Sermon for the 26th of October - Last Sunday after Trinity - Jenny Davenport
What are we to make of today’s Gospel? It is full of lessons for us, enough to keep us going for many sermons to come. But I am going to pull out lessons tonight which seem to me particularly apposite, from both the point of view of the Pharisee and the Tax-Collector.
The first is about the Pharisee’s prayer. What is wrong with it? It is about complacency, comparison and arrogance – he believes he is better than other people. The wrongness of putting yourself above other people is a constant theme in the gospels, for example in the parable of the wedding banquet and Jesus’s response to the request for James and John to sit on either side of him in Heaven. He upends the traditional view of importance “The first shall the last and the last shall be first”.
In this case the comparison with others “thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax-collector” is a particular feature of the Pharisee’s wrongness. And yet how natural it is to want to feel better than others.
In a famous experiment in 1970 in rural Iowa a teacher of 8 year olds conducted an experiment with her class in an effort to teach them about racism. Like most ground-breaking psychological experiments, it would probably not be allowed today on ethical grounds, but what she did was this.
She told the (all white) children that those with blue eyes were better than those with brown: they were smarter and better in every way. She told the brown eyes children that they were dumber, worse behaved and in every way inferior. Privileges were granted to the blue-eyed children and denied to the brown-eyed. Predictably, the brown eyed children started becoming sullen and fractious while the blue-eyed children behaved like angels. Their academic performance soared while that of the brown-eyed ones plummeted.
The next day she reversed the experiment, telling the children she had got it wrong and that brown-eyed children were superior. The results echoed those of the previous day, with the brown-eyed children now stars and the blue-eyed monsters. The depressing thing about this experiment is that when she told all the children that they were stars it did nothing for their behaviour or performance. It seems that the magic effect was not just thinking well of yourself but of thinking yourself better than someone else. This is the practice and instinct which Jesus is urging us to reverse. It comes from a presumption of scarcity, of not trusting God’s abundance. We find it really hard to get into our heads that we are so much loved by God, for ourselves, “holy and righteous in his sight” in the words of the Benedictus, that we don’t need to compare ourselves to anyone else. No-one could be more loved by God than we are. We don’t need to compete or shore up our egos by feeling better than someone else.
What of the lessons from the tax-collector? Not even daring to look up to heaven he repeats “God have mercy on me a sinner”. What’s right with this? First of all it is personal. Queen Victoria used to complain that her prime minister Gladstone used to address her as if she were a public meeting. And we see a little of this in the Pharisee as he lists his achievements to God. The Tax-collector, in contrast, addresses God personally. Jesus tells us that when we pray we should go into our rooms and shut the door and pray privately to God; the tax-collector’s prayer is between him and God; there is nothing public or showy about it.
Second, he is calling on God for forgiveness, unlike the Pharisee who boasts of his religious activities. It seems that the tax-collector is aware of his complete dependence on God. God loves him out of God’s graciousness and not because of any good works of his own.
Third, he notes what he is doing wrong in his life rather than relishing his successes like the Pharisee. In the Lord’s Prayer Jesus teaches us to pray that God will “forgive us our trespasses”, to detect which we need to examine our deeds and thoughts. Only when we are aware of our sins can we bring them before God for forgiveness and attempt amendment of life. The tax-collector is only too aware of his sins.
So, in conclusion, what are the lessons in this gospel reading for us?
1. If we are secure enough in God’s love we don’t need to go around feeling superior to anyone else.
2. Whatever the great benefits of public worship we need private time to prayer in person to God
3. We need to be aware that any good works we do reflect our love of God and our gratitude to him, they are not necessary to earn God’s love
4. We should examine our thoughts and deeds, be aware of our sins and bring them explicitly to God for forgiveness.
Lastly, we should thank God for the Gospel which has such rich learning for us.
Amen