Lord, Have Mercy
Luke 18:9-14
One
of the things I remember with great clarity from my early years is a
characteristic that seemed common amongst the adults I was around – a
tendency to compare oneself, favorably, with others. I learned
that is easy to find fault in other people.
My world was replete with those whose success was due to their
connections or to some shady activity in which ‘good’ people would not
engage. There were, of course, those of other skin color who
represented some vague threat to safety, security, and stability of the
community. And there was no shortage of those who failed to
maintain their homes or their families or their personal
appearance… “And while we are at it, let us give thanks that we
are not like ‘them’ – we don’t steal – except a little at tax
time. We go to church – unless we have something more important
or interesting to do or just need to take it easy this weekend.
We pay our tithes – usually – if we didn’t have to spend that money on
a new sofa or TV or a trip… Well, you understand Lord, and I know
you admire our faithfulness and wish others were more like us.”
So it is that I find the words spoken by our Lord Jesus “to some who
trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with
contempt” addressed to me, and with a great degree of personal meaning.
Perhaps you have never known folks like this - but now you can’t say that either.
Life lessons learned early run deep. It is so necessary that we
examine our thoughts, our attitudes, our ‘that is just how things are’
beliefs. We are especially sensitive to our shortcomings – often
projecting them onto others – and so often, that which irks us in them
is, in fact, a side of our self of which we wish not to be reminded.
I carried – or perhaps should say I carry - that burden of
self-righteousness and easy contempt for the shortcomings of
others. Call it what you will – bias, prejudice, racism,
intolerance – all names for sin; that which separates us from God and
deprives us of eternal life in the kingdom of God.
I have found, often through difficult lessons, that attitude, that
spirit produces fear where there should be hope, anger where there
should be joy, death where there should be life. But through an
awareness developed in prayer and mediation, in reflection and
confession, I am able to see some of those things in myself that
separate me from God – and that is, after all, what is meant by ‘sin’ –
to be estranged, separated from God.
I note however, there is a danger lurking in the shadows of the Gospel
reading today. As soon as we recognize the problem of absolving
ourselves of sin by reckoning our actions to be more acceptable to God
than those of our neighbor, we become the self-righteous. When we
condemn the Pharisee and side with the tax collector, we become like
the Pharisee. We are presented with a conundrum that seems to
entrap us in a cycle of hopeless unrighteousness. How does one
humble oneself without being proud of humility?
There is no place in humility for judgmentalism, for trusting in the
self – the ego - while holding others in contempt. Understand
that Jesus does not condemn the righteous works of the Pharisee nor do
the Pharisee’s words of thanks to God for his desire and ability to do
more than the law requires represent more than tradition – Psalm 26 is
a good example. Our collect this morning finds us asking that God
will “make us love what” is commanded.
Rather the key to the shortcoming judged by Jesus is the Pharisee’s
attitude – an attitude of contemptuousness toward others. Luke
not only tells us of his contempt for others but physically reflects
that contempt as he describes the setting with the key phrase:
“standing by himself.”
When I begin to draw a circle of exclusion around those who I find
“acceptable,” those with whom I will break bread so as to be sure I
keep the sinner out, I find that over time, the circle gets ever
smaller. It includes fewer and fewer until finally, I alone can
satisfy my own standard (and that only by fooling myself).
We are made for companionship, for community. God, unwilling to
be alone with creation, creates us, male and female, each of us, all of
us, to commune and participate in the love which overflows from the
center of God’s nature. And it is from that love that we shut
ourselves off through sin, through choosing to separate ourselves from
God.
Think of the great Bible stories that speak to this separation.
Adam and Eve, wishing to be independent of God’s assessment of right
and wrong, desiring to have that knowledge for themselves, found that
the ability to make those judgments brought shame rather than freedom,
separation rather than independence. Jacob, hoping to gain an
advantage over his brother Esau, as we saw last week, instead lived in
fear and was ready to give everything he held dear to save his
life. The brotherly bond was forever broken. Joseph’s
brothers, thinking to rid themselves of their arrogant and favored
little brother, sold him into slavery in Egypt, only to stand before
him in shame and with remorse when he became their salvation in time of
famine.
The stories go on and on, David and his deceptions create horrors and
war among within his own household, Solomon abuses his power and plants
the seeds which destroy a kingdom. And in turn, the kings and
false prophets of Israel and Judah lead both into captivity, separated
from the land, separated from the burial sites of their forebears,
separated from the temple, from the dwelling place of God.
Yes, sin lies at the door and devours our joy, our hope, our very life with God.
“Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.” “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’”
With those seven words, Jesus says, the tax collector, the unclean, the
unrighteous, found righteousness. While Luke’s story leaves the
Pharisee standing by himself, the tax collector goes down to his home –
he is restored, he has found a dwelling place, a place of acceptance
and security.
My earthly home, as a child, offered me much that was positive – care,
comfort, love – but it also planted some destructive seeds that over
the years have borne their prickly fruit. I had to learn, with
time and sometimes with pain, to uproot the destructive plants that
grew from those seeds. And like so many weeds, I must continue to
dig the roots that seem to grow back if not carefully watched.
It is, as James 5:16 suggests, “confess your sins to one another, and
pray for one another, so that you may be healed.” Through
confession, contemplation, prayer, and the sacrament of communion, I
continue to dig at those seeds of sin. Yes, God had been good to
me – very good. I have been given a love for righteousness; I
have often been placed in a position to do those things which are
necessary to the building up of my soul, to drawing near to God.
But God forbid I should ever look with contempt at moral weakness or
spiritual failure in another. Rather, let me say with Paul, “…the
Lord stood by me and gave me strength, so that through me the message
might be fully proclaimed…”
One does not make oneself humble – it is, like faith, a gift of God,
not of ourselves. And, as Edie made so clear in her sermon last
week, it is in praying without ceasing that we form our habits, we
shape our character, we alter those things in us that are
hurtful.
We were made to live as daughters and sons of God. We were made
for eternal life in the kingdom of God. We seek our way back to
the kingdom; as Christians, we believe that way is opened to us in the
person of Christ Jesus. I remember a couple of the favorite songs
we sang as a men’s group in the African-American church spoke of
working on a building – of sending our timbers up to heaven.
If I was a sinner man, I tell you what I'd do:
I'd stop my sinning, start my praying,
and work on a building, too.
In another idiom, we might think of it as Edie put it – of
constructing our habitat. The tools for building include the
sacraments, our worship, bible study and meditation, all under girded
by continual prayer. And in prayer, hope is found in the prayer
of the heart – the Jesus Prayer - perhaps most commonly in its
hesychastic form: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a
sinner.” This return to the Father through Christ in the Holy
Spirit is the goal of all Christian spirituality. It is to become
open to the presence of the Kingdom in our midst.
I noticed in the November newsletter that Edie has a brief review of The Way of a Pilgrim and an offer to do a study of this book if there is interest. The anonymous author of The Way of the Pilgrim
writes that the Jesus Prayer has two concrete effects on his vision of
the world – on his seeing the Kingdom. First, it transfigures his
relationship with the material creation; the world becomes transparent,
a sign, a means of communicating God's presence. He writes:
When I prayed in my heart, everything around
me seemed delightful and marvelous. The trees, the grass, the
birds, the air, the light seemed to be telling me that they existed for
humanity’s sake, that they witnessed to the love of God for all people,
that all things prayed to God and sang his praise.
Second, the Prayer transfigures his relationship to his
fellow human beings. His relationships are given form within
their proper context: the forgiveness and compassion of the crucified
and risen Lord.
Again I started off on my wanderings.
But now I did not walk along as before, filled with care. The
invocation of the Name of Jesus gladdened my way. Everybody was
kind to me. If anyone harms me I have only to think, 'How sweet
is the Prayer of Jesus!' and the injury and the anger alike pass away
and I forget it all.
Finally, the words of an earlier prophet perhaps offer a
key to understanding what our God is like with regard to healing the
broken:
Thus says the high and lofty One who
inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy, "I dwell in the high and holy
place and also with the one who has a contrite and humble spirit, to
revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the
contrite." -- Isaiah 57:15
The table to which we are all called, the fellowship of
Christ’s Body and Blood, is a place of forgiveness, healing,
restoration, and reconciliation.
May God revive us all - mind, heart, and spirit.
John Dryden Burton
28 October 2007
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