Untitled

Ashley Davis
28 October 2007
22+ Pentecost, C
Luke 18.9-14

So, on our way back from Park Memorial this afternoon, Paul, and Jeana, and I were listening to this song and it struck me that there was some syncronicity to this song and our Gospel text for the day. It is a dialogue song. Gary Coleman’s part of the opening dialogue goes like this:

GARY COLEMAN: Right now you are down and out and feeling really crappy
NICKY: I'll say.
GARY COLEMAN: And when I see how sad you are/ It sort of makes me...Happy!
NICKY: Happy?!
GARY COLEMAN: Sorry, Nicky, human nature-/ Nothing I can do!/ It's...
Schadenfreude! Making me feel glad that I'm not you.
NICKY: Well that's not very nice, Gary!
GARY COLEMAN: I didn't say it was nice! But everybody does it!

Yes, I just quoted “Shadenfreude” (which is German for happiness at the misfortune of others) from Avenue Q in a sermon. The song ends with the lyrics, “Shadenfreude: making the world a better place to be.”

Meanwhile, back at the text…Verse 9 tells us that this parable was written to “some who were confident in their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else.”

I think the first question we should ask is, “Who you talkin’ ‘bout, Jesus?”

Luke says Jesus speaks to “some,” but we want names, don’t we. Traditionally, we have assumed that Jesus is talking to the Pharisees, all Pharisees are proud and self-righteous now aren’t they, talk about stereotyping, but notice that the text does not say that Jesus addressed the Pharisees.

Drop down to the closing line of our passage, “all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.” This is a direct quote from Luke 14:11, when Jesus talked to the guests who chose a places of honor at a banquet. The last verse keeps us from limiting who Jesus is talking about to just one group.

I think maybe at this point, since you are all intelligent people, you realize that this is just as easily about the disciples and certainly just as easily about each of us. We read this parable and immediately and ironically think, gosh, that Pharisee was wrong, glad I’m not like him, and whoops you are.

Let’s dig into the body of this passage a little more. Both people go up to the temple. Regardless of which direction you come from the temple was at the highest point in Jerusalem so you had to go up. Prayer has been a theme from the beginning of this chapter, which told us through the widow to “pray persistently” and here to beware of the “perils of presumptuous prayer.” We get both the position and the prayer of both individuals. Both people start out with the word “God” and that is about as much as they have in common. The Pharisee stands up front and offers God a prayer of thanksgiving and reminds God of all he has done for God. The tax collector stood at a distance and said,” God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” The tax collector’s words mirror the beginning of Psalm 51, except that he adds the words “a sinner.” The Psalm goes on to say, I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me…create in me a clean heart and put a new and right spirit within me.”

Let’s hold up before we give the tax collector some metal of honor and make the Pharisee out to be a certified stinker. This parable neglects the fact that this tax collector, once he has wiped his eyes and blown his nose, will head home and probably continue his shady job. Sure it sucks, it is a nasty business, but he is stuck in it. To care for his family and what not, tomorrow he will take from his neighbors, turn money over to the empire, and keep some for himself. How many of us get the prayer right in church and fail to live it out in our daily lives?

On to the Pharisee, the parable doesn’t tell us that he sang “The Summons” all the way to the temple that day, or that he had tears in his eyes as he prayed, or that he was awash with emotion, and really meant all that he said. What preacher wouldn’t love a church full of people as committed as the Pharisee: he titles regularly, teaches Sunday School, visits the sick and feeds the hungry.

His prayer wasn’t that bad, it is very similar to many classic prayers of the time, look at the Psalms. The thing that separates him from the Jewish form is that he doesn’t say thank you from sparing me from being a thief or a rogue, but thank you that I am not like “this” tax collector. Here, he changes from a grammar of gratitude to a grammar of elitism. Here, he stopped praying and started speaking. With one sideways glance, he measures himself against his neighbor and is quite pleased with the distance he finds.

So in a sense this parable is a warning against pride, and self-sufficiency, and of relying on one’s own good works. It is also about being aware of who you are, both as a sinner and as a child of God, without having to compare yourself to your neighbor. As it so happens, we having been studying just this same thing in Tuesday lunch Bible study, Henri Nouwen in his book Compassion says, “Through union with God, we are lifted out of our competitiveness with each other into divine wholeness. By sharing in the wholeness of the one in whom no competition exists, we can enter into new compassionate relationships with each other. By accepting our identities from the one who is the giver of life, we can be with each other without distance or fear. This new identity, free from greed and desire for power, allows us to enter so fully and unconditionally into the sufferings of others that it becomes possible for us to heal the sick and call the dead to life.”

The group that the Pharisee belonged to did not make this easy for him, to be a Pharisee meant that you separated yourself from others so as to maintain purity before God. If you drew cartoon balloons over each of our heads I imagine some of them would say, “ Thank God I’m not like those fundamentalists.” Or “Thank God I’m not like those liberals.” Or “thank God I’m above all this.” Is there anymore of a sign that we have no idea who we are? Isn’t it so much easier and more comforting to look at others than to try to make sense of our own paradoxical selves? As our opening lyrics of the sermon said, does it really make the world a better place in any way for me to feel glad that I’m not you? Who you talkin’ to Jesus? Me and you and you and all of you.

In the name of our creator who invites us all to remember our true identity as children of God, an identity that doesn’t come from comparing ourselves to others or separating ourselves from them, amen.