Bradley Hanson in his book, Introduction to Christian Doctrine, says that how we think about
God shapes and determines what we think about God. In a like manner, I believe
that how we think about prayer shapes and determines what we pray. If prayer is
to be a public event, then the language of the prayer may be very formal. We
hear these prayers in our worship service in the prayer of the day, the
offertory prayer, the prayers of the people, and the prayers contained in the
Eucharist. These prayers have various functions, but the language is pretty
formal and may use metaphors and similes to call forth emotional and
psychological energy for worship. If prayer is about speaking justice, then the
language may be challenging and abrasive to the ears of those who hear those
pleas while evoking God’s empathy and care. If prayer is our personal
conversation with God throughout the day, prayer may sound a lot like how we
talk to our friends and may contain utterances of thanks, amazement, cries for
help, assistance, spiritual strength, and forgiveness.
How we think about prayer even determines the frequency of
praying. If prayer is a public thing, then we may not pray more often than once
or twice a month, maybe weekly. If prayer is about crying for justice,
depending on how satisfied you are with your life, you may only pray once or
twice a year. But if prayer is a conversation with God, then you may be praying
constantly even with base and common words. A professor I knew once said that
within the most profane oath lies a prayer for help. Again I want to say, how
we think of prayer shapes and determines what we pray.
If last week’s text was about the need to pray always
without losing heart, then this week’s text is teaching us how to think about
prayer and what to pray for. Let us first recognize the relationship between
these two parables. Last week we heard about the judge that was not just, that
is unrighteous, who does not fear God nor respects people. Yet because he
thinks highly of himself, he grants justice (righteousness) to the widow who
threatens to make him look bad in public.
This week, in another parable told at the same time, Jesus
tells us of a Pharisee who has convinced himself that he is justified
(righteous) by his own works, and, because of these great works that he has
done, he is more important than the people around him. He regards those who are
not like him as literally being nothing, of no value, not worth thinking about.
Those other people are so far from him socially that he doesn’t even stand with
the other person; he stands by himself. He is so self-satisfied that, when he
prays, he begins with thanking God that he is not like those other disgusting
people.
The first of the list of people that the Pharisee does not
want to be like are thieves. The word in Greek is more than stealing, it
carries with it the sense of rapacious people or animals like wolves that tear
at the flesh that they eat until they are so utterly sated they may vomit their
food and leave it in order to eat more; or, more often, after vomiting their
food, they will eat it again. They take and consume because they can, not out
of need. Thieving at another level includes people who have more than what they
need while others do not have enough. Thievery here is not actively taking
something from another, but it includes withholding what our neighbor needs
when we have plenty.
The second group of people are described as rogues. The word
in Greek literally means unjust or unrighteous. Merchants who don’t use
accurate weights for weighing or maybe put their thumb on the scale to add a
little weight for a little more money are unrighteous. Bankers who charge
interest and especially high interest are unrighteous. Anyone who misrepresents
themselves or their work or people who do not care for the widow, the orphan,
the stranger, and the poor are unrighteous.
The third group are adulterers. Biblically speaking adultery
is unfaithfulness to one’s spouse, but, in our relationship with God, adultery
can mean putting trust in someone or something other than Godself. As a matter
of fact, adultery is much more often cited as being the behavior of Israel consorting
with other gods and nations than it is used for the relationship between a man
and a woman. In terms of last week’s story, it is not revering or fearing God.
The last and lowest category that the Pharisee is thankful he
is not like is the tax collector, the one responsible for money flowing from the
masses to those in charge. Now in Jesus’ time, the job of being tax collectors was
particularly difficult. They represented the government or the ordering body. When
the Roman government decided it needed a certain amount of money to be raised
in various parts of the empire, that is, the people were to be taxed, the
governing bodies of the various parts of the empire would decide where that
money was to come from. Then they got a person to collect the taxes from the
designated people, but they did not provide for the salary of the tax
collector. If the tax collector only collected what was demanded, he might
starve so, of course, he had to collect more than what the empire and governing
bodies wanted. By collecting the money from the people and delivering it on
time to the people above him, peace was maintained in the empire. But, if the
flow of tax money was interrupted, the full weight of the Roman government
could come down on any given province.
To make taxes more complicated, the Roman government was not
the only entity collecting money. The temple also taxed the people through the
tithe, which was a temple tax. The temple too believed in a trickle up-economy.
Governors also taxed the people for local building projects and urban
improvements. Lastly, the land owners taxed the farmers on their produce from
the land. Today we would call it share cropping, but it was a tax none-the-less.
The assessed tax could be as high as 80%.
Each of the taxes was based on the gross amount that the
people made. By taking 10% here and 10% there, by the time the poorest people
paid for their food and clothing, there was often not enough to go around. To
not pay the tax was to be jailed and die, but paying the tax also often meant
that starvation and even death were nearby. Land and home would be sold first. Even
children, your spouse, and your very person might need to be sold into slavery
in order to pay the money needed. In the sense of an hour glass, the tax
collector was the one responsible for the sand flowing up instead of down. No
wonder he was detested.
It is not enough to the Pharisee to be thankful for not
being like those other no-accounts though; he needs to state why he is better
than those others: he fasts twice a week and he gives 10% of all that he
acquires. This then is his case of being righteous.
Biblically speaking, however, righteousness is not an
individual state. Righteousness depends on the life of the neighbor. If the
Pharisee lives in comfort, but his neighbor lives in poverty, then Biblically he
cannot be righteous because his comfort is at the expense of someone else. If the
Pharisee is living in comfort, and his neighbors are suffering and in poverty,
then Biblically he is stealing from them; he has broken his relationship with
them. The Pharisee has chosen to serve himself and has not trusted God for what
he needs; he has taken from others for his own sake and not served God and his neighbor—he
has become a thief, a rogue, an adulterer, and, yes, a tax collector.
He may be fasting twice a week, but we all know that only
the well-fed can fast. The poor and the starving call it, “We have no food.” When
it comes to taxes, the wealthy may give 10% of what they receive, but when you receive
nothing, paying taxes is not possible because there is no money. You might call
it, “being broke”.
As last week the unjust judge cared nothing for God, so now
we see that the Pharisee does not trust in God. He trusts in himself. He thinks
that prayer is about elevating himself over others rather than lifting up the
people around him.
We compare the Pharisee to the lowly tax collector who is
far off and cannot even bring himself to look up to heaven praying. His prayer
is that God would be merciful or have compassion, that is, would suffer with
him in the midst of his life. Jesus says this one was made righteous. What
makes him righteous or justified is that the tax collector asks or begs God to
be in relationship with him. As the widow begs for a relationship of equity, so
now the tax collector prays for a relationship of understanding and love with
God.
Although we too long for this relationship of understanding
and love, not only with God, but with one another, there are times in our lives
when we run to the place of the Pharisee. How often have I heard, even said,
“There, but by the grace of God, go I!” In saying these words, we separate
ourselves from the event even while recognizing that we might have been there or
done that ourselves, but, thank God, our actions did not result in calamity—we
were not caught. “There, but by the grace of God, go I!” does not mean we are
somehow better by our actions, but we believe that a better outcome resulted
because God favored us more. Now we look more and more like the Pharisee.
Poverty is not that far away for the average American family
which is only two paychecks from not being able to pay the bills. In worship we
pray, “We offer with joy and thanksgiving what you have first given us--ourselves,
our time, and our possessions, signs of your gracious love.” But when we leave
worship, we may separate ourselves from the people who can’t pay their bills anymore,
saying, “There, but by the grace of God, go I.” We like to think that God has
favored us because of our hard work. We think that we are responsible for creating the world around us as if
God’s creative work stopped on the sixth day of creation. In so many ways, we,
as a society, say “We’ve got ours, the heck with the rest of you—you who can’t
find jobs that pay a living wage, you who are starving in war-torn countries;
you whose homes have been taken away by cartels and people who only think about
their own wealth and power.
We thank God for our own lives of privilege and wonder at
the chances that might lead to us living in those conditions of disaster in
Haiti and say, “There, but by the grace of God, go I.” How much harder our
prayer lives might be if we, with the tax collector, said, “Have mercy on us
sinners, Lord, for we have so much and there are so many that have so little.
Help us to share the abundance of your creation. Help us lift up the lowly, and
let us be humbled in your presence and the needs of all that you have created
good.”
How we think of prayer really does determine and shape what we
pray. Being in relationship with God and one another, we pray that all may know
God’s presence and that all people will have respect, re-spect, that is, be seen
again. We pray that we may engage and honor the people that God has given us to
welcome in God’s kingdom on earth, anticipating God’s rule as it is in heaven,
with daily bread for all and forgiveness of sins. In this state of God’s abundance
and forgiveness, we then are able to forgive as we have been forgiven and are
saved from the trial that would judge our
works alone. Lord. save us from ourselves, and, in your loving arms, deliver us
from evil. Indeed, your kingdom, your power to save, and your glorious
resurrection are what will last forever.
It is in this relationship of forgiveness that we know relationship
with God and one another that continues to sustain us, and so we rejoice in
those words of help and hope:
“In the mercy of almighty God, Jesus Christ was given to die
for us, and for Christ’s sake, God forgives us all of our sins. Therefore, by
Christ’s authority, I declare to you the entire forgiveness of all of your
sins; in the relationship of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Spirit.”
There, in the grace of God, we go.
