Sermon Proper 25c: “Trial by Prayer”
In my family, there were five aunts who had no children and when we all got together at my Grandmother’s for Sunday dinner (at noon of course!) my brothers and I called our five special aunts the aunt heap. The aunt heap would never rob a bank, or pass the crippled man in front of Piccadilly restaurant without giving him some change. The aunt heap would never run off with my Uncle’s pool boy and they would never order clothes from a catalogue wear them once and return them. God, were they good. But then, the aunt heap had husbands who made good money, they had no children whose education they had to provide, and in general they all lived comfortable lives. They always had money to give the cripple and they were never desperate enough to cheat or wear clothes that they planned to return anyway. So were these aunts good or were they just sheltered from the hardships that many others face? How might the aunt heap have acted under difficult situations?
It is very easy for folks of good breeding and respectable behavior to sit in judgment and consider themselves better than those who are not. I am not suggesting that my aunts should have run off with Uncle Wade’s pool boy or that they should have disregarded good behavior. Where would society be without a proper church going aunt heap who insisted on high standards for themselves or their rambunctious and barefooted nephews?
But there is a difference between being righteous and being self righteous. The truly righteous know that there but for the grace of God go they. They know that it is only because of the goodness of God that they have been spared situations in which their weaknesses would have overpowered them. The truly righteous close their eyes when they pray and they do not make sidelong glances at their neighbors who have felt the pressure of hardships.
The self-righteous, on the other hand, take full credit for their virtuous life. They do not consider themselves privileged, but they are proud of themselves; they say with great satisfaction, I go to church, I tithe, and I proudly belong to the moral majority or to the moral minority— whatever.
We would all do well to ask whether we are as righteous as we think we are. Are we genuinely virtuous, or have we been passed over by the angel of real temptation? Have we been preserved from circumstances that might bring out the worst in us? Have we been tried in the fire or is our good behavior more a result of social conditioning rather than mature choice? The Pharisee in today’s Gospel, starts his prayer with an honest thanksgiving. You know he really is the kind of guy you want to have on the vestry. He pays the bills, comes to Bible study, visits the sick, and feeds the hungry. I would love to have a church full of these fellas who care enough to fast, who tithe on all their income, and keep the community together by diligence and passion. At first glance, we can’t color the Pharisee sinister. He is not Freddy Krueger in a choir robe (that was a Halloween reference, Joel.) He is probably a better person than you and me.
But there is a word in his prayer that gives him away—and it’s a word the aunt heap used on occasion—he doesn’t give thanks that God has spared him from being a thief or a tax collector; he gives thanks that he is not like them. “God, I thank you that I am not like other people…” Really? Here he crosses the line from gratitude into elitism. This can be a very subtle line we almost never notice when we cross it, but we do it all the time. The tax collectors, the adulterers, the gluttons and imbibers are our relatives. But we fail to recognize our kinship with others and when that happens we make ourselves the center of the universe.
Notice the distance in his use of the word “this”: “This” tax collector,” Now he has stopped praying and started peeking. You know the eighth deadly sin, peeking. Coolly, he measures himself against a neighbor and is quietly smug about the difference. The TV doctor, House, says that if faced with the choice of being smug or bleaching his hair he would choose smug because it is easier to keep up. Do we say with House,”God, I’m good”? Or do we say with Paul all glory belongs to God?
In the body of Christ, there is no room for arrogance. We are all limited human beings with weaknesses that can trip us up in a flash. We are all poor and lowly, in need of the protection and strength that come to us from God. We are all sinners in the hand of an all merciful God. The last words of today’s Gospel are a warning to us all. “Those who exalt themselves will be humbled; and those who humble themselves will be exalted.