good that he isn't a thief, a rogue or an adulterer. Pharisees get a bad rap. We tend to read that word Pharisee and think: overly rule bound, self-righteous Jew. The Pharisees are often the enemy in Gospel texts--but I think we are missing an important part of this story if we read the Pharisee as the bad guy and the tax collector as the hero. We miss the whole reversal that Jesus is telling them about. They all expect the Pharisee to be the good guy. And there is good reason that the disciples would think that. The Pharisee movement wanted to bring the Torah (the holy books of Judaism) to more people. They wanted more people to have access to the God of Israel. It was a very evangelical movement, meaning that they were going out and telling people about the Torah. It was a movement of the common people. Both men and women could be Pharisees. They held a radical and open view of their scriptures, and wanted to make the law of Israel available to all. This meant that the law ought to apply both with in the Temple and outside of it as well. The Pharisees were important to maintaining a Jewish identity while Israel was oppressed by Rome. So why do the Pharisees and the Jesus movement have so much conflict? Do you mind if we come back to that question? I promise we will, I just don't think we are ready for it quite yet. We need to spend some time with the tax collector first. 

            And the tax collector--he tends to get an overly positive reaction from us. We forget that tax collectors were not just like government employees. They didn't work for the equivalent of the IRS. No. They worked for an invading, dominating empire which oppressed people by force. The tax collector were are talking about here would have been a Jewish man, oppressing his own people, and would have likely been extorting them, making them pay extra fees to line his own pockets, and making life terrifically difficult for the poor. He wasn't just a humble guy. He was a pretty bad guy. We could use a comparison that isn't to the IRS... to better understand who this character is. What about a mafia boss? It doesn't quite work...but it gives the idea of the intimidation and profiting off of others that would have been true for the tax collector. 

            I think we are now better able to see that Jesus is doing a reversal of people’s expectations, like he frequently does in parables. And when I wonder about where we are in the story, as the frequent church-goers that we are, we are prone to be like the Pharisee. We are good. And I hope we know it. But in our goodness, it is important to know that we are not the only good ones, in fact, all of creation is good. All of us are made by God and loved by God. That love is special—it is specific. God loves each of us in particular ways. And God loves us even in our sin, and our flawed realities. God loves us as we fall short and as we strive for something better. We have a dual nature then, both fully good, created and loved by God and forever falling short, full of sin. It seems like a complicated way to live. And a hard identity to understand. But as Christians we are compelled to keep our feet firmly planted in both realities. An important way of keeping a hold of ourselves as both sinners and totally loved people is to be in relationship with one another. It is by being together in this church community that we can show each other how loved, appreciated and special we each are. I suspect we are all fairly aware of what our faults are, what our sins are. I suspect we each carry around a ridiculous amount of guilt around. But we need each other in this community to reflect our goodness.

            Okay--maybe we are ready to talk about conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees--there is a word that is a tricky rather theological word in our passage: Justified. This is the problem between them. Jesus promotes one idea of how one is justified in relation to God. And the Pharisees have a different one.  What does justified mean? And importantly—what is Jesus suggesting we do in order to be justified? It’s a tricky word; it’s an overly theological word. In Hebrew it is related to the word righteous—a word which is equally theological and difficult. It’s a word that we mostly hear in the negative—self-righteous. Righteous means, “right relationships” when translated most literally from the Hebrew. The right relationships are with God, with community and with our selves. What would the right ones be? They would be filled with generosity, love, justice and equality. The Pharisee was not in right relationships because he sees himself above other people—his relationships are hierarchical and don’t have justice, love or equality in them. The Pharisee, unlike Jesus thinks rightness in relationships can be obtained by following the rules of scripture. And he shows that in his fasting, and giving one tenth of his income. Jesus understands that rightness is less about the rules, and more about the relationships that might result from them.

So at the beginning of this passage then it might read: “He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they had the right relationships and regarded others with contempt.” And it would end with saying “I tell you, this man went down to his home with the right relationships.” This helps me understand the passage a lot better and what Jesus is helping us towards. This parable isn’t just about how to pray, nor is it just a reversal of our expectations about who is close to God. It is a reminder that through prayer we are able to work towards the right relationship with God. It’s prayer that moves us towards righteousness. The Pharisee’s prayer reflects his wrong relationship with God. It reveals that he is not in the right relationships with people in his community—he thinks he is superior to others. And he thinks that his good actions (his giving money, his fasting) is the reason that God would bless him. The tax collector understands that he has been in wrong relationships with community—this is part of why he understands himself as a sinner. His prayer suggests the right understanding of himself and his relationships—both that God is the giver of mercy and that he is a sinner. Though he doesn’t say it—the tax collector must understand himself as loved by God because he knows God might grant him mercy. I don’t think the moral of this parable is that we need to be more humble in our prayer—but it is that we need to pray fully aware of ourselves are loved and as sinful. This takes a fair amount of practice. Being totally trusting of God’s love, and totally aware of why we might not deserve it. We can rely on one another as we gather in this community to help us to feel loved, accepted and totally ourselves here. And we should pray together, confess our sins together, share a meal together, and be blessed together. Be merciful to us, God, a group of totally loved sinners. AMEN.