Two Kinds of Lonely
Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 25 Year C RCL)
23 October 2022--8:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass
Parish Church of St. Mark the Evangelist, Medford (Oregon)
Readings: Sirach 35:12-17; Psalm 84:1-6; 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18; Luke 18:9-14
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 in High School, “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 to 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 you 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. They can’t handle the truth. Tell them whatever convenient simplification will keep them happy.” Yet another time, I met with my boss Ambassador Jon Huntsman the senior editor of a major fashion magazine (parodied in The Devil Wears Prada). In every phrase and gesture, every choice of clothing and mannerism, she passed the message, all so subtly, all so politely, “Noblesse oblige. We have a responsibility to lead all those little people out there, 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 people 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, 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 just heals them, stands with them, and feeds them, announcing the 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 wasted half of the 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 scruffy 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 precisely because others look down on him. His standing far off is actually an act of solidarity with them, since recognizes that they are probably right in judging him. The loneliness of the Pharisee drives him farther away from others. The loneliness of the Tax Collector in an ironic way drives him toward them.
There are not just two kinds of
lonely, of emotional distance. At the
opposite pole, 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 may be 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 close his heart to any possible movement toward 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 a hell, I believe its doors are locked not from the outside by a punishing God, but from the inside by the people there who persist in declining God’s loving call. They reject it because they are afraid of accepting that they are in this with all the others, the wretched “little people,” and are merely (!) one of God’s beloved creatures.
Better a wicked person who knows they are one sorry mess than a “righteous” one with no clue as to how hard their heart has become. The self-satisfied religious person, singing “I’m in with the in crowd,” is unwilling to relate to others except as inferiors, as defectives who just don’t “get it.” Theyu are unwilling to relate to God except as one who owes them special treatment for being “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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