Mass readings for the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time:
Sirach 35.15-17, 20-22 Psalm 34.1-2, 16-17, 18-22 2 Timothy 4.6-8, 16-18 Luke 6.12-19
Last week our readings focussed on both the need for prayer in difficult times, but also the difficulty of prayer for us – praying effectively, properly, is hard work. This week we’re given another instance of prayer to consider as Jesus offers us a parable of two men at the Temple praying. They are contrasted in their manner before God, but I would suggest they are also contrasted in terms of who it is they are really worshipping, even as they assume the object of their devotion to be the one true God. One worships God, the other himself. One knows the truth, and is rightly concerned; the other is fooling himself and doesn’t recognize the peril.
I recently watched an interview with the children’s rights activist, Katy Faust. I think her analysis of where our civilization is now is spot on – the god of the West is no longer the God of the Bible, the God known in Jesus Christ, but rather the god we as a society worship is the god who is me – the individual is the false god of our times. And with every generation from the time God was displaced in our society by the cult of individualism in the years after the Second World War, the following has grown and corrupted everything, including the Church in the West. And yet, so many don’t recognize this as we unconsciously incorporate this egoism into our spirituality and change the religion of our ancestors into something unrecognizable to the Apostles.
Now when we look at these two men of Jesus’ parable, we get an obvious contrast: one man prays with arrogant presumption, the other in abject humility. But neither of them is at all admirable.
The Pharisee has some reason for his confidence in that he has, indeed, been faithful in some things: he fasts, he tithes. These are things we are recommended to do as Christians. However, we know that to give money for the support of the Church, the poor and those in need unworthily gains us nothing in itself – this is an obligation, so we can’t be congratulating ourselves for it, or be expecting praise from heaven; that won’t be a sacrifice that brings us closer to God.
The tax collector, to be clear, has good reason to be humble before God. We know that tax collectors at the time of Jesus’ earthly ministry were despised. They collected the taxes for a regime that was progressively destroying Israel through all manner of compromise with Rome; they helped Rome finance the colonization of the land and the steady displacement of true religion by the Hellenistic culture of the Empire, a culture that was hedonistic, brutish, and vulgar for all its superficial sophistication. This man knows he’s part of the problem.
I believe a lot of us look around at our current culture and see how low, garish and ugly it has become, despite its technological sophistication – it encourages the worst in us, it mocks virtue and the truly spiritual element of life, celebrating instead the material, but more insidiously an individualism that has destroyed so much family and community life. If we believe what the Church teaches that human beings are made by God for relationship, this loss of family and community connection compromises our very humanity; it makes us less than we are meant to be; it’s a further falling away from even where original sin landed us. And yet, so many of us find it difficult to pull away, to stop being a part of what is creating the problem – we’re too hooked on it to give it up, or maybe we get our living from it. Most never realize their complicity; it’s a grace, ironically, to come to the horrifying knowledge that we are part of the problem. And yet, as Jesus points out, that horrible realization is the beginning of our justification before God.
When we consider the Pharisee as a man engaged in self-worship, his self-admiration so evident, we see how unconscious a person can be in their self devotion and oblivious to their true spiritual state, and the spiritual and material needs of others – the Pharisee has no compassion for the tax collector, a man trapped by his circumstances into spiritual and moral contradictions that torture his soul. The Pharisee can only use that man as a point of comparison to himself, and of course, find himself the better person. We can see why his religion is so satisfying. He is imagining a god made in his own image, a god of rules and regulations, of lists with tick boxes all of which he’s checked off. This is not the God of Sinai who the Pharisee is ostensibly devoted to; a god of fathomless mystery that cannot be known through mere observance of laws, or through perfunctory acts of worship, or for that matter, in paying out a tithe in cash. The God of Jesus Christ, as we know him, is one of sacrifice beyond all reckoning, and so, a debt beyond our capacity to pay. And this is what the Pharisee hasn’t grasped; but what the tax collector for all his complicity in the evils of his day has – he knows his predicament, and can be thankful to God for this knowledge that can save him.
The Pharisee then is in a worse place, a trap he cannot perceive because it is hidden by the false religion he practices. From all outward appearances, he is a pious man, and enjoys social prestige for it. Jesus speaks of how such men are shown deference, given the best seats at the feasts. The Pharisees enjoyed political power as part of the elite. They weren’t entirely in charge, the princes of the House of Herod were, the Romans ultimately, but what influence they had they used more to guard their privileges than effect any positive change for their people. And as to their religious duty to others, Jesus condemns them for heaping burdens on others but providing no means of finding relief.
They need to change but they resist the suggestion because the religious system they uphold rewards them, not just materially as mentioned, but also psychologically. It tells them they are good, righteous, wonderful people who should be admired. Jesus condemns such selfishness.
And we as western people are indulged in the fiction that where we are today is somehow in continuity with our Christian heritage: that we are a caring and compassionate society even if we’ve long ago forgotten God. As Faust who I mentioned earlier, notes, this lack of self awareness, really a wilful lack of awareness, has consequences for our future as realized in our children. We’ve constructed a society that caters to adults, reassures them, protects them from the consequences of poor decisions, allows them to escape from responsibilities, never asks them for true sacrifices. And yet, we sacrifice our children, and indeed, the many other vulnerable among us. Abortion, medically assisted suicide are obvious, the way we structure work and our economy that takes both parents out of the home by necessity, these aren’t good for kids. More subtly are things like financial bailouts, and other aspects of fiscal policy including managing public debt, are aimed at keeping today’s adults comfortable and feeling secure while heaping burdens on future generations – think about how our leaders trot out slogans about how they are all about the future, occasionally including the trite appeal that this is for the children. It’s nice to believe that we’re good and righteous people, never selfish even as we choose leaders who devote our resources in a way that doesn’t serve the most vulnerable, the poor, the young in a way that really addresses their needs.
Faust invites us all to think how public policy would be if we really thought of children as the true rather than pretended priority, and how that would actually be so good for all of us, adults and children.
I would extend this issue of pretended virtue out to elements of the social justice movement, and all the many revolutionary and drastic programs for change being foisted on us in the name of securing our future.
The Pharisees, of course, thought they were leading Israel to a bright new future, spiritually, politically, I suppose also economically and culturally. The results of their work were consistently dismal; yet they continued to congratulate themselves for being the only really good people in Israel; even worse, they looked at the victims of the society they helped create and maintain, and judged them as unworthy of God.
As the scriptures tell us today, the Lord is our judge, and not us. So, we as the Church are called to set an example, remaining conscious of our obligations to God, to our neighbour, and to ourselves in seeking to know, serve and grow closer to God in humility; and in compassion help others do the same. That will rescue us from self delusion and keep us rooted in the truth of who we are as people in need of a God who is all compassion, but also of absolute, sometimes painful truth; so too is he mercy even as he is justice itself. And as harsh as the truth of who we are might be at times, as our Lord tells us, that’s what will set us free to become who God has called us to be, his faithful servants, his children by adoption, going home not just redeemed, but justified.
Amen.