Year C / 30th Sunday / Ordinary Time
Readings: Sirach 35.12-4, 16-18 / Psalm 34 (R/v 7a) / Timothy 4.6-8, 16-18/ Luke 18.9-14
Have you taken a good look at yourself looking at others lately?
I’d like to suggest this is what our gospel reading is inviting us
to do today so that we can better live and love as Christians.
The parable of the Pharisee and the tax-collector in Luke’s gospel
continues the theme of prayer that we heard last week.
Then, Jesus taught us about persevering in prayer.
Today, Jesus teaches us about humility in prayer.
Often, when we read or hear this parable,
we picture it like a short film being screened before us.
We see the setting: a temple.
We encounter the characters: a Pharisee and a tax-collector.
We see what they do and hear what they say.
Both men go up to the Temple to pray.
The Pharisee stands by himself in a section worthy of his role.
The tax-collector stands away from this place, some distance from it,
because he feels unworthy.
The Pharisee prays to God saying,
“God, I thank you that I am not like other people:
thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.
I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of my income.”
The tax collector, on the other hand, repeats over and over as his prayer,
“Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.”
You and I are familiar with this scene.
We are also familiar with how it ends:
God is pleased with the tax collector because his prayer is honest.
He knows who he really is, a sinner in need of God’s grace.
His prayer opens himself into deeper relationship with God.
The Pharisee’s prayer is all about himself
and nothing about God or about God being part of his life.
He comes and goes from temple the same--full of himself.
As we look at this scene,
you and I hear the sincerity and humility of the tax-collector.
And I believe all of us would definitely say, "I want to be like him:
I too am a sinner and I want to have the kind of humility he has
to be in better relationship with God."
As we look at the Pharisee, however,
I believe most of us would most probably judge him:
"He puts me off because he is full of himself, proud and self-righteous,
and I am thankful that Jesus is reminding me,
who comes to Mass faithfully, who prays regularly,
who lives my Christian life obediently,
that I am not like him. Thank you Jesus for teaching me not to be a Pharisee."
But what if this scene is not a short film we are just to look at?
What if it is a mirror?
A mirror that challenges us with a reflection
of ourselves like the Pharisee,
a reflection of us judging and condemning him because we are better than him?
Today’s passage begins
by telling us that Jesus addresses this parable
"to those who are convinced of their own righteousness
and despised everyone else."
Yes, Jesus is addressing the Pharisees of his day.
But couldn’t he also be challenging us today?
After all, who amongst us here has never been self-righteous like the Pharisee?
Never looked down on another? Never blinded ourselves to others?
We most probably have done so in a variety of ways,
and every now and then.
and more often than not in small, everyday ways than we are not conscious of.
Like treating the less skilled in our workplaces with less attention and care.
Like keeping believers of others religions apart because they threaten our faith.
Like crafting laws that benefit the powerful at the expanse of those in need.
Like taking care only of ourselves and forgetting the rights of others.
And, like even separating who’s in and who’s out to receive communion
because we judge them to be less Christian than we are.
And yet, isn’t our experience of God
when we come to prayer,
even when we are like the Pharisee,
the experience of God’s merciful forgiveness and continuing love,
not God’s condemnation?
We come to prayer not as people who are all good or are all sinful.
Rather, we pray with the complexity of all that is good and all that is bad in us.
We have both holy desires that we want to grow into
and the shame of sinfulness we need to confess.
Now, isn’t this who the self-righteous Pharisee also is
as he comes with his heart’s desire to pray to God?
If this is the truth of who we are when we pray
then the God we meet in prayer is God who truly understands, loves and forgives us
no less than he does the tax-collector.
Such a God sees all of us equally:
each of us is good because we are God’s creation;
each one of us is special because we are God’s beloved;
and everyone of us is God’s very own because we are made in God’s image.
If we are good enough for God to love us still and forgive us more,
not in spite of our self-righteousness and our sinfulness but because of them,
then so too are the many others we label sinful,
like the divorced, the gay and lesbian, the addicted, the non-practicing faithful;
they, like you and me, are always good enough for God's embrace and welcome home.
You and I are called to this kind of looking too;
this way of seeing that someone else is as good enough for God as I am.
Jesus shows us how we can begin to respond to this invitation
by praying like the tax collector does.
His manner of praying is humble praying.
It is praying with the honesty of knowing
who we are before God, a sinner
and what we need from God, mercy and forgiveness.
Humble praying is therefore about opening ourselves
so that God to come into and be part of our lives,
and in this way help us to see others as God sees them.
Praying like this, I’d like to suggest, will also slowly but surely
open us up to the honest truth
that our sinfulness binds us together with other sinners,
and that the need for God’s grace must marry them and us in prayer.
Humble praying then is about praying in solidarity with and for one another.
It is about seeing, connecting, loving and caring for one another
by holding each other constantly in prayer.
No one is better than another.
No one is more sinful the other.
We are all equal in God’s eyes.
And we all need each other’s prayers to make this same journey together
to be with God and to be eternally happy.
This is why humble praying is grace-filled:
It nurtures us to see ourselves honestly
in relation to one another and to God.
This kind of looking will guard us from being morally superior
and being quick to judge and condemn.
And it will also preserve us from being blind to others
and acting as if they don’t matter.
Ultimately, humble praying is about rediscovering
what God finds good enough to love in each one of us,
whether we are like the Pharisee or the tax collector:
and this is the hope God has in our potential
to always honestly know our need for God.
And isn’t this worth praying for humbly,
not only for ourselves who sin
but also for those who have sinned against us?
Preached at St Peter's Parish, Dorchester, Boston
photo: newcreationschapel.org
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