Sunday 28th October 2007 - Last Sunday after Trinity

Ten days ago Alan Coren, the wonderful journalist and broadcaster, died at the age of 69. In a tribute programme yesterday we heard him reading a clipping from the Toronto News and Mail from 1980. ‘Edwina Mackenzie, now 91, credits her long life to having decided, 61 years ago, to get off the Titanic.’

A satirist, his laconic humour often centred on the gap between famous people’s self promoted public persona and the reality of who they were and how they behaved. One senses that he might have had some wry words about both Pharisee and the tax collector in the parable we have just heard. Neither are very appealing characters.

Jesus uses quite a lot of humour and irony in his parables. They make very pointed comments on the behaviour of the Pharisees, many of whom come across as both self important and self-righteous. The Pharisee in this story thanks God that he is not like other sinful people and then goes on in his prayer to remind God just how good he is. In fact this is not really a prayer to God at all, he more interested in himself than in God.

Jesus’ parable is particularly pointed. Immediately after the Pharisee has thanked God that he was not like the tax collector praying next to him in the temple, Jesus said it was the tax collector, not the Pharisee, who was justified. Who was ‘put right’ with God. Because the tax collector had admitted before God that he was not a good man. As a consequence he opened himself up to God who then would draw him to himself.

Unfortunately, like many of Jesus’ stories or encounters we never hear the final outcome. I often wonder whether the rich man who asked what he needed to do to inherit eternal life really went and gave his possessions to the poor? In this story we are left with the tantalising question – what did the tax collector do next? What would one visit, one moment of deep honesty about himself, offered to God in prayer, do? Would it turn him away from his lucrative employment for the Roman administration?

But then we have to remember that Jesus told this story to guide his listeners towards a better understanding of both themselves and of their relationship with God. And so he deliberately exaggerated. To give a complete and simple ending to the story would have removed its impact. We are meant to be left puzzling about how it relates to us.

Last week we heard the preceding passage in Luke’s gospel urging us to pray without ceasing. It is God’s intention that we hold prayer as an integral part of our daily lives. Through prayer we share all that we are and all that we do with God. This parable though is not so much about prayer as about how we should approach God in prayer. Because to come close to God, and in the tax collector’s case, to receive his astonishing forgiveness, we need to face the truth about ourselves. The Pharisee is so obsessed with all the things he believes he has got right that he completely misses his lack of compassion and concern for others. The very things that have brought the tax collector to his knees in sorrow and regret.

It is important for us not to think that Jesus in this parable is somehow implying that we are like either the Pharisee or the tax collector. That it is a parable about us needing to acknowledge how deeply sinful we are. Although for some of us there are times when we have a little too much pride, and of course none of us is wholly without sin. But, having said that, I know that around me here in this church there are very wonderful faithful caring people. And this parable is not intended suddenly to fill us with some false sense of guilt or inadequacy.

But for all that we are vulnerable both individually and collectively to self-concern. I had a conversation this week with some people who had been worshipping at St Andrew’s but decided to move on to worship somewhere else. I asked them why this was. There were comments about style of worship, which I had expected. But what I was less ready for was a comment that they had not found the church very friendly and that they were not helped to feel a part of it. This comment was surprising to me. I frequently hear myself, and members of the congregation, saying St Andrew’s is a very friendly church. One’s first instinctive response might be defensive. But then we have to accept that our stated intention to be inclusive, and they have found friendship elsewhere.

Reflecting on this as I read the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector at prayer, I wondered whether perhaps we are being a bit blinkered in saying we are a friendly church. Perhaps what we should be praying is ‘we can be friendly and certainly many people find friendship in Christ here, but Lord help us to be more open and inclusive to all who come here. Work with us Lord to find new ways of extending our church family to those who feel excluded.’

May be the point is, as in the parable of the Good Samaritan, not ‘are we friendly’, but ‘who are we friendly to’? It is easy to be friendly and seek to include people like ourselves. People who we might normally want to spend time with. But what about people who are from different backgrounds? Or children, who get under our feet or distract us? And babies who cry at inconvenient times in the services? Do we make them and their families as welcome as Jesus did, even if our own worship gets interrupted?

If you recall why Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan, it was as a response to the question ‘Who is my neighbour?’ Jesus response was an unexpected ‘everyone’.

And so, when we pray, we are conscious of the perfection of Jesus’ life. We are conscious of the difficulty of living up to his teaching. But both as individual Christians, and as part of the Church family, God is constantly inviting us to reflect on how we might grow closer to him. It was not the great, obedient, respected Pharisee who received God’s blessing in Jesus’ parable, it was the fraudulent tax collector who had the courage to say ‘God be merciful to me a sinner.’

God doesn’t call us to be honest about ourselves so that he can put us down and make us feel guilty or inadequate. He calls us to be boldly honest about ourselves so that we may be lifted up. George Caird wrote ’honest humility is the one sure way into the divine presence.’ We will be exalted with the gift of the Holy Spirit and may discover what Basil Hume describes as a ‘marvellous sense of inner freedom’ when we find and accept our shortcomings and say ‘God be merciful to me, a sinner’.