“Hypocrites” up front! The
“humble” in the rear! That’s about how seating arrangement went at church when
I was growing up... at least that’s what we tended to think! The
rich, the uppity and the seriously educated sat toward the front - behind the
nuns in the front row. Drunks, the poor and the marginalized, in all
their marvelous country-parish variety, staked out the back
seats. Nobody made us sit that way, but that was the pecking order
as I remember it. Families sat in the same locations, generation
after generation. In my very early days, families had their names in
little card holders at the ends of the pews. We knew where people were
“supposed” to sit, and God help you if you dared sit
elsewhere. Stares would focus on you with all the intensity of a
laser beam. We exercised invisible control over each other that
way. Anyone who was ever raised in a small town knows exactly what I
mean!
My family, characteristically, chose the middle… dead center, in
fact! After all, we considered ourselves better than some people and
not as good as others. That’s how we felt and that’s how we
sat! We were probably a bit ambivalent toward God as
well. We were neither too close to Him, nor too far
away. We followed the rules, but we were never accused of being
religious fanatics. We chose a safe distance with a bit of wiggle room! We were a
lot like the religiously ambivalent woman in The Color Purple who said, “…it
ain’t easy trying to do without God. Even if you know he ain’t
there, trying to do without him is a strain!”
Now all of you, unaware of what
today’s gospel was going to be about, who unfortunately chose the front seats
today need not panic! All you who chose the back seats, of course, are not necessarily humble. Some of you maybe just like to be prepared to make a mad dash to your car after communion. Neither holiness nor the effectiveness of
one’s prayer has anything to do with where you sit in church. It has to do with
one’s attitude toward God and neighbor. The effectiveness of
prayer comes from within the heart and not in the seating location! This
parable is about attitudes in prayer, not about where you park your body, so all of you can relax wherever you chose to sit!
The gospel today says that “Two
people went to the temple to pray. One went home justified, the
other did not!”
The first man, a Pharisee, a meticulously
religious man, was very proud of his success in keeping rules and he knew of
the failure of others to do the same. He was proud of his success and had
become contemptuous of those who were not so successful. When he
approaches God, he not only proceeds to inform God just how
good he has been, but he also compares his grocery list of
spiritual successes to the man praying behind him! “Thank God, I am not
greedy, crooked and adulterous, like that man over there!” He assumed
he could be good without God’s help, if necessary, which made him “self”
righteous!
The second man, a tax collector,
aware of his failures, simply asks for God’s forgiveness, mercy and
acceptance. He knew he needed God’s love and forgiveness because he
was aware of his inability to be good on his own power. He compared
himself to no one, but God, and was humbled by the comparison!
Often, when we read these parables,
we tend to identify the “good” and the “bad,” “winners” and “losers,” and the
“hypocrites” and the “humble”… as if reality fell into two simple
categories! Then when we believe we have identified the villain, we
project that villain onto others whom we have identified. Actually, we
end up condemning in others what we really hate in ourselves. This
condemnation of others makes it easy to believe that we are really different,
better and more favored by God. Maybe we ought to read this parable
as if both of these characters exist in all of us. In truth, there
is a part of both in each of us! Instead of condemning in others
what we do not want to see in ourselves, let us “own” the Pharisee within us.
The Pharisee exists in all of
us. We would like to believe that we are “not like the rest of men,
grasping, crooked and adulterous.” When in actuality we really are
“like the rest of men.” We would like to believe that we are better,
different and even more favored by God! We select out of the truth
what we want to believe about ourselves and project the rest onto a convenient
list of those we assign labels like "the grasping, the crooked and the
adulterous.” Instead of owning our sin, we project it on others so
we can disown it! After we condemn others, we often tend to invoke
God’s condemnation of them as well to feel even better about ourselves.
When God doesn’t join us in our condemnation we pout like Jonah, like the older son, like the vineyard workers who worked all day and like the Pharisees! Jonah
pouted because God was so forgiving. He wanted the
Ninevites fried in Hell! The “older son” pouted outside the house
because his father was so forgiving of his wayward brother. He
wanted him punished! The all-day vineyard workers pouted because the
late comers were paid the same as they! They wanted more for
themselves and less for others. The Pharisees pouted because Jesus
was a “friend of sinners,” welcomed them and ate with them. They
wanted Jesus to do what they did: condemn and exclude! The Pharisee
in all of us resents God taking away our delight in having “sinners”
punished. We used to call in theology, the sin of “morose
delectation:” taking delight in others’ sins and failures.
The Pharisee also exists in all of
us, in our subconscious mind where we store those things that we do not like to
see about ourselves, where we store that information we do not want to
own. Down deep we know that there is a little Jim Baker, Richard
Nixon, Adolf Hitler and Pharisee in all of us, no matter how much we try to
hide it from ourselves and others. We can come to see this, not by
comparing ourselves to others, but by comparing ourselves to
God. “We only admit to consciousness those things which we have the courage
to deal with!” The pain of bringing these realizations to
consciousness so that God can love them away is what spiritual growth is all
about!
When we gather here for prayer, as we
stand together before God each week in this Eucharist, we gather as sinners…
one and all! There are no neat categories of “good” and “bad”,
“favored” and “unfavored,” but simply God’s children: broken, sinful, lost,
grasping, adulterous and crooked in one degree or another! No one
can see well enough to condemn anyone else. We can see only
externals. God can see into hearts. This God who sees
all, did not come to condemn, but to save! Our prayer, no matter
where we sit in church, will not be heard until we recognize our own
sinfulness, own it and treat ourselves with the same compassion that God treats
us to! That's why we start Mass with confessing our sins and right before Communion we say, "Lord I am not worthy, but say the word and I will be healed!" When we are able to receive that compassion from God and from
ourselves, we will be able to extend it to others! When we have done
that, we have finally learned to love God, our neighbors and ourselves! When
we have done that, the Sunday Eucharist will have finally exemplified the
parable of the wedding feast: a feast where the “good” and the “bad” are
invited to sit down with the great King and bask in his love and compassion!
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