Over the next four weeks we’re going to be in a sermon series about growing in your relationship with God. This growth happens in different ways for different kinds of people, and we’re going to focus on prayer, mission, music, and community. We hope that you’ll connect with at least one if not several of the stories we’ll study, and we’ll include a story from the congregation each week—you heard Jane’s this morning. Today we’re talking about prayer.
This morning’s Scripture Lesson is a parable that might be familiar to some of you. It’s a story Jesus tells about a Pharisee and a tax collector. The pharisee is a religious authority, a person who is supposed to be good and faithful—but this one goes up to the Temple to pray and he prays arrogantly about the how glad he is that he’s better than other people. We listen and can’t stand him, and Jesus critiques his pride. And then there’s a tax collector, a man most listeners would be inclined to dislike; he goes up to the temple and prays quietly and emotionally; he prays about the regret and shame that is hanging over him and his desire to change. And we admire his honesty, and Jesus commends his humility.
Parables are stories Jesus tells because he wants to get people thinking. As Amy Snow pointed out to us last week, often parables greatly exaggerate a situation to get our attention, and often the context around the parable—the situation in which Jesus tells the story—is as important as the story itself. Both are true of today’s story—let’s go deeper with this parable, and see what we can learn about prayer:
First, the context: The crisp introduction to this parable says: Jesus told this story “to some people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.”
Contempt is a powerful feeling. Contempt, by definition is feeling that someone or something is worthless, deserving of scorn, and beneath consideration. We hold contempt for people we find to be without value and from whom we expect that nothing good can come. We all at times feel contempt and contempt is powerful.
Contempt is felt by people in opposing political parties and on opposing sides of social issues…; Contempt is felt by people at family gatherings who can’t get someone else to see it their way…; Contempt can creep into our most important relationships, with neighbors, at church, even in our marriages. One of the things I was taught about couples counseling is that there are a lot of things that couples can work through if they are willing…but if they hold contempt for each other, you have to work through that…otherwise you can’t work through anything else. And contempt is a very common, human feeling. I wonder if you can think of someone you might be regarding with contempt these days. I invite you to tuck that person into the back pocket of your mind as Jesus tells this story to a group of people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt…
So in the parable we meet these two people; one is a pharisee, the other a tax collector.
Let’s first look closer at the Pharisee. Sometimes Pharisees get a bad rap in church. In some stories they serve as a dramatic foil or contrast to Jesus; the Pharisee is holding onto the worst parts of tradition while Jesus tries to breath new vitality into life with God. But that negative attitude is not at work in this story, for most Pharisees were good. Pharisees modeled generosity, and practices of forgiveness of debt, they kept the sabbath because there’s more to life than work; they studied and prayed as a grounding force for the stresses of life. So Jesus is starting with the assumption that Pharisees are good. Just not this Pharisee in the story—that’s the surprise. For this Pharisee, religion was all a show. He wanted to dress in the fine robes, and administer the sacrifices, and pray at the big public events, all so that everyone else could see how important he was…and probably not all at once, but over time, he had began to believe that…that he was more important, and better, than everyone else. And Jesus makes his prayer so ridiculous so we really will get the point, he prays: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, and even this tax collector. I fast twice a week I give a tenth of all my income…” Ugh, we think. If that’s religion; I’ll pass.
And then there’s the tax collector:
Nobody loves taxes, necessary as they may be, and many of you may know that in the ancient world, the tax collector not only took your money, but often enriched himself by skimming off the top. So Jesus, introducing us to the tax collector, wants us to assume that he is an unscrupulous and deceitful character. And maybe he is, but this one, in this story, surprises us with his prayer. Jesus says that “standing far off, [he] would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner…”
I want to know more about these two people. I want to know their histories and what brought them to where they are today. I want to know what they were feeling beneath the words Jesus says they were praying. When it comes to the Pharisee, was he always this arrogant? Was he born into this position of privilege? Did he have a father who was just as self-righteous and the apple didn’t fall far from the tree? Maybe not. Maybe he became a Pharisee for all the right reasons, and then as he rose to a place of influence and comfort, he forgot himself and became detached, judgmental, and lacking in compassion. I wonder if his prayer on that day really as cold and awful as it sounds. I wonder if his prayer lead him someplace he needed to go—did his prayer get some kind of an answer, that wasn’t what he was expecting. Gazing judgmentally at the tax collector, did God suddenly show him another human being, one who was as humble and penitent as perhaps he used to be. And was there perhaps a fracture, a small breaking in his hardened exterior that led him out of the Temple that day in search of a better life? Prayer has a way of changing people—even when they least expect it. I want to know what happened to the Pharisee.
I want to know more about the tax collector too. Who was he? What kind of a life had he led? What if he too was born into the position—his father was a tax collector, and a deceitful one at that. But what if this particular man wasn’t made of the right kind of stuff to be in such a lethal line of work, and he woke up each day full of shame and guilt. He would find something else to do if he could but, ironically, he’s never been good with money and he has expenses and debts of his own, and he just wants to get out from under it all and start over. What if he’s there not just to pray in guilt and shame but because he’s ready to make a change? What if he hasn’t been to the Temple since childhood, but today at his breaking point, he’s come home to God. What if he doubts that God’s forgiveness is great enough to help him? And what if in his prayer he discovers what God wants us all to find: that there is always a second chance, a way through the mess, a chance to come clean and remember that we are a child of God and are worthy of love. I want to know more about this tax collector.
Jesus tells an exaggerated parable about exaggerated people, but people are rarely so one-dimensional as we assume, and everyone has a story. When we wonder about the people in this story long enough to imagine that they might be real, we begin to see parts of ourselves in each of them. When have you and I been self-righteous, a little too sure that we are right and good. When have we looked upon someone else and felt contempt toward them, cancelled them, assumed that they have nothing of value to offer and never will. On the other hand, when have you or I found ourselves overcome with feelings of guilt and shame? When have we regretted the past and the present; when have we wondered if we are still loveable; when have we wondered if there is really a second chance for us?
Prayer is our chance to come before God just as we are, and to open ourselves to being changed. There is no prerequisite or training that is required for it, there are no correct or flowery words that are needed and nothing you might need to say is off limits. Prayer happens in a lot of ways. Much of the time it begins with a quiet place and a few deep breaths. You ask God to make you more aware of God’s presence, for she’s already there. And then you just talk to God. You unload, unburden yourself. Share your regrets and your fears and your hopes, in whatever words or feelings may come to mind. And you keep breathing, and listen. You listen knowing that an answer will come by and by…that sometimes the answer may sound like a “yes” and sometimes it may sound like a “no” and sometimes it may sound like “wait.” In prayer we ask God to show us something about who we are and about the world around us, so that we can grow.
I wanted you all to hear the story that Jane told in this morning’s video because I love the meaning of it: that in that prayer porch, she brought her own prayers into a room where she was visibly surrounded by the prayers of others: some of them arrogant prayers of self-righteous teens: “Dear God, I hope that other campers might get to know Jesus as well as I do!” Others were teens at the end of their rope, struggling with depression or exclusion or loneliness and speaking to God in desperation, wondering if they would find in God someone who would finally listen. And her story, Jane is learning that prayer is something we do together even when we pray by ourselves; we join into the great company of those who went before us and those who are walking through life with us today, who are yearning for a closer walk with God. People who pray are people whose lives God will change; in prayer we are coming to see ourselves more clearly, and we are growing in our awareness of other people; and we are learning to celebrate the beauty and brokenness and variety in which God has created us all. In prayer we are learning to love one another and trying to figure out how to live together.
In prayer we let go of our contempt for other people; in prayer we let go of the shame we may be feeling about ourselves, and in both of those acts we find freedom. Let us pray:
God, if I am feeling shame or guilt today, set me free.
God, if I am holding another in contempt today, set me free.
God, when I am overcome with the suffering of the world, show me how to make a difference.
God, when I am overwhelmed, help me to know that you are in control.
God, show me myself and others as you see us: with grace, hope, and love. Amen.