Ecclesiasticus 35:12-17
2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18
Luke 18:9-14
We begin our parish Month of Prayer today and the gospel reading gives us a timely reminder of where we need to begin when we pray.
Jesus tells a parable in which two characters give us two different models of praying. And it is a parable directed, Jesus tells us, at those “who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt”. That is, those who define themselves over against other people, who is in and who is out, and you assure yourself that you are OK because you are not like everyone else.
The first model of praying: a Pharisee goes up to the temple to pray and “stands by himself, praying thus”. The sense of this in the Greek is that he is addressing himself as he prays, almost as though he was his own god. And indeed, this seems to be borne out in what he says, for he uses the word “I” four times in two sentences, congratulating himself on how good he is. And he does not actually address any request, or need, to God at all. His attention should be on God, but he only notices two things: himself, and the tax collector, whom he despises.
The second model: the tax collector. Tax Collectors at the time of Jesus were extortioners and crooks, licensed by the foreign occupying power to collect taxes for Rome, and backed up by military force. They were so unpopular and hated that the Romans turned a blind eye to them collecting excessive profits for themselves, because otherwise they wouldn’t have found anyone to do the job. They were more like Mafia protection men than today’s honest and upright servants of Her Majesty’s Revenue.
So the tax collector stands at a distance - a contrast to the Pharisee who had gone boldly into the heart of the temple as though he owned it. The tax collector knows he has no right to be there. And he has nothing to bring to God, no righteousness to show off about. What does he say? The only thing he can say, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”
Note that the Pharisee and the tax collector agree on one point, and they are right: the tax collector is a sinner. But the tax collector sees the truth that the Pharisee does not see: that righteousness can only be received as a gift, not claimed as a possession. And we can only receive a gift if we know that we have nothing to bring. We can receive if our hands are open and empty, but not if they are closed and grasping.
And so the tax collector goes to his home justified. That is, he is put right with God, he has received God’s righteousness as a free gift. He is in fact made one with God. But the poor Pharisee, alas, is not justified, not put right with God. He is at one, not with God, but only with himself, just as he was at the beginning of the story. For him nothing has changed. But for the tax collector, everything begins anew. He is in a living relationship with God which changes everything.
The place where we can begin to pray is the place where we recognise the truth about ourselves, and our need of God. We cannot justify ourselves. Self-justification is always about defining ourselves over against other people. It means inhabiting a dualistic mindset, us against them, me against the world.
Now that is the mindset that the tax collector had been inhabiting. You can’t live by robbery and extortion unless you somehow regard your victims as being different from you. You can only be violent towards someone if you stop seeing that they are essentially the same as you.
But the tax collector by his repentance has stepped out from that world, has let go of all that. In great sorrow, he sees the truth of what he has been, and turns away from that and towards God. Repentance means turning around, taking a new direction. Even from a distance, even with his eyes cast down because he dare not look up. He know he has nothing to offer from what his life has been and can only cry out to God for mercy.
And mercy is granted. All who ask will receive, says Jesus. But to be able to receive, we must first let go of our pride and self-righteousness, of all our attempts to justify ourselves. The tax collector does this, and is justified by God. The Pharisee does not, and so makes himself unable to receive the gift that God wants to give to him, also.
Now this is a parable, and as we know parables are tricky and catch us out. It’s not so much that we read parables as that parables read us. So, when we read this story, where do we see ourselves, whom do we identify with?
The snare for us, as we read this parable, is that it is so easy for a gift to become a possession. God has given us his righteousness, freely. But now it’s mine, hang on to it! Oh God (as I might say) I thank you that I am humble, that I realise that I am a sinner and in need of your mercy. In particular I thank you that I am not like that really smug self-righteous person over there, congratulating themselves on how good they are...
Whoops! If we think like that, suddenly we’ve switched places in the parable, and maybe not even noticed. To repent means leaving behind the old way of thinking, the old way of being human, in which we define ourselves over against other people. But we see how persistent that way of being is, what a struggle it is to be free from it.
But of course righteousness is God’s gift and not our effort! The struggle is never an attempt to justify ourselves or make ourselves righteous. Rather, it is a continual turning towards God with open and empty hands, to receive from him the gift, always the free gift, of being made righteous. The gift of unity with God which is at the same time the gift of unity with all humanity.
As we leave behind the illusion of self-justification we realise our fundamental identity with everyone else. The “everyone else” that we thought we were different from. We are just the same as the whole struggling sinful human race. We, along with everyone else, depend entirely on God’s grace and mercy. Our justification, which is God’s gift, frees us from the old way of thinking and at the same time fills us with profound compassion for the whole of humanity and indeed all of creation. When we are caught up in God’s love, which embraces everyone, our hearts are opened to see all humanity as our brothers and sisters.
This then is what prayer does. We turn to the Lord in humility and repentance, crying out “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” And God fills us with his mercy, forgives our sins, and restores us to union with him. We are justified by his grace. And, being freed from our sin, we discover that the whole of humanity is there with us in the place of our prayer. There are no outsiders any more, and so our prayer reaches out and embraces all with the same love and embrace with which God has reached us. The end of our prayer is the discovery of our union with God and all creation, to dwell in God’s love for ever and not to cease praying and striving for all our brothers and sisters and all that God has made.
Saint Isaac the Syrian, one of the great jewels of the Eastern Church, summed up this spirit of prayer as follows:
What is a merciful heart? It is a heart on fire for the whole of creation, for humanity, for the birds, for the animals, for demons, and for all that exists... By the strong and vehement mercy that grips such a person’s heart, and by such great compassion, the heart is humbled and one cannot bear to hear or to see any injury or slight sorrow in any in creation. For this reason, such a person offers up tearful prayer continually even for irrational beasts, for the enemies of the truth, and for those who harm her or him, that they be protected and receive mercy.
Even so, Lord, teach us to pray. Amen.
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