The Publican and the Pharisee in the Temple. Picture: Greek Orthodox Diocese of America
Sermon by Rev Sydney Maitland for Sunday 27 October 2019.
Readings
Old Testament: Joel 2: 23–32
Epistle: 2 Timothy 4: 6–8, 16–18
Gospel: Luke 19: 9–14
Ask a simple question and you expect to get a simple answer – but ask a more complicated question and the answer will almost certainly be more complicated as well.
The simple yes/no reply will not do justice to the question and then there are matters of definition. ‘What do you mean by …’ in other words, is your understanding of truth or justice the same as mine?
This is especially so when we are talking about values and what should or should not be.
But then there are times when the discussion turns itself inside out, and a sense of the amusing or the absurd or the quizzical comes in. Here is the zone where the paradox reigns and where things that should be straightforward turn out not to be so.
In Joel, there is the promise of God to give back to the people the years that the locust had taken. Some might ask ‘Why did you allow it in the first place’ but others may see it as a way of looking through the reverses that life and circumstance had led them into.
Yet here is God acknowledging that there had been times of loss and of tragedy which His people had had to face, and yet in His love for them He was going to remedy.
Like the story of Job, God would more than fully restore the fortunes and the hopes of His people. Specifically, He would pour out upon all His people the fullness of the Holy Spirit so that all might know Him more fully and serve Him more completely. They would receive His truth in their hearts more deeply, their prayers would be more powerful and their witness more certain.
God would indeed do a new thing among His people, and the world would see and know it as well.
But then Paul has something quite striking to say as well. He is in prison and his case with the emperor has not been going well. He can still write his letters and receive visitors but things are turning against him.
He thinks of how people dedicate their food and drink to the gods and he seek that his own life now is being poured out as an offering.
For Paul, things are coming to an end.
But there can also be a sense for us also that life itself is an offering to be made to the Lord and in which we see all sorts of hopes and ambitions not being realized.
There is that sense in which we are also invited to see these very reverses as offerings that we can make to the Lord and instead of being taken with regret or anger or resentment, we also can find peace by offering the same things to the Lord for His service and to His glory.
They are there to be surrendered to Him so that the mystery of His wonder can also bring fruit out of such a sense of loss and frustration.
The offering that Paul was seeing as his case before the emperor was going against him is the same offering that we also can make during the course of our own lives, even and perhaps especially during what we would expect to be our most fertile and productive years.
And so we see Jesus telling the parable of the Pharisee and the tax-collector praying in the temple.
The Pharisee is full of himself and so prays within and even to himself, proclaiming the wonders and good deeds of his life.
He sees himself as faultless and generous in his lifestyle. Surely God was not going to fault him.
The tax-collector was a collaborator with the Roman empire, stripping his own people and extended family of their money.
He had paid for the privilege of taxing them and could charge what he liked so long as Rome got their prescribed amount.
But now he was ashamed and perhaps resentful of the circumstances that had brought him to this situation. Yet instead of blaming others, he was willing to look at himself and to see the fault within.
And so there is no sense of self there – and certainly no sense of self-regard or self-satisfaction.
Now, rather than blaming others his looking for mercy for himself. But Jesus seen this man as closer to the true condition of mankind before God, rather than the Pharisee.
This man was not only aware of his faults but was also aware that God could and would forgive him, restore him and lead him back to who he was and where he belonged.
The effect of all these readings is to draw us back to God who looks to receive us and to bless us. He looks to pour out the Holy Spirit upon us, like a gushing tap rather than a few drips out of a squeezy bottle.
But by the same token, God is looking for us also to lay before Him the sins and disappointments of our lives. All those time of failure and anger and frustration.
God is looking for the opportunity to open the taps of His glory into our lives. He looks for us to desire them, without condition or bargaining or hesitation.
