The Pharisee and the Tax collector

I remember when I was working in Basildon we had a small church on the side of the town called Langdon. They hated being associated with Basildon. I remember once being severally told off when I said that I was happy to be here in Basildon and someone came over to me and said. “what you have to remember Father is that we are not like those people from Basildon we are from Langdon: although they had a Basildon postcode.

Jesus addresses people who pride themselves on their virtue while despising everyone else. This attitude can come through in our prayer life. Listen to the Pharisee who comes and prays to himself and notice the language he uses. The dominant word is “I” His self-righteousness is the dominant theme of his prayer. Thanking God he is not like those around him or the tax collector. The Pharisee’s thought of themselves as separated from the rest of the Jewish people. They saw themselves as superior. Notice something else about his prayer it has no humility. He tells God everything that he does that makes him a good Jew.

So I wonder who are the Pharisees in the Catholic Church today. There are some right wing factors that are not very pleasant with the way they use a kind of aggressive Catholicism. They use their authority to burden people rather than to live in freedom. These are the sort of people who will find fault with everything that they do not agree with. They may even feel that they are here to correct the wrongs in the Church. They harp back to a time when the Church of the past looking at it through romantic eyes. They despise and are aggressive to anyone who disagrees with them rather than listening to them in freedom and love. They do the outward observances very well but what matters is what is in the heart.

Listen now to the prayer of the tax collector. Not daring to look up to heaven he turns and says “be merciful to me a sinner.” He recognizes and knows himself and realises his need for God. IT seems to me to be a prayer from the heart. He knows his need for God. He also knows who he really is and his need for God. He has nothing to offer apart from his brokenness and his pain. He realises that all he can do is trust in God. His real self is no secret.

Jesus now comments about the story. What he has to say will be a shock for his hearers? He declares that the tax collector goes home justified where the Pharisee does not. It, they would have thought been the other way round. The tax collectors prayers pierced the clouds whereas the Pharisee prayer only reached himself. Jesus is the friend of tax collectors and sinners. He does not put their sinfulness on hold but rather calls  them away to look at what it means to live in the freedom of God’s love and mercy. For Jesus sinners were not just sinners but beloved sinners. They deserve more than being rubbished by people who despise what they do. If we come and pray and realise that our religion has a heavy investment in despising other people then we will just go home again as we came. We do not change we are not changed by our prayer. But, if we are simple and acknowledge our sinfulness and need for God and we begin to acknowledge the truth about ourselves then we can place it all on the love and mercy of God.