So the Pharisee goes to the temple to
pray. And when he goes to God in prayer, he is feeling confident about
himself and his own righteousness. He thinks he’s a really good Jew;
really, much better at being Jewish than most other Jews. And so his prayer
reflects his attitude. “Lord,” he
says, “I’m so thankful that you’ve shown
me exactly the right way to be Jewish. You have put into my mind just exactly
what you want and expect from your people, and I am doing just that. I’m
thankful, Lord, that I’m not like all those other Jews around here. I’m not
like all those people who don’t dress right, and who don’t live their lives
right, who are living sinfully and who really aren’t acting in a very Jewish
way towards their brothers and sisters. Look at me, Lord, and notice that I’m
not like them. I mean, was there ever a better example of how a Jewish person
should live than I? I fast regularly, I tithe, I know exactly what your commandments
are, and I live them out every day. I’m such a good man, Lord. And I
know that because I’m such a good man, you will reward me.”
The tax collector prays a very different
kind of prayer. In Jesus’ day, a tax
collector was a BAD man, a BAD Jew. After all he was collecting money from his
fellow Jews to give to the Roman oppressors. So this tax collector also goes to
the temple to pray. And just as with the Pharisee, his prayer reflects his
attitude. He knows he’s not a righteous man. He knows he’s made mistakes
and that he deserves to be punished by God for the way that he lives his life. So
he throws himself on the ground, and he can’t even raise his eyes to look
toward heaven. He beats his chest, and he cries out in humility and
helplessness, begging God to save him in spite of his inability to do what God
has commanded. He prays because that’s just what flows out of him in his state
of desperation. He doesn’t have much hope that his prayer is going to
change God’s mind about him. But maybe he does hope that throwing himself
on the mercy of God will help him change himself. And Jesus says that it is not
the righteous Pharisee who will be exalted for his prayer; rather, it is the
tax collector who has got it right.
Pharisees were devoted to God and
righteousness. Most of their faults were
the result of over-striving for holiness. Their zeal may have been misguided,
but they did have zeal in their desire to please God. So why does Jesus not appreciate them?
The Pharisee is presuming that he is
righteous enough and does not also need to ask for mercy. But we are all both saints and sinners. No
matter how hard we try to love God and our neighbor, there are always times,
perhaps even most of the time, when we are self-absorbed. Any serious attempt
at daily examination of our life makes us painfully aware of our failures. We
need to beg God for mercy with all the fervor of the tax collector.
Secondly, the Pharisee thought he could
earn God’s grace. But God’s grace is a gift that is freely given to us and to
everyone else in the world. We don’t earn a thing when it comes to God’s love.
We only try to live in response to the gift. The movement in our relationship
to God is always from God to us. Always! We can’t, through our piety or
goodness move closer to God. God is always coming near to us, especially in the
sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion, and in worship and prayer.
The Pharisee is not only sure that he is
righteous; he also assumes that anyone not as righteous as he is not even
worthy of consideration. In the world today, we are being continuously
encouraged to build ourselves up by denouncing the “other,” whether the “other”
is viewed as the illegal immigrant, the Muslim, the homosexual, the rich or the
“elite.” This is one of the traps Jesus is urging us to avoid.
The real contrast is about the attitude of
the hearers. The Pharisees, self-righteous people who despised sinners, were
ignoring the fact that God actually does forgive sinners and restores sinners
to righteousness, freeing sinners who seek it from both the penalty and the
power of sin. To despise sinners is to
do something God does not do, and therefore, by definition, to be unrighteous.
It is instead to exalt ourselves above the very God who is pleased to forgive
all who come in humble honesty and repent. God will humiliate those who exalt
themselves. And God will exalt those who seek righteousness with an honest,
humble heart. The tax collector was truly repentant and begged for forgiveness
of his sins. In his humility, he saw through to the great
heart of God, and he cast himself on God’s divine mercy. Jesus teaches his
disciples a lesson about God's mercy in justifying the tax collector, instead
of the apparently holy Pharisee.
Even more importantly, the Pharisees put
‘getting it right’ over responding to the needs of others. Clearly, Jesus’
first priority—the widow, the orphan, the poor—was their last priority. Unfortunately, we see the same thing today. On November 1st, as the sequester kicks in,
more families will be taken off the Food Stamp program than Feeding America
provides with food. We are deluding
ourselves if we think private charity will fill in the gap.
Praying with humility seems to be the main
point of this week’s parable. We’re not supposed to go to God in prayer,
expecting that God is going to be at our beck and call to give us what we want,
or give us a clear answer. We are supposed to go to God in prayer because we
can’t help it, because we don’t know what else to do. When we go to God with
that kind of attitude, that’s when the prayer we offer flows out of us day and
night.
We
are supposed to turn to God because we know that without God, we are truly,
truly helpless and because we know that if we happen to have a blessing, if we
happen to have good things happen in our lives, it isn’t because we deserve it
because we are so good and righteous. That’s the kind of attitude we ought to
have, says Jesus: persistence and humility. Not just in our prayers, but
in the way we live our whole lives. And if we are blessed, if we happen to be
so lucky, as most of us are, then we ought to just be thankful and know that it
isn’t because we deserve it.
We
pray because it changes US.
·
It
changes us into people with humble and grateful hearts.
·
It
changes us into people who aren’t so focused on what WE are getting out of this
world and how we are feeling from day to day.
·
It
changes us into people who are able to love God no matter how our lives our
going and love others as much as we love ourselves.
No comments:
Post a Comment