I thank You, God, that I am not an alcoholic.
I thank You, God, that I am not like those rich people, who've never had to work a day in their lives. I'm thankful that I'm not like those welfare people who've never had to work a day in their lives.
I thank You, God, that I am a Canadian, and not an American.
I thank You, God, that I am not a terrorist.
I thank You, God, that I am not like those members of the Taliban.
I thank You, God, that I am not like Osama bin Laden.
I thank You, God, that I am not like Jerry Falwell.
I'm really thankful, God, that I am not like that hypocritical, self-righteous Pharisee in our Gospel reading.
And most of all, I thank You, God, that I am not like other pastors, who are often negative, judgmental, and disparaging of others.
I also thank You, God, that irony is not dead.
Fellowship of Disparagement?
Jesus' parable of the two men who went to the temple to pray is a subversive parable that leaves no one untouched, for we all engage in the politics of disparagement. Indeed, Canadian politics is based on the politics of disparagement. That's how you get elected in many places--stirring up group feelings and pumping up group identity by condemning another group. "We're thankful that we're not like those Albertans, who in turn would let those 'Eastern ... people freeze in the dark!'"
The politics of disparagement is also used effectively by terrorists, and in response we use it to pull together loyalty and support for war and to squelch any dissent. The politics of disparagement is particularly insidious, however, when it creeps into the church. Today is Reformation Sunday in many churches, which often becomes an excuse for good Protestants to think, if not say, "We're thankful that we're not Roman Catholic" and for Mennonites to say, "We're thankful that we're neither Catholic nor Protestant!"
The followers of Christ are called to be more than a fellowship of disparagement which gives those who indulge in it a sense of closeness only because they're standing together against a common enemy. And Jesus does us a service by laying at least two traps in this parable.
The "'Pharisaic' About The Pharisees" Trap
What makes this parable so sneaky is that it sets conventional perception on its ear! It made its original hearers do a double-take! Pharisees, after all, were the good people. They were admired. Their efforts to be holy were second to none. "Pharisee" means "separated one," meaning that they tried extra hard not to be tainted by corruption and other unseemly influences. Everyone knew that what the Pharisee prayed in Jesus' parable was true; he did indeed "fast twice a week" and "give a tenth of all (of his) income" to the work of the Lord. (Luke 18:12) I mean, this is the kind of church member most pastors would die for!
The Pharisee was thankful that he was not a thief, a rogue, or an adulterer. Well, so are most of us. Who would want a church made up of thieves, rogues, and adulterers? (Luke 18:11) And who would want a church made up of tax collectors? Other than our own congregation, I mean? Tax collectors in Jesus' day were reprehensible. They cheated! They collaborated with the enemy! And there is absolutely no indication in the parable that this particular tax collector did anything to be justified. He's guilty as sin. He makes no promise to change; he makes no reparations to people he's cheated; all he does is ask for God's mercy! For all we know, remorse is the only thing he has to offer in exchange for mercy. He may very well want forgiveness without any consequences. How do we know he won't be back at the temple next week, again with his hands empty, with nothing to prove his sincerity?
There is little about the tax collector that warrants hope. The Pharisees, on the other hand, were good people! Many people respected them, and perhaps the Church would have been better served if Jesus had said, "I commend you, Mr. Pharisee, for your commitment to God. Your spiritual discipline is most noteworthy. Your faithful fasting and giving are an inspiration to others. Maybe tone down the bravado a little, so your witness is a little less embarrassing, but otherwise you're right on track."
That's what people may have expected to hear, but in this parable Jesus picks yet another in a long line of anti-heroes that Luke parades through his Gospel. And in justifying the tax collector, Jesus is testing us. Jesus told this parable to his disciples (Luke 18:1). As someone has said, "the Pharisee as understood in a negative sense lurks in everyone, and we should not evade the scrutiny of the text by casting stones at ancient Pharisees." (Cited by Mike Hoy)
The "being 'pharisaic' about the Pharisees" trap is a subtle one. The tendency to compare ourselves with others in order to justify ourselves runs deep. If we understand this parable as an exhortation to learn humility and go home spending all week trying to be humble, we've missed the point! This is not a call to focus on the smallest, introspective, most microscopic details of our lives in order to avoid being a Pharisee. I may try, and I may even be successful, and even grateful that I avoided being a Pharisee, but... Oops! As soon as I think I'm not, I am!
The Self-Deception Trap
Every year millions of high school students take the SAT exam--the Scholastic Aptitude Test, which features a number of questions besides those about math and English. Students, for example, are asked to evaluate their leadership ability, and in a recent batch of exams, seventy percent of the students rated themselves as above average in leadership, and only two percent as below average. Sixty percent rated themselves as above average in athletics while only six percent said below. When they rated themselves as to how easy they are to get along with, twenty-five percent said they were in the top one percent, sixty percent said they were in the top ten percent, and no one said he or she was below average. (R. Curtis Fussell, Deadly Sins And Living Virtues)
In an age devoted to self-esteem, we may all think we look pretty good compared to others, and it's nice to see that level of confidence in students, but is it the kind of confidence that says, "I have something to offer this world to make it a better world?" Or is it the kind of confidence that simply says, "I'm better than you"? If it's the latter, which is actually the kind our society rewards, perhaps it's inflated confidence, because seventy percent of us are not going to get to be leaders; sixty percent of us are definitely not above average in athletics; and I'm not at all sure that sixty percent of us are all that easy to get along with.
Inflated confidence sooner or later gets deflated. Some of you may remember Cassius Clay, the colourful boxer with the unforgettable lines, like "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee," and his best known line, "I am the greatest!" The self-acclaiming boxer once boarded a plane that was preparing for take-off, when the flight attendant instructed the "Great One" to put on his seatbelt. "Superman don't need no seat belt," came Clay's quick reply. Just as quickly, the flight attendant answered, "Superman don't need no plane either," and proceeded to help Clay fasten his seatbelt.
Scott Peck tightens the belt a few more notches, suggesting that the "greatest evil comes from people who think they are doing good." In his book, "People of the Lie," Peck says that the "central defect of ...'evil' is not the sin but the refusal to acknowledge it." (page 69) Look out for people who consider themselves above reproach. Better yet, look out for those moments when you consider yourself above reproach, for spiritual growth requires the acknowledgment of one's need to grow. While it can been exceedingly painful to look at our psychic shadow, it does encourage a measure of healthy shame, if not humility.
"The poor in spirit," says Peck, "do not commit evil. Evil is not committed by people who feel uncertain about their righteousness, who question their own motives, who worry about betraying themselves. The evil of this world is committed by ...the self-righteous who think they are without sin because they are unwilling to suffer the discomfort of significant self-examination." (page 72) That, in fact, is the only winsome thing about the tax collector. Too ashamed to come into the centre of the temple, the tax collector, Jesus says, stood "far off," wouldn't "even look up to heaven," "beat... his breast" and said, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" (Luke 18:13) "I tell you," says Jesus, "this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted." (18:14) Like many of Jesus' stories, this parable hooks us into looking at someone else, only to discover, in the end, that we are examining our own life before God.
A New Map, With Latitudinal Lines Of Grace
The Pharisees thought they had a reliable map to find their way into and through the kingdom of God. The Pharisees, and Jesus' listeners, were used to assessing their spiritual well-being by comparing themselves with others who were less rigorous about their faith, but Jesus scrapped that map. He changed the map, or at least rearranged the guideposts that had previously been used to find and follow God's purpose. People believed that one could guess who was deserving of God's grace; it was easy to tell the "good guys" from the "bad guys". And Jesus says, "That's none of your business. That's God's work." I'm not even sure that Jesus' parable offers us a role model. There is neither obvious blame in the Pharisee nor apparent merit in the tax collector, and perhaps we are meant to imitate the behaviour of neither the Pharisee nor the tax collector. Jesus removed the conventional guideposts to good behaviour, and like Jesus' first disciples, we may wince and cringe.
If Pharisaism used a map with pronounced longitudinal lines of specific behaviours and detailed rules, Jesus crisscrosses those lines with more pronounced latitudinal lines of grace. Jesus asked us to out-do the Pharisees (Matthew 5:20). It's not a bad idea to embody the best of pharisaism, devoting ourselves to holiness and perfection through the keeping of God's commandments, but it also wouldn't hurt to beat our breasts now and then beg God for mercy. It can actually be spiritually uplifting to hold ourselves up to ridicule now and then, and laugh at our puny efforts to be better than others.
Today's parable isn't really about the tax collector or the Pharisee. It's about the nature of God--God's unfathomable mercy and God's amazing grace, because there is nothing, nothing you and I can do to earn the grace of God. And it's only when we begin to realize that we're all in the same boat that we begin to catch the genius of Jesus' clever story.
There was a man in his forties named Raymond, who lived in a group home. Raymond was an Episcopalian, not because of his parents or because he was raised in that church, but because of a priest who welcomed his help. The priest wasn't bothered by Raymond, who, together with his friends were a rather rowdy group, sitting there in the second row, holding the hymn books and singing very loudly, even when they couldn't read the words. After much patient instruction, Raymond became an altar boy, and though he sometimes forgot the right order of things, he worked hard at it, saying, "I help in God's house."
One day the leader of the group home took the group on a trip to another city, and because Raymond loved the church he rousted the whole group early on Sunday morning, and told them to get ready for church. He couldn't tell the time but he knew it was Sunday, and on Sunday you go to church! Raymond didn't know that not all churches were like the one at home, and though the cathedral was almost empty, when the priest came out you would have thought you were in some great, crowded cathedral because everything was done perfectly and properly. When the altar boys appeared, Raymond blurted out, "That's me--that's my job," which, of course, caused the priest to turn and glare in his direction, his frown growing worse at the sight of Raymond waving!
After the sermon it was time for communion, always Raymond's favourite moment in the service. He didn't get up to receive it, however, for just before the sermon ended another man had entered the church and slipped into the back row. He looked a lot like the other men there, gray-haired, in a suit and tie, but he'd been crying, and while he sat there he continued to weep. Raymond had noticed the man, and it caused him to fidget, turning back to look at the man, then looking at others--even at the priest--as if he expected one of them to do or say something. Finally, when almost everyone had been served, Raymond bounded out of his seat, walked to the back pew, took the weeping man's hand and pulled him up. The man shook his head and tried to pull away, but Raymond said to him--loudly--"God loves you, no matter. You come, you come."
They then walked together down the aisle, Raymond's arm around the man's shaking shoulders, until they knelt together in front of the priest, waiting for the bread of heaven. The priest wasn't too happy about it, but this wasn't really about him anyway. In fact, little else mattered--not the swelling sounds of the organ, the beauty of the church, or the priest who seemed to have forgotten whom he was called to serve. God was there, and God is the one who feeds lost lambs. (adapted from a story told by Pamela Tinnin)
Another priest--Jesuit Father Walter Burghardt--suggests that if we need to thank God about ourselves, we should pray like this: "O God, I thank you that I am like the rest of humankind. I thank You that, like everyone else, I too have been shaped in Your image, with a mind to know and a heart to love. I thank You that, like everyone else, I, too, was embraced by the crucified arms of Your Son.... I thank You that You judge me, like everyone else, not by my brains or beauty, my skin tone or muscle power, my clothes or my colour, ...but by the love that is Your gift to me.... I thank You that, for all our thousand differences, I am so remarkably like the people around me." (Walter J. Burghardt, Still Proclaiming Your Wonders) Amen.
As Raymond said, "God loves you, no matter. You come, you come." Come, just as you are, and accept God's love.
Response: "Just as I am, without one plea"
I don't particularly like the parable in today's gospel reading because it's a subtle trap that catches everyone! In past Sundays I've mentioned that most parables fall into one of two types; one is the "Go Thou and Do Likewise" type of parable, and the other is the "How Much More" type. Today's parable belongs in a category all its own! I'd call it a "Gotcha" parable. It's like that annoying park bench on Bank Street on which is written, "You've just proven that advertising works!"
The first trap is the "being 'pharisaic' about the Pharisees" trap. When we watch a movie, we allow ourselves to be manipulated by the movie-makers; we cheer for the hero or heroine, and suspend any judgment about him or her because we want that person to win the day. Similarly, it's immediately obvious to us, upon hearing today's parable, that the Pharisee is the bad guy! Luke tells us that two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee prays a pompous, self-inflating prayer that leaves us cold. The tax collector prays a confessional prayer, humbly and unobtrusively, pleading with God for mercy. Our hearts immediately go out to the tax collector, but Luke has stacked the deck long before we witness these duelling prayers. Not only are we well aware, by chapter 18, that Jesus befriends tax collectors, and argues with Pharisees, but Luke introduces the parable by saying, "(Jesus) told this parable to some who trusted in themselves ...and regarded others with contempt...." (Luke 18:9)
Another trap that Jesus exposes in this parable is the trap of self-deception. The Pharisee in Jesus' story was an impressive man, but it is at the point that he is impressed with himself that we begin to have doubts about him. It's a little like the old Mac Davis song, "Oh Lord, it's hard to be humble when you're perfect in every way." The song makes fun of people who are full of themselves, for finding ways to measure our success at humility begs the question, of course. That rarely prevents us, however, from attempts at self-deception.
A year or so ago I read a Tom Clancy novel (Rainbow Six) about an act of mass terrorism planned for the Olympic Games in Sydney. The novel was based on a rather far-fetched premise, only after September 11 it no longer seems far-fetched. And, in fact, at the time of the Olympics two men were arrested in New Zealand on suspicion of terrorism. They had in their possession a Sydney street directory with the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor highlighted. The fear was that they planned to sabotage the reactor during the Games, but one question on authorities' minds was whether or not the men would actually have found the reactor, for the map they were using was made in 1972. Apparently Sydney streets often change, that had these two men evaded arrest the authorities were confident that they would probably still be looking for the reactor a year later!
All quotations of Scripture, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised
Standard Version.