Sermon by Rev Sydney Maitland for Sunday 23 October 2022.
The Pharisee and the Publican, baroque fresco in Ottobeuren Basilica (Full image and source)
• First Reading: Joel 2: 23-32 (Anyone who calls on the Name of the Lord will be saved)
• Psalm 65
• Epistle: 2 Timothy 4: 6-8, 16-18 (Paul’s life, draining away. Confidence in God)
• Gospel: Luke 18: 9-14 (The Pharisee and the tax collector. Pharisee prayed ‘with himself’ RSV, ‘to himself’, JB; ‘about himself’ NIV. The tax collector justified before God)
One of the strange things about our modern awards system is that it acknowledges those already rewarded for their endeavours. Leaders in the public service are lauded further while successful sports folk and entertainers are also given further honours.
It is true that there are those who have devoted their lives, unthanked, to the public good are also honoured but somehow the attention seems to go to those already acknowledged.
But Jesus is profoundly counter-cultural, even contrarian: in His own time and ever after. He takes what is normal in the world and then upends it, making His own life no exception to this principle.
And so, perhaps to the scandal of some of His audience, He does it again in His parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. Today it might be the penitent abuser of the defenceless and the prominent leader of some national charity.
And the interesting thing is that our gospel reading is taken from a 1989 edition of the scripture which says that the Pharisee was standing alone while other versions refer to him as praying with himself, to himself or about himself.
And this is significant. His prayer, if it really is one, was one of self-congratulation. Yes, he was holding to the law, but it was as if God owed him something for all his efforts and good works. His own efforts were sufficient in his own eyes to justify him before God, and in any case he was a better case than that tax collector at the back.
But the Pharisee was not doing anything exceptional. He was comparing himself with others, carefully selected so as to show him up in a good light. He had chosen the works he would mention before God and play down, even avoid those that were less honourable.
And in the light of his self-assessed character and works, God owed him. That was and still is the assumption of those who expect to be rewarded by God on the strength of their self-assessed lives.
And if this were true then God would be placed under an obligation. He would in effect be under a higher law – so God would not be God.
Looked at this way, the proposition is absurd, even insulting or worse, but it is a common way of looking at life.
And so Jesus looked at the tax collector, as He looks at all social and moral outcasts down the ages.
This was a man who knew that he had no standing before God – none whatever. He did not even dare to look up. He knew the desperation of his situation, and his self-disgust, even self-hatred. As a Roman collaborator, he was a betrayer of his people, willing to do the Romans’ dirty work for them.
But it was from this position that he was throwing himself onto the mercy of God, in acknowledgement of his sins and a desire to be separated from them.
Now he was open to what God had to say to him and we can be sure that there was plenty to say: not only in rebuke but also in affirming him. If every saint has a past then every sinner has a future.
There were still possibilities before him if he would let God guide him into them.
And this was why Jesus referred to him as being justified before God, because he had passed the initiative in his life to God while the pharisee was keeping a firm grip on his own life agenda.
Looking at the Old Testament lesson, we see Israel burdened and afflicted by the predations of her neighbours. Yet God is still offering a future and a hope. Whatever life had stripped away from them, God would restore, in His own way.
Here also is a lesson for us. Whatever disappointments life has thrown at us, God has seen. The issue is not how well or badly life has treated us but how we have responded to them in faith.
Will we dare to continue to trust in God and to worship Him? Will we accept that in life there may be things that we do not understand and certainly cannot control?
Will we allow His to be the light of our lives and the strength of our relationships and transactions? Will we make an offering to Him of the things of life that have gone against us?
Writing to Timothy from prison, Paul continued to place all his trust in the Lord, even when he was anticipating his own death.
The man who had laid aside so many prospects of advancement and had accepted a life on the road with no real, personal home, was still trusting in the mercy of God.
He believed that God would reward his lifetime of service – as a gift rather than as a wage. God would meet him in love, who had devoted his life to Him in love. There was and would be no other way.
And so for us, in comparison with what Jesus has done for us, our best works are utterly trivial. That is the point of our faith for the mercy and rewards of God are unearned because they are unearnable.
They can only be received in love and joy, which is given in exuberant and extravagant mercy.
