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Let me ask you a riddle: What is the one thing that you may have, and the moment you say you have it, it is gone and you have it no more? I'll give
you a hint, in the form of a story: The answer to our riddle, of course, is humility. This little story shows that in our desire for true humility, we can end up proud, AND JUDGMENTAL! In this morning's Gospel reading we hear a classic story about pride and humility--the story about the pompous Pharisee and the humble Publican. The main problem with the Pharisee's prayer is that it is not a prayer, but a report to God about how good the Pharisee is. We are reminded here of Mark Twain's quote--"He was a good man in the worst sense of the word." The Pharisee is clearly a good man, a religious man. We would in fact be happy to have many people like that here at St. James. Good people with good habits. But this slightly-caricatured portrait of two very different men gives good people with good habits a slightly raw deal. Because we know which of these men pays the bills, teaches the lesson, visits the sick, feeds the hungry. Our Church, for example, needs people with the commitments of this first man, the Pharisee - people who care enough to fast, people who tithe on all their income and who thank God that they can. As in Jesus' day, it's people like the Pharisee who hold the community together and who keep the faith with diligence and passion. The Pharisee,
however, is missing one thing - awareness of where his goodness comes
from and where it is in danger of going. He thinks that his accomplishments
come only from himself, not from God. Further, he takes his own goodness
for granted, not knowing that at heart he can be as bad a sinner as anyone
else. And so he simply does not know his need for God.
On the other hand, the Publican--tax-collector, extortioner, low-life - knows his miserable sinfulness and knows that only God's freely-given mercy - Grace - can do him any good. He is not only humble enough to say that he is a sinner; in fact, what he really said in the original Aramaic was, "O God be merciful to me, the sinner." The publican refers to himself as THE sinner--the primal, chief, worst sinner. And this humility wins him God's favor. So it is that our attitude, and not just our acts, may be important to God. C. S. Lewis talks a bit about pride in this context. He says, "The reason God hates pride so much in his creatures, is because it is the very vice that keeps his creation from enjoying Him the Creator. In our self-sufficiency we find no need of the All-Sufficient One." This story also shows the pitfalls in building our self-esteem by comparing ourselves with others. It is one of the main reasons that the Pharisee gets a thumbs-down sign from the story-teller, Jesus. It is interesting to note that the tax-collector does not seem to be aware of the Pharisee's presence; but the Pharisee starts right off by saying, "O God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers or even like this tax collector." If for no other reason, God is not pleased when we say we are glad we are not like some other person, because that other person is God's creation and God's concern. To look down on others is to look away from God. Our duty to God is not to be better than someone else; it is to be what God calls us to be. The Pharisee feels good because he believes he is better than the tax-collector. It was easy for him to feel superior to the tax-collector, a societal low-life. Had the Pharisee compared his achievements with what he had the potential to be, he might have seen that he had lots of room for improvement. Our relationship with God has to be vertical, never horizontal. It is about you and God, not about you and me. Now take that concept, and apply it for a moment to our current international situation. If we compare ourselves to the terrorists, to the Taliban, to Bin Laden, it is easy to see that we are the good guys. But, if we compare our record as a nation with our potential, we will see that we have lots of room for improvement. In our patriotic fervor, which can give us a black-and-white picture of right vs. wrong, good vs. evil, let us not forget that we have many faults and need to be working on them, even now. Many years ago I heard this saying for the first time, "The Church is a hospital for sinners, not a rest home for saints." That has been important to me. From the day of our baptism to the day of our death, we say, as the tax-collector said, "God, have mercy on me, a sinner." A lot of Episcopalians over the years have said to me that they were glad to be in this denomination because they didn't have to sit and be called sinners all the time. But you are a sinner. I am a sinner. I may mean something different by that, however, than what you may have heard in your former denomination. When I say we are sinners, I do not mean that we drink too much or we steal or we have impure thoughts. Surely we do some of those things some of the time, but they are just symptoms of what I mean by Sin. What the tax-collector knew, was that he could never, by himself, overcome his inclination to rebel against God. And so he needed, above all, God's love and mercy. He knew he could ask for it, and he knew that it was God's nature to say yes. Each of us is afflicted with the same inclination to sin, or rebel against God's total sovereignty over our lives. It is in human nature and therefore in each one of us, to want what we want when we want it. It is called self-centeredness. When we make the mistake of looking down upon the fellow next to us because he or she has done something that we haven't done, we are fooling ourselves. We do our own version of the other person's sin, or we will do the very same thing one of these days. We wonder, how could someone do that? Well, we just haven't been in his shoes on that road in the heat of that day. The Pharisee thought he had overcome every bit of his inclination to sin, and therefore did not know of his need for God. As long as we think we can earn our way to the top of God's list, we will never, never know the joy of Grace. Humility is to know our need for God. Humility is to know we are sinners. Grace is the unconditional love that God showers upon us, even though we are sinners. Yesterday, on my favorite Saturday Web site, "The Desperate Preacher's Web Site," I read a sentence, a single sentence, that sums up everything to be learned from this reading: "None of us is worthy, and yet all of us are." None of us is worthy because of anything we do, and yet all of us are worthy, by God's Grace alone. Copyright 2001 The Rev. William A. Kolb Gospel:
Luke
18:9-14 |
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