Two Kinds of Lonely
Twentieth-first Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 25 Year C RCL)
27 October 2013--8:00 a.m. Said, 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass
Twentieth-first Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 25 Year C RCL)
27 October 2013--8:00 a.m. Said, 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass
(With Holy Baptism)
Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland
(Oregon)
God, give us hearts to feel and love,
take away our hearts of stone
and give us hearts of flesh.
Amen.
A popular song when I
was a teenager went, “I'm in with the in crowd, I go
where the in crowd goes. I'm in with the in crowd and I know what the in crowd knows.” It was ironic and campy, but it spoke us
teenagers, so unsure of ourselves. At certain moments later in my life, I had
glimpses where the song’s idea was not taken ironically.
Once,
the executive of a senior political leader took me aside and said, “Listen I know that you’re not like (here she
listed several of my foreign service colleagues). They just don’t get it. But you do, and I’m sure your can do this
just like my boss wants.” Another time,
in the rarefied air of a research institute in religion, a senior professor
said to some graduate students with me, “We are the elite and can handle the
truth. The many out there—pffff—forget
about them. Tell them whatever
convenient simplification will keep them happy.” Yet another time, I met with my boss the senior
editor of a major fashion magazine (the one who the book The Devil Wears Prada wrote about). In every phrase and gesture, every choice of
clothing and mannerism, she passed the message, all so subtly, all so politely,
“We are better than all those little people out there, and we have a
responsibility to lead them despite themselves.”
Today’s Gospel is a
parable that Jesus told against “those who belittled others because they
thought they were better than them.”
Two men who go to the
Temple to pray: One is a Pharisee who keeps all the laws, an upright member of
the community. The other is a Tax
Collector—a traitor to his people, collaborator with the hated Roman
oppressors, who gouges and steals money for his own profit. The parable praises the evil man and condemns
the righteous.
There are three ways
that we commonly misread this parable.
The first is that
Jesus is condemning Pharisees in general, saying that they were all hypocritical,
self-satisfied, and holier-than-thou. But
at the time of Jesus, the Pharisees were generally seen as the most democratic,
sincere, humble and open groups of the various Jewish sects. Their principal teachers tried to build personal
piety and obeying God’s Law, both in its details and intent. Jesus is closer to them than any other group
in his teaching. The point here is not
to criticize Pharisees as a group, but rather shock the listener into new
understanding by contrasting an upstanding lover of God with a wicked traitor.
The second misreading
is that Jesus is praising the Tax Collector’s chest-beating, over-wrought guilt
as the one-size-fits-all proper approach to God. This view, to be sure, is fostered and
popularized by the grim pessimism of theologians like Saint Augustine and John
Calvin, and Martin Luther. But I wonder
if that is what Jesus means here. When
Jesus approaches the truly wretched, he does not beat up on them and tell them
to further abase themselves. He heals
lepers, not tell them to beat their breasts as sinners. To such people, Jesus announces joyful news
of liberation, new life, and the jubilant arrival of God’s Reign.
The third misreading
is that Jesus here is trying to teach salvation by grace alone apart from works,
again, usually as contained in the writings of Augustine, Calvin or
Luther. While this parable may provide a
facile proof-text for such a doctrine, there is nothing in it to suggest that
deeds do not matter, nor that the Tax Collector somehow has confessed Jesus as
his savior.
So what does it mean?
Jesus’ parables
regularly turn things upside down and try to get each of us to stand in
delighted awe of God’s great surprises.
An honored and righteous priest and Levite pass by a gravely injured
fellow Jew, and it is a hated and loathed Samaritan that finally helps the poor
man and acts as a true neighbor. A
shameless father, unconcerned about his honor and the order of his house, runs
out and hugs, and then throws a big party for, a troubled son who had as much
wished him dead and then frivolously spent half of his estate on detested
vices. In his parables, Jesus chooses
incongruous or shocking images to represent God at work: the Reign of God is not seen as a great cedar
tree or vine, but rather a wild and unclean weed, the mustard plant; ritually
suspect leaven or yeast represents the Kingdom at work, not pure, unleavened
loaves for Passover. Such scenes shock
us out of our regular ways of thinking, and make us look, really look, in
wonder at the world around us and the God at work in it.
Notice here that the righteous
Pharisee stands by himself in the
center of things as he thanks God that he
is not like all the other sinners around.
He stands by himself in order
to draw attention to himself, so that he can clearly point out the differences
that separate him from and make him
better than other people. He praises
God that he has been able to do all sorts of good acts, in contrast to people
like ‘that Tax Collector over there’.
The Tax Collector stands
“afar off” to the side, avoiding contact with others because of his shame. He doesn’t dare raise his eyes up to heaven,
and simply asks God “have mercy on me, a sinner.” Why
is he ashamed? He is one of the telones, a class of entrepreneurs who
collected tolls, governmental surcharges, and head taxes. They were a rough lot, closer to what we
would call the “muscle” of a gangster loan shark operation than an IRS
agent. The word translated as tax
collector, or publican, is probably better translated by revenue farmer. They are
traitors to their people. This is what the
tax collector bemoans as he beats his breast.
Jesus says that it is
the Tax Collector and not the Pharisee who went out of the Temple that day having
been made right with God. Why?
Jesus has chosen two
stereotypes here: the righteous, pious,
and socially responsible Pharisee and the irreligious, unscrupulous, and
morally tainted Tax Collector.
The difference
between the two is in their hearts. Though both stand by themselves, though both
are lonely, there are two kinds of lonely here.
The Pharisee isolates himself because he has contempt for others and
thinks he is better than everyone else.
The Tax Collector is lonely because he is ashamed and isolated because
others look down on him, and he recognizes that they are right. His standing far off is actually an act of
solidarity with other people, recognizing that their judgment of him is right. So the loneliness of the Pharisee drives him
away from other people and from God. The
loneliness of the Tax Collector drives him toward other people and God.
There are not just
two kinds of lonely. When we think of
the Pharisee and the Tax Collector and which one was closer to God, which one was neared to God, we need to
remember that there are two different kinds of nearness also: what C.S. Lewis
calls nearness of proximity and nearness of approach.
A hiker in the mountains comes out onto a ledge and sees, there beneath her, the small town where she wants to spend the night. It is only about 500 meters away—straight down. To get there, she must continue on the path, with its switchbacks and gradual descent. At moments, she must actually go farther and farther away from her goal—800 meters, 1400 meters as the crow flies—before the switchback turns. But all the time, she is actually getting closer to her evening resting spot.
Jesus’ point in contrasting the two men in the Temple is that from the point of view of nearness of proximity, the Pharisee is much closer to God than the Tax Collector, but from the point of view of nearness of approach, and this is in the long run the only thing that counts—the Tax Collector is nearer to God by far, despite appearances and what stereotypes tell us to expect.
A hiker in the mountains comes out onto a ledge and sees, there beneath her, the small town where she wants to spend the night. It is only about 500 meters away—straight down. To get there, she must continue on the path, with its switchbacks and gradual descent. At moments, she must actually go farther and farther away from her goal—800 meters, 1400 meters as the crow flies—before the switchback turns. But all the time, she is actually getting closer to her evening resting spot.
Jesus’ point in contrasting the two men in the Temple is that from the point of view of nearness of proximity, the Pharisee is much closer to God than the Tax Collector, but from the point of view of nearness of approach, and this is in the long run the only thing that counts—the Tax Collector is nearer to God by far, despite appearances and what stereotypes tell us to expect.
The Pharisee here,
against the better teachings of his own tradition, has let his contempt for
others and his desire to be better than others close his heart to any possible
action from God. The Tax Collector,
against expectation and the normal way these guys behave, senses that he is in
this with all the others. And finding
himself in along with all the others, he has a lot to be sorry for.
In a word, the
Pharisee here is unable to get any closer to God or to his fellows. The Tax Collector has made a start at
both.
If there is any such
thing as an eternal hell, I believe its doors are locked not from the outside
by God, but from the inside by the people suffering there. They do so because
they persist in rejecting the love of God, afraid of accepting that they are in
this with all the rest, one of God’s beloved creatures.
Better a wicked man
who knows he is one sorry mess than a “righteous” one with no clue as to how
hard his heart has become. This is the idea
Jesus seeks to convey in the parable.
The self-satisfied religious man, singing “I’m in with the in crowd,” is
unwilling to relate to others except as inferiors, as little people who don’t
get it or won’t understand it. He is
unwilling to relate to God except as one who owes him for his ability to remain
as “in with the in crowd.” So he remains stone-cold hearted, and is not
justified by God when he returns to his home from the Temple.
I pray that all of us
this week can find ways to connect with others in our lives, especially those
upon whom we have a tendency to look down upon. This story makes me wonder whether looking
down upon anyone is a sign of dire spiritual illness, a sickness unto
death. Perhaps it’s not just a mild
foible. It might be best to learn to root
it out of our hearts and minds, and erase its vocabulary from our voices.
In the name of Christ, Amen.
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