I have been publishing writing online since about 2003, when I created a website for my students to cut down on the massive amount of paper I was having to have printed for them to be familiar with the document of American history. It was easy, and it was convenient—but also there were some technical challenges I never thought I would encounter back in the days when everything was done on a typewriter.
I once was struggling with the formatting for a blog post, and it was making me batty. In the type-setting world, being “justified” means adjusting the spaces between the words in each line so that both the left and right margins are even. For some reason, even though I was choosing “align left,” the text ended up being justified, and the columns were too narrow for that to look anything but weird. Sometimes text looks great when the words stretch evenly from the left edge of a column to the right. But other times, it looks artificial, phony. And it WAS phony. Paragraphs don’t even read well that way.
And so it was here. The gaps in some sentences yawned. The density of words per line was completely out of balance. Finally, I looked behind to the hypertext code to see that I had brought some formatting code along with me when I had copied a phrase typed elsewhere, and that had caused the entire paragraph to change alignment. I know just enough about blog coding to know that I do not know much of anything about hypertext code, but I could spot what was amiss. Once the pesky hidden code was removed, the paragraph returned to the formatting I desired: words aligned with the left side margin, but naturally proceeding across the page until no more could fit without artifice.
Later, I thought about how much our own concerns about being justified, about how we can see the fault in others without seeing our own imbalances and flaws can overshadow our ability to deal kindly with each other. There seems to be a shocking lack of humility at the root of so many relationships in our common life together. There is too often a concern about our own salvation, rather than how the way we live our lives and align ourselves alongside our neighbors affects them. We praise ourselves for our self-righteousness, and decry other people’s perceived flaws, and congratulating ourselves for not being “like them.” Yet this lack of empathy undercuts claims of being righteous in the first place. One of the wisest pieces of advice I was ever given was a reminder that we never know the hidden battles other people are fighting, so to always try to be kind.
One of the wisest pieces of advice I was ever given was a reminder that we never know the hidden battles other people are fighting, so to always try to be kind. In this gospel passage, we hear the familiar story of the “Pharisee” and the tax collector praying in the temple. Once of them prides himself on living a blameless life—apparently blameless so that he can blame others for their failings. The tax collector acknowledges his sin. Yet it goes further: the righteous one’s focus in his prayer is himself, not God. The tax collector acknowledges his sin, and prays to God for mercy.
Yet we have to be careful in this conclusion—because the second we sneer at the Pharisee, we run the risk of doing exactly the same thing he does: making assumptions about people when we fall into stereotyping. The fact is, you don’t have to be a Pharisee to fail to be humble, and you don’t need to be a tax-collector to be honest with yourself about the ways in which you have sinned against others and against God. The Pharisee starts with praising God—but praising God that he is better than those around him. Is this really a prayer, or is it a self-congratulatory monologue—one that ALL of us have engaged in at one time or another?
Our own efforts to deny our own ragged edges and claim justification without a heaping dose of God’s grace are mere delusion. The self-righteous one thanks God that he is not a notorious sinner like that tax collector, and the minute that prayer is formed, he is condemned by it. When we look at another person, one very much different from us, and immediately make a snap judgment about them even though knowing nothing about them, we make the same mistake that that self-righteous man makes when seeing the tax collector.
The actions of the tax collector, while praiseworthy for the acknowledgment of his sins, also will ultimately run aground if he does not stick to his determination to repent, or if he fails to believe in God’s grace. This is another issue we all encounter in our faith lives at one point or another, either for ourselves or for others. We may torture ourselves over long-ago wrongs we have committed, or we may believe that God cannot forgive notorious sinners, such as murderers. But God’s grace is only abundant if it is abundant for everyone. We do not get to limit God’s grace to suit our own whims—whether for self-abnegation or for hopes of seeing others punished.
It’s when we change our focus from ourselves that we can realize that we rely not on ourselves, but on God’s abundant mercy and forgiveness. This doesn’t mean we have to shame ourselves, but at least be open to realizing that we can always improve our relationships with our fellow-beings, attempting to acknowledge our common journey toward being called to a humble spirit of repentance. What if we started with encouraging others in their particular struggles, aided in no small part by acknowledging our own? Our challenge begins with letting go of being justified.
To be honest, both men risk treating God as a mere tool: for the first man, God is a tool to look down on others, and for the second, God is a tool for getting his sins forgiven. Neither thinks about the obligation paced upon them as regards the sustaining and caring for those around them in the community. And unfortunately, this shallow self-interest is a common concern of too many who claim to be Christians, but who resist the call to be like Christ.
So what is the better way? Psalm 65 models the idea of prayer that begins with praise of God (as the Pharisee prays) from humans who know their own sins and transgressions (as the tax collector exemplifies). But then it carries forward to go beyond the prayer of either the Pharisee or the tax collector. The psalm resolutely insists that God not only forgives but blots out our sins if we rely upon God and God’s generous, compassionate sustenance. We approach God in humble silence, and as we listen, we become aware of the sure provision of God that makes our lives possible, and we are invited to join with all of creation is praising God. The way we praise God best is by allowing God’s spirit to shape and mold us.
This psalm proclaims three specific aspects of God: as redeemer, creator, and sustainer. The psalm properly starts in silence, as Ellen Davis notes in her translation “To you, silence is praise…”), and ends with shouts and song coming from the pastures, hills, meadows, and valleys, and not just in domesticated landscapes but in the wilderness itself. In all things, God’s activity is extolled: God hears prayer, blots out sins, and draws people to himself and to his Temple. Then follows in verses 5-12 a lyrical description of how God sustains and orders all of creation. The psalm ends with a prayer for the Earth’s fertility to show forth the abundance of God’s blessing and generosity. Note that the praise of God starts with silence, and then an expression of trust in God that we can lay our sins before God, knowing that God will not just forgive, but blot them from existence as we acknowledge and give thanks for God’s generous and generative power.
Our gospel reading focuses on what happens in the sanctuary, and certainly prayer is important before God’s altars. But, as Psalm 65 reminds us, unless we expand our horizons beyond our own concerns to the way all creation, including us, are invited by God into praising God best by becoming our best, most generous and fruitful selves, our prayers risk objectifying God instead of offering true worship.
Prayer that stands in awe and gratitude before God, that acknowledges and takes responsibility for our own sins, is prayer that draws us into deeper relationship with God and others. Such prayer, in harmony with all creation, invites us to give other as much grace and compassion as we ourselves hope to receive from God. Such prayer is, in itself, an act of faith and worship of God out in the world. Such a prayer becomes a way of living rather than a time set apart. And shouldn’t that be where true salvation really begins?
Preached at the 505 on October 22 and the 10:30 am Eucharist at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.
Readings:
