Proper 25C - Tax Collector and Pharisee, and God

Today’s Gospel reading is another twisty story from Luke.  We’ve made our way through a lot of parables about power, privilege, poverty, humility, and God’s unimaginable love of all.  Today, we hear another parable from Luke, today about the Pharisee and the tax collector. 

As a reminder, in those times, the Pharisees were well-respected, devout Jews who loved God and lived Godly lives.  Tax collectors were way worse than today’s IRS employees.  Tax collectors were Jews who’d been hired by the Romans to collect taxes. The Roman Empire didn’t care how much the collectors took, as long as Rome got its share.  As a result, tax collectors charged much more than needed, and pocketed the difference.  They were considered traitors by the Jews, and particularly the religious Pharisees who worked so hard to maintain a God-centric Jewish identity, despite the Godless Roman Occupation. 

The Pharisee was doing everything right.  The Pharisee is at the temple praying.  I tithe, I pray, I fast. There’s nothing wrong with his actions. He continues, Thank you God. Thank you that I’m not like the rogues, thieves or that tax collector.  And although our jaded ears hear the negative that, we’ve probably all offered a similar prayer.   Thank you God. Thank you that I’m not like that homeless person. Thank you that I don’t have a crazy sibling, Thank you that I have a house, a nice house compared to them. Thank you that my kids don’t behave like their kids.   

On the other hand, the tax collector wasn’t doing anything right.  He was a traitor to his people, he was a thief, he didn’t even have the correct prayer stance for the time, and the story tells us he stood far off, as if he knew he wasn’t worthy.  His prayer, a simple, “Be merciful to me, a sinner. “

The hearers of this story would have expected one to be justified, and one not, but they would have been surprised at which one was justified.  They would have assumed it was the Pharisee, because they were part of the system that judged – judged the Pharisee as good, and the tax collector as bad.  But Jesus again throws in a surprise ending, with the tax collector leaving justified, as if he got a reward that rightfully belonged to the Pharisee.  But actually, they both left with what they’d sought.  The prayer of the Pharisee was more like a book report or status update.  I’ve done this, and this, and this.  Thanks.  The Pharisee left with what he’d sought from God, which was – nothing.  The tax collector, on the other hand, asked for mercy, and left justified. 

What does this mean?  It doesn't mean that one man was better than the other, because of who he was or what he'd done. To think this would be to swap one judgmental error for another.  The Pharisee was not better than the tax collector, as he perceived.  We need to be careful not to turn this into an equally incorrect judgement. The tax collector is better than the Pharisee.  No one is better.  No one is more loved.

It doesn't mean that one man was justified  because he was repentant. This story doesn’t even tell us that one man is justified because he was repentant.  We’d sure like to think that.  We’d like to fill in rest of the story.  The tax collector left justified, and quit his evil ways, never took more than was owed, and even paid people back. But in fact, it doesn’t say that. Because it’s not his permanent change of heart that made him justified.

This is why I’m not a social worker.

I have a social work degree, and my senior year at the ripe age of 20, I was an intern serving as a case manager in an Illinois prison.  I had a caseload of 50 inmates, who’d arrange to come see me, their case manager, every 2 weeks.  I really tried to help them. 

I had one gentlemen who came in with another inmate.  They weren’t supposed to come in my office with two, for my safety.  But they did.  It turns out, Joe was deaf, and his buddy interpreted for him. But they used a funky made up sign language which I spotted because I knew American Sign Language.  They had connected in prison, and never learned real sign language. I offered to teach them.  After my book was scanned to assure it had no contraband, I set up a schedule and started teaching both of them, so they’d be able to communicate with the rest of the world upon their release.  Months after my internship ended, I ran into the other case manager. He asked if I knew that Joe really wasn’t deaf.  It turns out, at one point in his transferring between prisons in Illinois, he arrived much sooner than his file, and he donned a deaf persona.  When his file finally made it, some well intentioned staff person noted in his file that he was deaf, because he’d been there for weeks, deaf.  All of a sudden, Joe was deaf.  But not really.  They did this because it got the two of them special considerations. No yelling guards, always have a buddy with you.  

It was about that time, that I realized that I don’t have it in me to be that magnanimous in that job.  I realized I could get easily burned out, because the people I was trying to fix, were not always going to meet me half way. They may never repent.  And I wanted them to. 

And I still do, to some extent.  It’s human nature.  We wonder if the pan handler will use the money for good or ill.  We wonder if the sex workers served by Rahab’s Sisters even want to get of the life.  But the truth is, it doesn’t matter in God’s eyes, and I don’t want to be that judgmental.  I don’t want to create strings for good works. 

God's love and mercy extends to us all if we ask, regardless of what we have done, will do, have been, or will be.  It's all because of God's nature, and Jesus Christ's sacrifice for us.  Today’s Gospel teaches us that it does not matter, what good things the Pharisee had done, what bad things the tax collector had done, what attitude either of them had towards their future. What matters is God’s nature, God’s grace, God’s love. 

There’s a contemporary Christian song by the band Mercy Me, with a refrain about God’s love that says it’s “Not because of what I’ve done but who you are.  Not because of who I am but what you’ve done. “

It’s not about me.  It’s not about the tax collector or the Pharisee or repentance.  It’s about God’s love.

And that’s really really hard to remember.  It’s hard to remember when things are going really well – that our good works are the cause of God’s grace.  It’s hard to remember when things are going really badly – that our bad works could somehow equate to a lack of love and grace from God.  It is always about God’s grace and love.  We need tools to remember it. 

 The tax collector provides a basis for the Jesus Prayer.  "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." 

This is a brief, but powerful prayer. It includes several types of prayer all wrapped up.  It’s got adoration, praising and adoring Jesus the Lord and Son of God.  It’s got confession, admitting I’m a sinner, and it has a petition of God to have mercy on me.  For me, it’s great because it’s short, and I can memorize it, and as a result, will never be without a prayer on my lips. 

The Jesus Prayer is the center of the book, The Way of the Pilgrim, by an anonymous Russian writer.  In the book, the pilgrim meets a religious teacher who encourages him to pray as follows:

“Sit down in silence. Lower your head, shut your eyes, breathe out gently, and imagine yourself looking into your own heart. Carry your mind, that is, your thoughts, from your head to your heart. As you breathe out, say, "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me." Say it moving your lips gently, or simply say it in your mind. Try to put all other thoughts aside. Be calm, be patient, and repeat the process very frequently.”  And so he does, thousands of time per day. 

The Jesus Prayer is not a magical incantation, but a way to quickly, simply put God back in the center. And when we put God back in the center of our world, of our very breath, we can find peace with ourselves, and with the world around us.  Nineteenth century holy man Serafim of Sarov observed, “have peace in your heart and thousands around you will be saved”. 

In the New Church’s Teaching Series book, The Practice of Prayer by Margaret Guenther, the author talks about how uses this prayer to accompany her manual labor, turning drudgery into a time of connection with God. One of her favorite times to pray at labor involves cutting wood.  She will size up old logs, and estimate how many times she can pray the Jesus Prayer for a particular log. Then she prays her way through.

The Jesus Prayer doesn’t solve all problems. But it’s succinct, easy to remember, and most relevant to today’s reading, it keeps the focus on God and God’s love and  mercy, not on us and our wins or losses.  It reminds us of God’s unconditional love, and moves us away from the conditional love we are so good at.  I can get behind the tax collector, if he really is a changed man.  I can help the homeless if they help themselves.  It’s tough.  It’s impossible without God. But by keeping God’s unconditional and unearned grace always on our lips, we can say, I will, with God’s help.   

Proper 21 - Lazarus and the Rich Man

When I was confirmed in Evanston Illinois, I was given a “red letter bible”.  For those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s a bible where all of Jesus’ words are written in red print.  I must admit that I was originally perplexed why there were no red letters in the first half of the bible, and little in the end.  It all seemed to be concentrated in what I now know to be the Gospels.  Funny, huh?

In any case, if you look at a red letter bible, and look particularly at the Gospel of Luke, it’s hard to find any red letters that don’t talk about wealth, power, privilege, and the dangers of these.  Or something singing the praises of the weak, poor and sick.  Today’s Gospel reading continues, following on the prodigal son, and Jesus lambasting the Pharisees for the hoity toity dinner party and power-grabbing seating chart, and it being easier for a camel to go through a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven.   Today, we hear about the rich man who walks past Lazarus, not the same Lazarus we hear about around Easter.   To be sure, these are difficult words to hear, particularly as Americans, as Episcopalians, as St. Thomas. Compared to the other Episcopal Churches in the area, we are one of the most wealthy.  As a denomination, Episcopalians, are one of the most wealthy, and as a nation, the United States is the most wealthy.  I would love to say something pastoral that would make this lesson easier to take, easier to preach, easier to hear.  Easier to think it’s not talking about us.  But that’s not my job. And in fact, it is precisely aimed at us. 

Lest you feel too depressed before I even begin, or tune me out at this point, the end of the story gets better.  There is hope. But not before there’s a call to change, and some serious self-examination to be done. 

Every day, when the man came and went, he’d see Lazarus, who was so hungry that he’d have been happy with the crumbs falling from the rich man’s table.  He was so sickly that dogs licked his wounds.  In your mind you might envision Fluffy, the neighbors Pekinese, licking his nose.  But that’s not what this was. This was much more likely a pack of wild, mangy street dogs, trolling the streets for trouble – or food.  To say the dogs were licking his sores tells you something about how sick and defeated Lazarus was, how unable he was to fend off the dogs.   And the rich man walked by this scene, every time he left his home, in his expensive clothing. 

Both men die, and Lazarus goes to Abraham’s bosom, while the rich man goes to Hell.  The rich man asks Abraham to “send Lazarus to dip his finger in the cool water”.

Abraham responds that when the rich man was on earth, he had nice things, and Lazarus was in agony. Now the tables are turned. He further says that a great chasm has been fixed so no one can go between where Lazarus ends up and Hell.

The rich man doesn’t give up. He begs Abraham to send Lazarus to earth to warn his brothers.  Abraham responds that if the rich man didn’t listen to Moses  and the other prophets, neither will they listen to someone who rises from the dead. 

Why did the reach man end up in hell?  It wasn’t his wealth per say.  But the wealth certainly contributed.  I’ll agree with Martin Luther King, who wrote about this very passage, and concluded that it wasn’t the wealth, but the rich man’s actions that landed him in hell.

He didn’t see Lazarus.

MLK wrote that the first sin of the rich man was that he passed by Lazarus and never saw him. He went to hell because to the rich man, Lazarus was invisible. And worse, by not intervening, he allowed Lazarus to become invisible to everyone. Anecdotally, I can tell you that one of the greatest challenges and most disheartening truths for the poor of today is that they’re seen as invisible.  Few people make eye contact on the streets, and they begin to feel like they are, in fact, invisible. 

Acted superior in life, as in death. 

The second grave error the rich man made was that he acted superior to Lazarus both alive and after they’d died.  Alive, he walked past as if Lazarus wasn’t there, wasn’t suffering.  Once they’d died, he repeatedly asked Abraham to have Lazarus do things for him. Never asking Lazarus, but ordering.  Dip his finger in cool water.  Go warn my brothers.  Even in death, Lazarus is seen as a lesser man. 

Set rules about chasm on earth. 

Finally, it was the wealthy man’s refusal to acknowledge the chasm between he and Lazarus on earth that fixed the chasm forever.  Being a pretty visual and literal person, I thing of this as two men and a big pit.  On earth, Lazarus was in the big pit. Lazarus definitely knew there was a gap between he and the rich man who stood on the edge  But while coming and going, the rich man never noticed the pit or Lazarus, or maybe he noticed but couldn’t be bothered.  Now in death, the rich man is in the pit, and he now clearly sees the chasm between the bottom of the pit and the top.  But he set the rules while on earth.  Pit? Chasm? What pit? I see no chasm that needs to be crossed.  The rich man  set the rules on earth. He refused to see the distance, the need between himself and Lazarus, thereby cementing the chasm as uncrossable in death. 

Hearing this Gospel is pretty condemning.  Comparatively speaking, we all have nice things. All of us in this room have riches that far exceed many others in this world.  To tell you just how wealthy we are as a country, there’s a website, globalrichlist.com, where you can enter your income, and it calculates your relative wealth compared to everyone in the world. For me, in a middle management government job, I am in the top 1% worldwide.  Sobering. 

Paul talks more about wealth in this letter to Timothy, and his letter provides some context and instruction on what to do with that wealth.   He does this after some pretty stern warnings too.

Paul warns that you can’t take it with you.  He tells the people that they came into the world with nothing, and will leave with nothing, so why be trapped by senseless and harmful desires that happen when they want to be rich.  He tells them that the love of money is the root of all evil.  Note that he says it’s the love of money, not the money itself.  It’s not about the money. It never really was.  It’s about what the money does to a person, if they’re not careful. 

That’s the real danger of money.  If we’re not always watchful, wealth can distort our interactions and perceptions of God, of our neighbor, and even of ourselves.  Regarding God, wealth makes man lose sight of our need of God. We think money can solve our problems, or we can buy our way into heaven, or we forget that God does not really keep track of our earthly wealth.  With our neighbor, the Gospel illustrates the problems that come with wealth. Wealth creates a sense that one is superior to another, makes us invisible or immune to the needs and plight of others, and it creates an uncrossable chasm between us and them.

 Finally, within ourselves, wealth creates a great sense of discontent. We begin to desire wealth, and more things that wealth can provide, rather than being content with food, clothing and shelter we need today – with “our DAILY bread”.  As Paul reminds, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment. 

I can’t overemphasize the importance of contentment. It comes from a place of deep gratitude for what you have, rather than what you don’t.  Socrates said it well.   “He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have”. 

Again, it’s not about the money itself. It’s about what the money does to a person.  Paul concedes this by offering consoling words to people with wealth, which again would be all of us.  He commands them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on uncertain riches.  Today, the same is true.  For those who find themselves with riches, focus on God and our deep and always need of God, on helping your neighbor, on being content with what you have.

We are called to do good, be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share.  Talking about Lazarus and the rich man, Martin Luther King said that the greatest challenge of the church is that we need to be as concerned as Christ is for the least of these – for our vulnerable brothers and sisters in Christ – for the Lazaruses of our time.  He wrote, “And we must do it because in the final analysis we are all to live together, rich and poor, lettered and unlettered, tutored and untutored.  Somehow we are tied in a single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.”  We need to see the chasm now, and cross it now.