There but for the grace of God

From Wellington Cathedral of St Paul

There but for the grace of God… 24 October 2010

The Revd Jenny Wilkens

• Joel 2:23-32
• Psalm 65
• 2 Tim 4:6-8, 16-18
• Luke 18:9-14

http://wellingtoncathedral.org.nz/index.php/Sermons

I've been reading this weekend Michael Blain's history of this Cathedral and was intrigued to find this description of what was hoped for the new Cathedral in a booklet written in 1962: It must 'demonstrate on the grand scale the meaning of the Christian faith as uniquely revealed by Christ, the self-sacrifice of God and the fellowship of Christian people in the Body of Christ…so that the congregation may disperse feeling that it has had a wide and powerful Christian experience together… It is essential to have such a Cathedral to accommodate vast numbers on State occasions and to permit the congregation to be truly representative of the Diocese…equally a place to which the "little man" comes, who would not so much as lift up his eyes to Heaven.'

The final part of that quote took me immediately to the tax-collector of our Gospel reading, who, 'standing far off, would not even look up to heaven' (Luke 18:13). Perhaps he was as awed at being in the Jerusalem temple as many are who come into this magnificent sacred space, a salutary reminder to us who love and know well this familiar place, yet it can perhaps become over-familiar, so that it loses its capacity to bring us to our knees in worship, so that we have a wide and powerful Christian experience together, words worth pondering.

If we've grown up knowing this Gospel parable, we too lose the shock value of Jesus' first telling of the story. We think we know the answer as to who's the goodie and who's the baddy in the parable. Well, so did Jesus' hearers, and they were wrong!

While the Gospels portray the Pharisees as Jesus' prime critics and opponents, we need to hear that for Jewish society, the Pharisee was the good guy, the respectable committed lay person whom everyone would expect to pray in an exemplary fashion and have a hot-line to God, no problem. Interestingly enough, they were also the religious progressives, seeking to adapt the biblical laws to the demands of everyday life, they were really trying to apply their faith. They were the members of the EfM groups, the Deepening your Faith group, the Faith in the City group, they were serious about their faith!

And the sort of prayer our Pharisee prayed here was not unlike other contemporary prayers that were encouraged and affirmed, like that of Rabbi Judah, 'One must utter three praises every day: Praised be the Lord that he did not make me a heathen, for all the heathen are as nothing before him; praised be he, that he did not make me a woman, for woman is not under obligation to fulfil the law; praised be he that he did not make me an uneducated man, for the uneducated man is not cautious to avoid sins.' So the Pharisee would be the natural 'good guy' to Jesus' hearers.

We are perhaps more familiar with the current thinking about tax-collectors, who were renowned as dishonest, greedy collaborators with the Roman government, and so seen as traitors to their own people. The tax-collector would be quickly seen, then, as the archetypal bad guy of the story.

So here then is the shock value, the pulling up short of Jesus' sting in the tail of the parable - 'I tell you, this [tax-collector] went down to his home justified, rather than the other [the Pharisee]' (18:14).

Why so? What's so good about the tax-collector? What's so bad about the Pharisee? Perhaps we find it easy to pull apart the Pharisee figure when we see how he is described: 'standing by himself', he sets himself apart from other people. He has subverted the good goal of the Pharisees to be set apart for God, by setting himself over against other people, on a pedestal, looking down on them. And then the Greek gives the show away by telling us he is praying not to God, but to himself, focussing on himself, full of self-congratulation and entitlement. Notice in his prayer he uses God's name once, and the word 'I' four times, as he tells God his good points.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if he didn't do this by putting others down, labelling them, and so creating a gulf between himself and these others he'd conveniently put into boxes. Of course he was the winner in this game of spiritual one-upmanship, of invidious comparison, pretending to pray but actually looking over his shoulder at that tax-collector over there.

Oh dear, there but by the grace of God, go I…it is so easy to get sucked in from childhood to that tendency to measure our worth in terms of outward success, accomplishments, accumulations, power and privilege, and all in relation to where we are on a scale against other people. This is part of the world we live and move and have our being in, and it can be deeply destabilising to our sense of identity and self-esteem if we are constantly see-sawing up and down, buying into the world of put-downs and 'you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours'.

It's so engrained in us. Perhaps we need to ask ourselves the question, am I secretly thinking in my heart of hearts, 'Thank God I'm not self-righteous and full of contempt like that Pharisee?' Whoops, I feel a touch of Pharisaism coming on! And how easy it would be for the tax-collector to turn into the Pharisee: 'God, I thank you that I'm not like this Pharisee, self-righteous and arrogant, who thinks that his good works set him apart from the rest of us ordinary people and make him so special…'

Better then to stay with the prayer of the tax-collector, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner". He knows who he is, and he knows what people think of him, so he stands far off. But he also knows who God is, and throws himself on God's mercy. In some way he has grasped what the whole story of the scriptures tell us, what the prophet Joel and the apostle Paul had learned, that God sees us as we are, yet loves us, has mercy on us and longs for our redemption and salvation, our healing and wholeness. And our Psalm reminds us too that God longs this not just for us, his people, but also for his whole creation.

But hang on a minute, you might say, speaking of Paul for a moment, isn't there a touch of the Pharisee, of self-congratulation in that epistle reading? Doesn't Paul use the word 'I' rather a lot - I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith… Well, maybe so. But let's notice too how Paul is very clear to acknowledge others alongside him - the crown of righteousness is 'not only for me, but also to all who have longed for the Lord's appearing'. Paul pleads for mercy for those who once deserted him. And above all he acknowledges his dependence on God throughout his ministry, the one who has rescued him, supported him and saved him, and who can be trusted for all eternity. Paul's God is the God of faithful surprises, who constantly amazes us by his continued forbearance and perseverance with us recalcitrant creatures. This is a God on whom we can depend through all the vagaries of other people's estimates of us, a God before whom we can lift our hearts and heads in thanksgiving and worship. Thanks be to God!