We are nearing the end of the second half of our liturgical year in
which we have been invited by the Church through our weekly readings
to think about what is involved in discipleship, in following as best
we can Jesus' teaching. That teaching is not easy. It makes demands
on the whole of our lives. The Scriptures know nothing of partial
Christians. Christianity is like pregnancy in that regard; you either
are or you are not. Certainly we hope our faith grows within us so
that it becomes more and more obvious to others that we are Christian;
but once the egg of faith is fertilised then we are on the way. So
what does that way involve?
Well, according to the theme chosen for today it involves humility.
That's clearly right, but if I was choosing the theme again I might
prefer to choose a different word. I might now choose "Confession".
It's not quite the same thing, but they go hand in hand. They're
almost twins. And if you want to go for the trifecta, you could put
your money on mercy. Humility, confession, and mercy; they're a
formidable trio, and they are at the centre of the way of
discipleship, of being followers of Christ. And they are at the heart
of our readings today.
Here's a bit of an old chestnut to get us under way. A young man was
caught up in a conspiracy to assassinate Napoleon Bonaparte. He and
many of his co-conspirators were caught, tried, and sentenced to
death. He was the only child of his widowed mother, and without him
to support her she would be destitute. Somehow she managed to wangle
an audience with Napoleon and begged the emperor to spare her son's
life.
Napoleon was not impressed. "Madame," he said. "Why should I have
mercy on him? He is guilty. He deserves to die." "Oh, yes,' the
woman agreed. "He is guilty and he deserves to die. That is why I do
not ask for justice for my son, for that would do him no good. It is
because he is guilty that I beg you to be merciful to him."
I can't remember the outcome, so if you prefer happy endings you can
assume that Napoleon was bowled over by the widow's plea and her
clever argument and granted his would-be assassin a free pardon. Or,
if you're on a sugar-free diet, you can assume that Napoleon decided
to execute her, too! Either way, the point is that mercy is only
available to the guilty.
If we seek God's mercy we must first acknowledge our guilt, which is a
good enough cue to turn to our gospel reading. St Luke gives us this
very compact, well-known story. A couple of Jews go up to the Temple
to pray. One is a Pharisee, one who tries very hard to keep the Law.
And when we look at his prayer, we may have a little sympathy for him.
We won't admit that, of course, because previous experience tells us
that the Pharisees are the bad guys. But deep down, on the quiet, we
might admit to ourselves some sympathy for this particular Pharisee.
For a kick-off, of course, he has at least made the effort to go to
the Temple to pray. That's more than we can say for about 90% of our
compatriots on any given Sunday, let alone a weekday. Then we hear
what he is praying. He doesn't get off to the best of starts, I must
admit: God, I thank you that I'm not like other people. That puts us
on edge a bit, doesn't it? Who does he think he is thanking God that
he's not like you and me? But hang on a minute. We seem to have
misunderstood. He goes on to identify the sorts of people that he is
not like. It turns out he's not talking about people like you and me,
at all. He's talking about robbers, evildoers, adulterers, and
tax-swindling collaborators. And we're not included in that list, are
we? And thank God we're not!
He goes on, "I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get." Hmm.
It might have been better if he'd quit while he was ahead. This does
sound a bit boastful – not the sort of thing to say out aloud, even
though we might think something along these lines. The public arena –
and in particular the Temple/Church - is hardly the right place to
start boasting in this way.
But with that reservation noted, assuming he's telling the truth about
himself, he doesn't sound too bad, does he? It seems he makes a real
effort to keep up his religious observances. And in that respect at
least, he probably isn't like "this tax collector". This tax
collector is a scoundrel, ripping off his fellow Jews, and sucking up
to the Roman occupiers.
But then it's his turn to pray. And as he prays he (inadvertently)
creates the simple prayer at the heart of Eastern Orthodox
spirituality, known simply as the "Jesus Prayer". Of course, he is
not at this time addressing his prayer to Jesus; he is praying to the
God of Israel, the one true God. But his prayer is very clear. He
knows what he is like. He knows he is guilty. He is indeed a sinner.
Justice would do him no good at all. If justice had her way, the
Pharisee would have been acquitted and the tax-collector sentenced to
death.
But when Jesus passes judgment his verdict is the other way around.
They are both guilty, but one of them only has recognised that and has
asked for mercy. We are acquitted – "justified" in the words of this
passage – through God's mercy, not in accordance with his justice.
Now, this tax-collector had come to the Temple to confess his sins.
In modern parlance, dealing with sin was the core business of the
Temple - think of all the sacrifices made as sin-offerings – and for
several centuries the Church took over this role. We no longer needed
to make sacrifices, of course, because Christ has made the one perfect
sacrifice sufficient for all the world for all time. But it was still
thought necessary to confess our personal sins to and through a
priest.
Then came the Reformation. And ever since the Anglican Church has
held that we can confess our personal sins directly to God, whenever
and wherever, without going through a priest. We can use a priest,
and sometimes that can be very helpful, but we're not obliged to do
so, and few Anglicans today do so. So why do we still come to church
to confess them? And the answer is, we don't.
To understand what we do in our various Liturgies, we can turn to our
reading from Jeremiah. Here we see the corporate nature of prayer,
including prayers of confession. Judah is suffering from a terrible
drought, so Jeremiah, as a Judean and on behalf of himself and all
other Judeans, is crying out to God for relief from the never-ending
Big Dry, as our Aussie neighbours would say. But as he does so he
acknowledges that the people do not deserve rain – they do not deserve
divine help. Why not? Well, they are terrible sinners. What have
they been up to? Are they also the sort of people the Pharisee was on
about – robbers, evildoers, adulterers, and tax collectors? No, what
Jeremiah acknowledges is the sin of backsliding, that is, not being
zealous enough in their religious practices. They haven't prayed
enough, or fasted enough, or given alms, or respected the Sabbath, or
whatever. They've become less committed, lazier, in relation to the
commands of their faith. They're backsliders. We can thank God we're
not like them, eh?
The prayer of Jeremiah is the prayer of the People of God. In the
same way, when we gather together in this Holy Place, we are gathered
as the People of God, the Church; and so when we pray in our liturgy,
we pray, not as individuals like the two in our gospel story, but
collectively, with one voice, like the voice of Jeremiah. We
acknowledge, not our own individual sins, but the sins for which we
are collectively responsible in this place.
What might they be? Well, one example that crops up regularly at Holy
Trinity is our failure to love one another as he loves us. Whenever
we use this liturgy (page 404) our liturgists change the text a wee
bit: The text as written says: "In silence we call to mind our sins."
But our Liturgists usually change this to, "In silence we call to
mind our own failure to love as he loves us." Now, that's fine –
that's a perfectly legitimate use of the liturgy. And it can be
helpful. It changes from the relative safety of the general, to the
more challenging specific. Instead of acknowledging "our sins" in
general, which might be different from week to week, our liturgists
are telling us that the besetting sin of this congregation, time after
time, is our failure to love one another as he has loved us.
We are guilty of a failure to love. And so when we suffer our own
drought, when our membership and our finances dry up, we are right to
cry to the Lord for help, first acknowledging that guilt and our need
for God's mercy, for only God can end our drought. As Jeremiah said,
can the idols of the nations offer help? No, it is you, O Lord our
God. Therefore our hope is in you, for you are the one who does all
this.
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