Lose to Win

Pentecost 20 Sermon Yr C
October 27, 2019
St. Michael’s Episcopal Church
The Rev. Canon Michael J. Horvath
Gospel: Luke 18:9-14

On Thursday night our Parables class got together to study and talk about another parable.  This time it was the Parable of the Pearl of Great Price.  Now I was a bit anxious about that parable, because everything I had read about it, all the commentary that I had studied, all seemed to give very tenuous meaning to the parable.  And the interpretations didn’t feel like they moved me forward in understanding Jesus or the Good News.  But, I found out after struggling with the parable last week and then debating it in class, that there was actually deep meaning there.  Of course there was. In fact, there were a few deep meanings that we as a class gleaned from the parable.  It was a reminder to me that sometimes Jesus doesn’t make things easy for us.  We need to work at our faith and spiritual lives – and use our brains.

Today Jesus presents us with the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax-Collector. In the constellation of parables, it is probably one that many of us are familiar with.  Two men, a highly observant religious man and a tax-collector (the lowest of the low in antiquity).  They have come into the temple to meet their God.  The Pharisee reminds God that he is doing all the right things and thanks God that he is not like other people he could mention who were not doing the “right things”.  The tax-collector simply prays to God to have mercy on him.  It is the tax collector who goes home a forgiven man.

When I read today’s parable in preparation for my sermon, I thought “Thank the Lord, this is an easy one!”  On one level, this is an easy parable from which to glean a lesson.   “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”  We all know that.

And what is it that we want to automatically say when we read or hear this parable?  “Oh God, thank you for not letting me be like the Pharisee!”  We can now pack it up and go straight to coffee hour.

And instantly we become just like the Pharisee.  Jesus has set us up and we have missed the point of the parable.  The Pharisee has become the easy target for our condemnation, just like the tax-collector was the easy target for the Pharisee.

Although I knew what the easy interpretation of the parable was, I couldn’t get past the fact that as I was between a rock and a hard place when it comes to condemning the Pharisee.  You see, I am just like him.  And don’t think you’re getting off so easily, because you are just like him yourselves!  One of the ways we as humans understand ourselves, and our identities, is through comparison. If we are perceptive, aware people, we’re naturally going to notice those around us and take note of how they are different from us. Social comparison is hardwired into our brains. It’s called “self-other mergence” and it takes place in the frontal cortex. We aren’t likely to stop, and this act of comparison is not in itself unhealthy.

But it’s that next step that often happens after the noticing that’s problematic. In some ways we can start viewing ourselves as “less than” – the “compare and despair” syndrome that tells us that we are not enough in comparison to someone else’s looks or achievements. The other way is that of the Pharisee, where we start viewing ourselves as “better than” because of who or what we are.  I used to wonder why we gave the Pharisee such a hard time if, in fact, what he was saying was true?  What is not honorable or desirable in being honest, faithful and charitable?  Isn’t the Pharisee justified in his opinion of himself?

And as I reflected on this, I came to understand that what the Pharisee lacked, even with all of the positives that he listed, was a sense of humility.  Now humility is rather an unpopular and often misunderstood term.  It is often incorrectly understood to mean a sense of low-self esteem or lack of self-worth, when it actually means quite the opposite.  However, scripture shows us that when we are humble, we are free from pride and arrogance. We know that we are in need of God’s grace, yet we also know who we are in Christ – God’s beloveds.

Humility also is recognizing that we need God’s help, knowing we can’t truly succeed on our own strength. It is thanking God for our talents and gifts, giving God credit for our accomplishments, and seeking God’s mercy when we fail.

The Pharisee’s words indicate that he’s not free from pride and arrogance and that there’s a lack of self-awareness of who is truly God.  But there is another thing that his lack of humility does.  For all the comparisons that he makes which put him in a good light, and for all of the ways he lives a good life, the Pharisee’s lack of humility has prevented him from having a relationship with God.  This man has nothing to be thankful to God for because he has already determined that he’s already got everything figured out and doesn’t really need anything else to secure life eternal.

Indeed, arrogance and pride is what separates us from one another in our own lives.  Think of those we are angry with and when our hearts are too full of pride to make the first effort at forgiveness.  How often have we thought, “I’ll say sorry, if she or he says sorry first.”

The Pharisee’s explicit effort to distance himself from the tax collector and the implicit way he separates himself from God uncovers what I think is yet another great lesson in this parable.  The lesson is that given the myriad of ways we can distinguish ourselves for better or worse from our neighbors, given the legion of ways our egos can tell us that we are self-sustaining and self-sufficient, we will all meet the same ending.  The text of our funeral rites says: “We are mortal, formed of the earth, and to earth shall we return. For so did you ordain when you created me, saying, ‘You are dust, and to dust you shall return.’”  Humility has its root in the Latin word “humus”, or earth.

To earth you and I shall return and when we meet our Maker, I’m not sure whether a checklist of all the things we did right will be enough.  We are, after all, very human, and a corresponding list of our wrongs must surely be attached as an addendum to the list.  No, instead I think God will be asking us what our relationship was with him, with each other.  Have we been able to move beyond our egos and self-aggrandizement to create relationships where love and forgiveness bind us to one another?

Scorekeeping blinds us to the fact that we are simply earth, ashes and that our physicality is not so important after all. On an individual level, we start to either become anxious that we are not up to snuff, or we become egomaniacs.  On a larger societal level, things become more insidious, potentially more deadly. One need only look at the language and tropes of a growing white supremacist movement in the United States to understand where differentiating and distancing ourselves from one another can lead.

This parable is the invitation to stop keeping score, to acknowledge and hold before God the lifeless places of our life: the pain and disappointments; the break ups and break downs; the darkness, sufferings, addictions; the times in our lives when  we can’t see a light at the end of the tunnel, where we are no longer able to dream dreams, have visions, or prophesy. This is the exact place the tax collector found himself.

The tax collector went home justified, not because he was good or better than the Pharisee, he wasn’t, but because he offered God a life in need of God’s grace, not a list of his good deeds. God did not withhold anything from the Pharisee. But God couldn’t give the Pharisee what he was asking for, because the Pharisee was asking for nothing. For the tax collector God’s mercy becomes a transformative event, out of the darkness and into the light of a new relationship with God. This parable doesn’t tell us how his story ends. It tells us, rather, how our story might begin with God – through whose Son we are strengthened to fight the good fight, finish the race and keep the faith. Amen.