Have Mercy on Me

2016-10-23-have-mercy-on-me

Saugatuck Congregational Church, UCC
© Rev. Alison J. B. Patton
October 23, 2016

Scripture:  Joel 2:23-27 and Luke 19:9-14

Are you more like the Pharisee, or like the tax collector? The more I puzzle over this question, the more my puzzler gets sore. It’s a bit like a Zen Buddhist koan:  a paradox on which to meditate.  You see, I might admit that I am like the Pharisee: self-congratulatory, convinced that I’m doing better than those around me. But the very act of confessing it makes me a little more like the tax collector.  If, on the other hand, I answer the question by saying, “Oh no, I am not at all like that self-centered Pharisee – thank God!”  Am I not behaving exactly as the Pharisee did?  So by admitting my righteousness, I am humbled. But by claiming to be more humble than he, I am caught in the very act of elevating myself.

So, what’s the right answer?  How are we supposed to respond to this deceptively simple parable?  On the one hand, the writer of Luke makes it plain.  We’re supposed to be “humble,” and not judge others.  In a rare case of apparent transparency, Luke provides the punch line right up front. On another hand, that line is only available to us, as readers of Luke’s gospel.  The actual listeners, the people who followed Jesus, who were gathered around him on that particular afternoon, fishermen and former lepers, widows and other would-be-disciples, they didn’t get the cliff notes. Those came later.  So what did they hear?

They heard this:  Two men went up to the temple to pray. One was a Pharisee – pious, well-respected – a good, Torah-abiding man.  The other was a tax-collector – despised by the general public.  This was not your modern day IRS employee, working within a system of checks and balances, gathering resources for the common good.  First century tax collectors collaborated with the occupying Roman Empire and extorted money for their own personal gain. So you can guess whom the audience thought they were supposed to root for, as Jesus began his tale.  It’s like a sermon that begins, “A minister and a gangster walked into the room…”

Imagine the audience’s surprise, then, when Jesus goes on to reprimand the Pharisee and sing the praises of the tax collector.  What?  Can you picture the looks of confusion and indignation, how those Jesus-followers must have scratched their heads and wrinkled their brows ?  There they were, certain they knew who the good guy was, when Jesus flipped the tables on them, again.  The tax collector is justified?  Really?  Justified:  made right with God.  Forgiven.  Despite all his bad behavior?  Jesus’ followers would have needed to work their way through their own assumptions about Pharisees and tax collectors, before they could wrap their heads around Jesus’ point.   So I’d like to suggest we do the same.

First. The Pharisee.

He starts off well enough:  “I thank you, God…” Jesus has just been teaching about the importance of gratitude.  Being a faithful disciple begins and ends with giving thanks to God, the Giver of all gifts.  So the Pharisee says, thank you. So far, so good. But then, the Pharisee’s prayer goes completely off the rails:  “I thank you that I’m not like all those other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector… I am a model person of faith. I go above and beyond expectations: generous, pious, practically perfect.”

It’s probably the recency effect, since Tobey and I just attended the Westport Country Playhouse’ production of Camelot.  I can’t help but picture that most famous knight of the round table, Sir Lancelot, when I read the first few lines of the Pharisee’s prayer.

When Lancelot first appears on the scene, he sings about how well suited he is to be a knight; there is no one more qualified.  He extols all his virtues, from the physical to the spiritual.

A knight of the Table Round should be invincible,

Succeed where a less fantastic man would fail.

Climb a wall no one else can climb,

Cleave a dragon in record time,

Swim a moat in a coat of heavy iron mail.

No matter the pain, he ought to be unwinceable,

Impossible deeds should be his daily fare.

But where in the world

Is there in the world

A man so *extraordinaire*?

C’est moi! C’est moi, I’m forced to admit.

‘Tis I, I humbly reply.

That mortal who

These marvels can do,

C’est moi, c’est moi, ’tis I.

Like sir Lancelot, the Pharisee is consumed by his own goodness, so much so that he neglects to acknowledge the source of that goodness. In the words of Luke, he “Trusts in himself that he is righteous,” leaving everyone else out of the equation, including:  God.   The Pharisee congratulates himself for having cracked the code, made the grade, achieved divine approval by his own devout acts. I call this a check-list faith:  if only I accomplish a, b, and c, I will win God’s approval – everyone’s approval, for that matter.  Too many of us have been raised to pursue a checklist faith. Maybe you know what I’m talking about?  We assume that we are welcome in church only so long as we behave well, follow the rules, have our act together.   And we assume it’s up to us to get it right.  So the pressure’s on.  Friends, the pull to perfection is a powerful force in our lives, and a singularly destructive one.  It’s the force that isolates us from community just when we need it most: when our lives are falling apart, when we stumble or fall or fail.  Because the dark side of perfection is the fear of judgement, and shame.  More on that in a minute.

The Pharisee doesn’t want to have anything to do with failure. So he distances himself from the people who have failed, at least in his eyes:  thieves, rogues, adulterers; even that tax collector.  “Thank God I’m not like them,” he intones.  And while we are quick to judge his harsh words, we may not be so different.  Might we all have a tendency – perhaps it is a human tendency – to measure our worth by comparison and contrast, to gauge how we’re doing, by looking at how others are doing, and then passing judgement?  “Surely, I’m not like that.”

This is where it gets uncomfortable: because naming the people we think are in need of some serious soul-scrubbing usually exposes our own need for a spiritual overhaul.  After all:  What do we really know about the lives of those others? What does the Pharisee really know about that tax collector?  Bishop Yvette Flunder, Founding pastor of City of Refuge, United Church of Christ in Oakland, CA observes that it’s much easier to judge a person from across the room.

So the Pharisee stands “by himself,” praying his prayer and pointing his finger. Because so long as we stand at a distance, we can project all the ugliness, all our anxiety, all our own fear of failure onto that stranger on the other side of the room.  Get up close, and we might just have to look that tax collector in the eye. We might just overhear his story and discover the struggles that we share in common – or the ones we couldn’t have imagined.  We might just get a good look at his flaws, and recognize them as our own.  And that might not be such a bad thing.

Here’s the truth of it:  two men went up to the temple to pray.  Both men were Jewish, both were devout, but one was more courageous than the other. That one was the one who dared to admit that his life was not all goodness and light.  The one who put his trust in God and confessed his failures.  The one who asked for mercy – and got it.  And that one was the tax collector.

When Jesus applauded that tax collector, he reminded his audience, and us, that, perfection is not the point.  And neither is shame.  We’ve all got work to do.  And God welcomes it, wants us to haul out our stuff, to name not just the good but also the ugly and the broken, because that’s how healing begins, how transformation takes root; it’s the first step in becoming not who we are but who God intends us to be: whole and holy.    In the words of the Rev. Molly Baskette:

To see ourselves only as ‘good’ is to live only half our lives.”[1]

Beloved people of God:  The stunning import of this parable emerges only once we can recognize ourselves in both the Pharisee and tax collector.  Maybe this is the solution to the koan, the puzzle posed by this parable: “Am I like the Pharisee, or like the tax collector?”  Maybe the answer is, Yes!  “Am I good or bad?” Yes.  “Am I arrogant or humble?”  Yes.  “Am I in need of God’s mercy?”  Yes.  Yes.  Yes.  The truth is, there are no good people and bad people; no clear lines between folks who are arrogant and those who are humble.  No divine plan to praise the perfect people and condemn everyone else.  There is just we, God’s beloved, mixed-up, struggling, failing, learning, growing people.  And God, who loved us from the word, “Go,” – long before we tried to achieve any a, b or c, calling us always into deeper relationship.

What would it be like to live our lives as if we believed that? As if confessing our failures was not a cause for shame but the path to renewed connection – with God and with each other?  I’ve got a magnet on my fridge that reads:  “What would you do if you knew you could not fail?”  I’d like to re-write it, to read, “What would you do if you knew that failure was not the end of the story, but just the beginning?”

If I believed that, really trusted it, I might live like this:  I might love God with my whole heart, mind, soul and strength; I might take risks for that love, pour myself out, reach out to Pharisees and to the tax collectors; share all my stuff; break bread with strangers; screw up sometimes, fall flat on my face, miss the mark; drop to my knees, pray for mercy, trust all my imperfections to a loving God;  give thanks, every time, for that boundless mercy; then get up, dust myself off, and go back to loving God and God’s people.

This, Beloved, is what it means to follow Jesus.

God help us as we go.

Amen.

Scriptures

Joel 2:23-27 – Common English Bible Translation, adapted

Children of Zion,
rejoice and be glad in the Lord your God,
because God will give you the early rain as a sign of righteousness;
God will pour down abundant rain for you,
the early and the late rain, as before.
24 The threshing floors will be full of grain;
the vats will overflow with new wine and fresh oil.
25 I will repay you for the years
that the cutting locust,
the swarming locust, the hopping locust, and the devouring locust have eaten—
my great army, which I sent against you.
26 You will eat abundantly and be satisfied,
and you will praise the name of the Lord your God,
who has done wonders for you;
and my people will never again be put to shame.
27 You will know that I am in the midst of Israel,
and that I am the Lord your God—no other exists;
never again will my people be put to shame.

Luke 18:9-14 New Revised Standard Version

9He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: 10“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ 13But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ 14I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

[1] Molly Phinney Baskette, Standing Naked Before God: The Art of Public Confession, (Pilgrim Press, 2015), 13.