October 28, 2001
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Humble, Generous Life All Saints Remembrance Prayer: Eternal and loving God, send your Holy Spirit among us, as you have promised. Knit us together in love so Christ may live in all we do and say. Empower our ministries with deep faith and abiding hope. Amen (Gathered in Love Worship Resources for Year C. LaVon Baker, ed. p. 154). Today’s bulletin cover reminds us that “the prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective” (James 5.16) It is as we pray that we come to understand the promise of prayer, the position of prayer, and the possibilities of prayer. Here is the promise of prayer. In the verses immediately prior to the ones in our second reading this morning, Jesus tells his disciples the parable of the persistent widow who sought justice before a judge who respected neither God nor people. She kept knocking on his door, until he granted her request, saying, “If I don’t”, he says, “she will wear me out by showing up with her petition day after day, after day.” Jesus didn’t tell the disciples the parable so they would pester judges. Instead the parable was told so his disciples then and we disciples now would be persistent in our prayer life. If your prayer seems ineffectual, he says, continue to pray. The promise of prayer is that God will hear us. That does not mean that every prayer is answered as we wish it to be. Nor does it mean that all we have to do is tell God what we want and it will be granted to us. Prayer is not like rubbing a magic bottle so that a genie will emerge and do our bidding. Understand that prayer to be honest conversation between the faithful and God. Pray in a way, that speaks to your need, and that reflects the desires of the heart and soul that can only be answered by God. Jesus sees the widow as a model of persistence and teaches that she is a model for how to pray. But he is not done. He goes one to teach that persistence is one element in prayer - how we pray is also important. Then he tells another parable about a Pharisee and a tax collector. We may know the story as that of the Pharisee and the publican. Remember a parable is a story told to make a larger point. For instance, as children we learned in the parable of Goldilocks and the Three Bears not to take what does not belong to us. The parable of Hansel and Gretel teaches a lesson about wondering off down unknown roads. There are adult parables too. Look at any night time soap opera or daytime soap for that matter. They are often full of parables about believing in a sense of entitlement, that money, looks, a big fancy house, expensive fancy clothes are license to trample people in order to achieve whatever it is they want. There is nothing wrong with having money, or good looks, or a big house, or expensive clothes. Those are good things as long as they do not fill us with overwhelming smugness because of what we have or overwhelming envy because of what we do not have. Jesus wants those with him, the disciples and the others who follow him to pray humbly, not because they have no value, but their value is such that they do not need to hold others in contempt and disrespect. He wants his followers to approach prayer in a position of humility. He teaches about humility because there are people who trust so much in their own righteousness that they begin to disregard other people. They forget what we sometimes forget, that there is no zero sum righteousness. In other words, it is not the case that the more righteousness, the more of a right relation with God there is for me, the less there is for you. God’s grace and love are endless and unconditional, God always loves us; who are we to put limits on the grace of God, to decide that we can parcel out whom God will bless and whom God will not? Just who are these two praying me? The Pharisee is part of a group of observant, practicing Jewish people who were also socially influential. People watched what they did and listened to what they said. Because of their adherence to the law, they were often seen in opposition to Jesus. In the New Testament, the Pharisees were mainly the foil for Jesus, they help him prove his points about forgiveness, hospitality, and inclusion, mainly by opposing him. But Jesus never quits talking to them, never quits loving them, and never declines to build relationships with them; he was often the dinner guest of a Pharisee. The Pharisees were the interpreters of the law, and they were faithful to their practices and the way of life. Most lived simply. As this Pharisee prays, he is off by himself because he believed in keeping his distance from people so that he could remain ritually pure. He did not want to get close to anyone he considered unclean. Did you notice that in his prayer the Pharisee asks nothing of God for himself? This is not a prayer of petition. Nor is he offering a prayer of intercession, he is not praying for anyone else. He is offering a prayer of thanksgiving. We are used to prayers in which we thank God for what God has given us. We properly thank God for our good health, for our homes, for our families, for our lives, for the opportunity for service, for giving us the gifts of time, talent, and treasure. In the tradition of one kind of prayer, the Pharisee offers a prayer for what he is not. “Thank you God, that I am not a thug, a thief, or an adulterer, or even like that tax collector (we do not know how he knew the other man in the temples was a tax collector). We may join him in praising God that we are none of those things, either, that our lives contribute to both church and society - when we do not disregard other people’s property, or personhood, or heart. But then he goes on to bask in his own rightness. He is doing a bit of chest thumping and bragging, “look at how good and superior I am. I tithe all my income, I fast twice a week, I do more than is required.” His prayer is not a “there but for the grace of God, go I” prayer, but a “thank you for making me superior to everyone else” arrogant kind of prayer”. The Pharisee shows us one position of prayer. But Jesus says there is another model and continues his parable by describing the prayer of the tax collector. His is the position of confession, he does not thump his chest in pride, he beats it in contrition, and offers a simple prayer. “Be merciful to me, let me know not only your judgment, but your grace, because I am a sinner.” Anyone hearing his confession would say, “what else is new”? By definition the tax collector was out of relationship with God and with his neighbors. He was “working for a foreign government, collecting taxes from his own people, participating in a corrupt system, politically a traitor, religiously unclean, a tax collector was a reprehensible character (Interpretation series, Luke by Fred Craddock, p. 211). So we may be surprised when Jesus makes the point that the tax collector has been vindicated before God. He is vindicated, justified as was the persistent widow because he is not irredeemable. He is accounted as righteous because he knows that his weakness is his strength, his awareness of his sinful character puts him on the road to restoration. He is more righteous because he is more self-aware and humble before God. The Pharisee’s problem is that his strength is his weakness. He is a good worshiper, he is spiritually disciplined, he believes in God. We affirm all of his good behavior. But his weakness is that he takes it all as a matter of his inherent goodness rather than as the result of a relationship with God. He believes that his faithfulness makes him superior and so rightly contemptuous of others. His lack of humility is driving a wedge between him and God. Pray honestly, persistently, and humbly. We long for him and for ourselves when we are like him this prayer of confession: “How easily we have forgotten you, O God of our salvation. We imagine that our prosperity is of our own design. We wander into paths of self-righteousness and self-congratulation. We compare ourselves with those whose sins are public knowledge and consider ourselves better than they. O God, rescue us from the evil inside us that alienates us from others and from you. We humble ourselves before you, seeking forgiveness” (Gathered by Love p.150). When we seek and receive God’s forgiveness, we begin to know the great reversal Jesus describes. The one who is up will be let down, the one who down is raised up because righteousness before God is not our doing, it is God’s. Peter Gomes is the chaplain of the Memorial Chapel at Harvard University and the author of a book of essays on the Bible, simply called, The Good Book. He ends a sermon on stewardship by quoting John Wesley’s answer to the question, “But what can I do for the [realm of God]?” He replied: “Do all the good you can, (Peter Gomes, “Time, Talent, Treasure” in the book Sermons. William Morrow and Company, 1998, p. 198). The possibility of prayer is that it leads us from conversation to blessing to confidence to action. First we pray, then we act as God leads us to act. Prayer challenges us to talk to God and to listen to God and to listen for what is possible in our lives. That is what Paul wants Timothy to do. Like so many of those we will honor and remember today, Paul has reached the point in his life when he could look back and know that he’s done all that he could and the best that he could. Even the basic reading of the letters of Paul show us that Paul was not someone we would be considered humble by any means, except before God. As egocentric as he was, he reminds us that the possibility of prayer is that it leads us to a depth of relationship with God we can barely imagine. He always trusted God. Himself a Pharisee, and the son of a Pharisee, Paul knew his own great spiritual reversal as he moved from being a bounty hunter of Christians to an apostle of Jesus Christ. Now he is at the point of death, and can say that like a boxer, he has fought the good fight, like a runner, he can say, I have finished my race. Like one attuned to God, he can say, I have kept the faith. He is ready to receive his prize, not the laurel wreath of a victorious athlete, but a crown of righteousness given to him by the only worthy judge, Jesus himself. He knows that the prize is his, but it is not his alone. It belongs to everyone who holds on to their faith. Pray humbly, honestly, and live and face death with confidence. Now Paul is so secure in his relationship with God, he is so confident that despite the abandonment of people whom he had once trusted, he knows that the Lord Jesus himself, has been with him and will be with him to sustain and to strengthen him. So he could face death unafraid. He was generous in sharing his faith, and as he does, he becomes one more model of prayer for us. Finally, in my imagination, I see Paul, the Pharisee, the other tax collector, you and me all humbly offering and generously sharing this prayer that celebrates the constant presence of God. “Living God, we seek your presence now. Our minds cannot understand you, yet our hearts cry out for a living relationship with you. Our eyes cannot see you, yet without you there would be nothing to see. Our faith cannot grasp you, yet in you we live and move and have our being. Our way ahead into this week is hidden from us, but we trust that you have prepared a way through for us. Renew our vision of the eternal truths in the light of which our day-to-day lives must be lived. Open our eyes to see your presence in the simple glories of everyday things. Light up our relationships with other people by the living word of love in Jesus. Help us so to see where we went wrong in the past, that we shall be able to take our bearings afresh for the way ahead. In Christ name we pray. Amen. (from Chalice Worship, Chalice Press, p. 262, prayer 162). To God be the glory forever and ever. Amen.
Dr.
LaTaunya M. Bynum |
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Broad
Street Christian Church
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