“God I thank you that I am not like other people….especially that guy over there…”
“What was that God? What did you say? Now just hold on for just one second! What’s the point of religion if I can’t look down on someone else? What good is that? Why be virtuous if I can’t be better at it than somebody else? What else is there to do if not to mock and hold contempt over someone? What else is there to do with my spare time and attention? What else would I think about all day? How else would I pray if I didn’t pray about how others are so much worse than me? There wouldn’t be anything to say! What would we talk about all day?”
“God, let me tell you how religion is supposed to work. Here’s how it is, the whole point of heaven is to enjoy watching everyone I don’t like burn in hell. Burn baby burn! That’s the general idea, Lord.”
“What’s that Lord? No, no, no! That mercy and humility thing will not sell, you’ll never grow the Church that way. It is what is known as a bad business model. Folks will only join up and pay up if they get to hold someone else in contempt! That’s what religion is all about after all…”
Sound familiar? How often do we fall into the trap of religious contempt? It is one of the most dangerous spiritual poisons.
Not much has changed since Jesus first told this parable. The religious impulse still gets twisted into something full of ridicule. It is so easy to sink into that pit and it is so hard to escape from it. Once faith becomes a means to ridicule, mock and hold in contempt it is almost like an addiction that can’t be cured. Maybe we should start a 12 step group, call it religion gone bad anonymous.
Perhaps that is what the gospel is really all about a recovery program for this world that has fallen into the habit of ridicule and contempt. The gospel is the medicine, the cure of souls, that we may escape from the infection of contempt. We are cured by the absolute humility of God in the flesh, the self emptying of God to be among us, the suffering of God on the cross, bleeding that our hearts may have a transfusion of grace.
Last week the gospel lesson was about prayer as well. It was about the importance of persistent prayer. This week we learn the dangers of presumptuous prayer.
We see the tax collector as the example of prayer that is heard and affective, a prayer of humility and a call for mercy, “be merciful to me a sinner.” And he was forgiven. There is no doubt that he was guilty of much. Tax collector’s in first century Israel were a pretty devious band of state sanctioned criminals who worked for the occupying army, the enemy. The Pharisee on the other hand didn’t have much to confess, but his prayer was not heard, there was no grace for him, no forgiveness.
Virtue is a tricky thing. The Pharisee had plenty of virtue, he did everything right, the problem was that it became a wall that separated him from others. The scriptures say that he stood by himself. He stood by himself, apart.
Perhaps true virtue can only be measured by our ability to be part of the world, not above the fray or aloof. True virtue is the capacity to claim our own fallenness and our common humanity and to stand together. Tithing and fasting and morality are all wonderful things but in order to benefit from them we have to treat them as gifts that free us to be more human rather than achievements that make us superhuman, better than the less informed and less disciplined.
The great irony of this parable is that the Pharisee was not only less than human he was also far away from God and unable to receive grace, he was too busy with himself to hear God and to receive the freedom of forgiveness.
The Tax collector, on the other hand, was all too aware of his failings, of his sins, and he knew that he was in need of God’s mercy to free him from the quagmire of his messed up life and in doing that he reached out beyond himself and drew close to God.
One of the strange things about the life of faith is that the closer we are to God the more aware we become of our own failings and our need for God.
The more in communion we are with the triune God the more aware we become of how far we have fallen away. It’s one of those paradoxes. Sometimes this can be disturbing and discouraging.
But rather than provoking despair it invokes a deep humor and abiding perspective on life.
What we see in the parable is really two different images of God, one true the other false.
One image is of a God full of contempt and ridicule for all that is different.
The other image of God is of a God who is full of love for the other, full of curiosity and adventure and fascination in the glory and beauty of others, full of desire that we be in communion. This image of God is expressed fully in the person of Jesus Christ who is in the world that the world may be free of contempt, that we may stand together rather than apart.