Homily: Yr C
Proper 30, Oct 27 2013, St. Albans
Readings: Joel
2.23-32; Ps 65; 2 Tim 4.6-8,16-18; Luke 18.9-14
Where is God?
Two men who went up
to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. They went to where God was, to the holy place
on the top of the mountain. At the
centre of the temple was the place called the holy of holies, which was filled
with the presence of God. If you were a
holy man, a righteous man, you were allowed to come near to that central place
where God was. The Pharisee was a holy
man, because he kept the law that God had given the people. Not only did he keep the law, but he did more
than was required. The law said that he
had to fast on the Sabbath day, but he fasted twice a week throughout the
year. The law said that he had to give a
tenth portion of certain possessions like wine and grain, but he gave a tenth
of all his income. Surely this was a man
who was entitled to come near God. And
so he did come near, moving into the centre of the temple courtyard and
standing in a place of prominence where everyone could see and hear him.
But the second man,
the tax collector, didn’t follow the Pharisee to the centre of the
courtyard. He stopped and stood far
off. His head was bowed, his eyes were
on the ground. His hunched shoulders and
rounded back told of the immense shame that he bore like a lead cloak thrown
over his body. His tear-filled eyes
couldn’t see the Pharisee, though he may have heard the words of contempt that
drifted down towards him. But he didn’t
need to hear them. He knew what he
was. He was a tax collector, a
collaborator with the hated Roman authorities who extorted money from his own
people to finance their oppression. It
was only the protection of the Roman soldier posted at the temple door that
made it safe for him to stand among his own people. He was despised, and he despised
himself. He was an outcast, unfit to
stand in the presence of God, and so he stood far off with his eyes cast down.
And there was nothing
that the tax collector could do to change his situation. He was stuck.
To stop collecting taxes meant that he would continue to be just as
despised, still regarded with contempt, but without any income to feed his
family and without any Roman soldiers to protect him from rocks and abuse. There was no witness protection program for a
tax collector that wanted a new start. He
would always be a tax collector, even if he stopped collecting taxes. His shame had already permanently stained his
family – his children would likely end up as tax collectors too, marginalized
and outcast. The Jewish law required him
to repay those he had defrauded but that was impossible – overcollecting to
feed his family, fraud in the eyes of the Jewish law, was his sole source of
income. He was stuck in a hopeless
situation with no way out and no one to turn to. Even if he wanted to there was nothing he
could do to make things right. He was
the scum of the earth and he knew it as he pounded his breast. His mumbled prayer was “God be merciful to
me, a sinner.”
The crowd of
righteous people who listened to the outsider from Galilee telling the story
nodded apprehensively. They knew that it
was only right that the tax collector should feel such shame. Of course the Pharisee was nearer to God than
the sinner. But where was Jesus going
with all this?
Then in a few words,
Jesus turned the world of his listeners upside down. “I tell you,” Jesus said, “it was the tax
collector who went home justified, not the Pharisee. It wasn’t the one who kept the law that was
in right relationship with God, but rather the sinner who begged for mercy, for
compassion. Don’t look for God in the
temple, in the holy of holies, but rather if you want to find God, look for him
with the poor and the marginalized, the outcast and the sinners. That is where you will find God.”
With those few words,
Jesus reversed the conventional wisdom:
the one who is near God turns out to be far, and the one who is far is
near to God. Where is God? God is with the person who is standing far
off, the one regarded with contempt, head hanging down, eyes on the ground,
shamed and marginalized. In the world of
Palestine two thousand years ago, God was to be found with the tax collectors,
the prostitutes, and the lepers, those who were pushed to the margins of Jewish
society. Where is God to be found in
Ottawa this morning? If we take Jesus
parable seriously, God is to be found with those that we have pushed to the
margins, those who live with shame, those who live without hope. In shelters.
In prisons. With addicts. With those who suffer from mental illness. With the elderly in chronic care
facilities.
Blessed are you, tax
collector, when people hate you and when they exclude you, revile you and
defame you. Rejoice in that day and leap
for joy. But woe to you, Pharisee, when
all speak well of you. For all who
exalt themselves will be humbled but all who humble themselves will be exalted.
It may go against the
conventional wisdom, it may not even make sense, but this is the fundamental
message that we get in the gospel of Luke. Jesus came to seek out those who are lost and
to show them compassion and mercy. That
is the message we get in Jesus’ teaching, it is the message we get in the
parables, but above all it is the message we get in Jesus life, a life which
culminates in crucifixion and resurrection.
And make no mistake,
with the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, Luke is deliberately
pointing us forward to Jesus’ death and resurrection. Today’s parable is addressed to those who
regard others with contempt. The word
used for contempt shows up in only one other place in the gospel of Luke, and
that is at the trial of Jesus before Herod, the trial that led to Jesus
condemnation, humiliation and death on a cross.
Within a few short weeks of challenging the status quo with the parable
we heard today, it is Jesus himself who is shunned, humiliated, regarded with
contempt and executed as an outcast outside the city walls. Death however is not the end of the story,
and on the third day he who was humbled on the cross is exalted in the
resurrection.
For those of us that
know the shame and despair of the tax collector, the message of today’s gospel
is that God is with us, suffering with us in the depths of our
humiliation. He knows what it is to be
held in contempt, he’s been there. God
is merciful and compassionate and longs to be with you. Even though that may be hard to believe in
the face of life’s challenges, Jesus wanted so much for us to experience God’s
mercy that he died a criminal’s death in order to convince us that God is
merciful and that even death can be transformed into life.
For those of us who
identify with the Pharisee in today’s story, the good news is that God doesn’t
regard us with contempt, and that he still reaches out to us even when we turn
away and trust in ourselves, like the father in the story of the prodigal son,
who pleads with the elder son to come to the banquet. The Pharisee too is stuck, stuck in a pattern
of self-reliance and in a bad habit of comforting himself by judging others. But for those of us who get stuck like that,
those of us who have knowledge, wealth, power or social position, there are two
paths laid before us. The first is the
path of contempt, the path we choose each time we look on someone else with
judgment or indifference. The path of
contempt leads away from God. The second
path is the path of compassion, the path that Jesus took when he voluntarily
humbled himself in solidarity with the sinner and the outcast, a path that
eventually led to his own death at the hands of others. Humility for Jesus was not just a mental attitude;
it was a lived social reality. We are
called to encounter God not at the centre of the temple, but at the margins of
our society. Look for the one that is
hunched over, eyes to the ground, beating her breast. Look closely, for that’s where you’ll find God.
