THE PERIL OF PRESUMPTUOUS PRAYER
Kate Irish Filer told a wonderful little story in our adult education class last Sunday that works quite well as an introduction to where we’re headed today. Once upon a time, a poor widow with three young daughters moved to a town near a Methodist church. The minister went over to visit them and even invited them to worship on Sunday morning. The widow said, “We would love to come to church, but we don’t have any Sunday clothes.”
The minister went back to his church and talked to a few of the women. Those women then went out and bought and delivered beautiful Sunday outfits for the woman and her daughters. The next Sunday morning, the whole congregation watched for the woman and her daughters, but for some strange reason, they never showed. Sorely disappointed, the minister went back to the widow’s house to see what had happened. “Well,” woman replied, “we got all dressed up in our brand new clothes, and we looked so nice that we decided to go to the Presbyterian church instead!”
Ah, we’re forever making distinctions, are we not? One woman decided that she and her daughters looked too good to go to the Methodist church, so they went to the Presbyterian church instead. We make distinctions like that all the time. We make distinctions about a person’s worth based upon the color of that person’s skin. We make distinctions about a person’s value based upon what that person does for a living. We make distinctions about a person’s intelligence based upon where that person got their education. We make distinctions about a person’s substance based upon whether we deem that person to be liberal or conservative. We make distinctions about a person’s appeal based upon nothing more than their looks. We make distinctions about a person’s relevance based upon the location of that person’s house. We make distinctions about a person’s usefulness based upon that person’s net worth. We are forever making distinctions about people based upon our perceptions rather than upon seeing them for who and for what they really are. How often we fail to see that person as a precious child of God.
A similar thing was occurring in the passage we read from the gospel according to Luke. There Jesus tells a story about two men who went up to the Temple to pray. One of the men was a Pharisee, while the other man was a tax collector. The Pharisees, of course, were an exclusive sect of the Jewish faith 2000 years ago. This particular Pharisee was a very righteous man; he worshipped God in the Temple, he gave God ten percent of his income and he obeyed Jewish law. Thus, the people listening to Jesus’ story would have seen him as the hero. The tax collector, on the other hand, was not a righteous man. The people listening to Jesus’ story would have seen him as the villain.
Tax collectors in Jesus’ day were actually thought to be traitors. They were ordinary citizens who had the good fortune – or the bad fortune, depending on how you look at it – to have been appointed by the Roman government to assess and collect taxes. They were notorious for their dishonesty. They frequently overcharged the Jewish citizenry, obtaining great wealth for themselves and earning the disdain of the general populace. Because the Pharisees hated the tax collectors, they thought Jesus should hate them, too. Thus, in the parable Jesus tells, we have a clear cut case of good versus evil – the good and faithful Pharisee versus the evil and traitorous tax collector.
John Dominic Crossan is a former Catholic priest and one of the cofounders of the Jesus Seminar. To give us a better feel for how the people of Jesus’ day might have felt about this parable, he offers the following analogy. Modernizing the parable a bit he says, “The Pope and a pimp went into St. Peter’s to pray.” How’s that for a graphic illustration? Do you see how Jesus’ audience might have understood his parable now?
In any case, as the story goes, the Pharisee was quick to make distinctions. He actually said in his prayer, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” The Pharisee sees the tax collector as less than human. In making his distinction between himself and the tax collector, he is thankful to God that he is not like him.
We might take offense at the Pharisee’s prayer, but prayers like that were often said in Jesus’ day. They were common fare and were not considered self-righteous boasting. The Talmud, a record of rabbinic discussions about Jewish law, actually records a prayer just like the one that we just heard. It was said by rabbis whenever they entered what they called the house of study. The prayer goes like this:
I give thanks to Thee, O Lord my God, that Thou has set my portion with those who sit in the house of study, and Thou has not set my portion with those who sit on street corners. For I rise early and they rise early, but I rise early for words of Torah and they rise early for frivolous talk. I labor and they labor, but I labor and receive a reward and they labor and do not receive a reward. I run and they run, but I run to the life of the future world, while they run to the pit of destruction.
Perhaps we could actually say that self-righteousness was a part of their culture. It was certainly a part of their prayer book. So the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable said a prayer to God, thanking God that he was not like the tax collector. It was a prayer Jesus’ audience would have understood well because many of them would have said a similar prayer themselves.
The tax collector was in the Temple to pray as well, however. His prayer was a little bit different than the prayer of the Pharisee. He stood far off – he could not even bring himself to look toward heaven – he beat his breast and he cried, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”
Now remember, this is a parable. A parable of Jesus always has a twist and a central truth. The twist of the parable is this. Jesus says, “I tell you, this tax collector went down to his home justified, rather than the other.” The tax collector was justified in the eyes of God, while the Pharisee was not? Jesus audience would have been shocked. They would have reacted much as we might react to John Dominic Crossan’s analogy. Remember? “The Pope and a pimp went into St. Peter’s to pray?” How would we react if the ending were this: “The pimp came out justified in the eyes of God, while the Pope did not.” It’s not exactly the ending we might expect either, is it?
The question we’ve got to ask ourselves now is this: “Why?” Why was the tax collector justified in the eyes of God while the Pharisee was not? I believe Jesus gives us the answer to this question at the end of the parable. He says, “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”
Well what, exactly, is humility? Does it have to do with keeping your eyes to the ground and seeing yourself as a nobody? Does it have to do with self-deprecation? I don’t think it does. One can have a healthy sense of self-esteem and still be a humble person. I think C.S. Lewis describes humility well in his book, Mere Christianity. He writes:
Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call “humble” nowadays. He will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.
In other words, a humble person is a person who thinks of someone besides themselves. A humble person is a person who puts you ahead of him or herself. A humble person places others above himself because he has learned to see others as precious children of God as well. This is the kind of person who will be “exalted” as Jesus says, because this is the kind of person who comes nearest to the heart of God. Think of the truly humble people you have known in your lifetime. They do seem strangely “Godly,” do they not?
Last week we examined Jesus’ parable about the widow and the unjust judge. The judge neither feared God nor respected man. Yet the widow continued to badger him until he gave in to her demands. Today we examined Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, which immediately follows the parable of the widow and the unjust judge in Luke’s gospel. Dr. Peter Rhea Jones, a professor at the McAfee School of Theology in Atlanta, Georgia, believes these two parables are meant to stand together. He calls the first parable, “The Promise of Persistent Prayer.” He calls the second parable, “The Peril of Presumptuous Prayer.”
The peril of presumptuous prayer is that presumptuous prayer just might go unanswered. Justification in the eyes of God is a gift to those who seek it, not an entitlement to those who think they deserve it. It comes to us freely, not as a result of our labors. It comes to us when we humbly ask for it, not when we arrogantly assume we’ve earned it. The tax collector begged God for mercy. He knew himself for who and for what he really was. The Pharisee did not know himself. He could only point a finger at others. He made clear distinctions between himself and others, and in the process he encountered the peril of presumptuous prayer. Perhaps the lesson here is this. We have no right to make distinctions between people. We have no grounds to condemn the sin of others. I mean, if we’re honest with ourselves, we come to realize that we have enough of a need for forgiveness ourselves.
What we’re talking about here is what we call the doctrine of reconciliation. The doctrine of reconciliation has to do with the restoration of our relationship with God. Recall how the tax collector went home justified, while the Pharisee did not. To go home justified is what we mean by reconciliation. But there are actually two parts to the doctrine of reconciliation. There is what we call vertical reconciliation and there is what we call horizontal reconciliation.
Vertical reconciliation has to do with the restoration of our relationship with God, up above. That’s what the tax collector found. Horizontal reconciliation has to do with the restoration of our relationships with others, all around us. That’s what the Pharisee failed to understand. You see, the two go hand in hand. When we are reconciled to God, we necessarily seek to be reconciled to one another. One can never be reconciled to God when one fails to be reconciled to one’s fellow human beings. One can never be reconciled to God when one makes distinctions among human beings. You know how the Apostle Paul writes in the book of Galatians, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all made one in Christ Jesus our Lord?” This is exactly what he was talking about. In the eyes of God, all are created equal. All are precious children of God. It is not up to us to make distinctions.
Jonathan Swift was an Irish essayist, poet and clergyman who lived between 1667 and 1745. He is perhaps best known to us as the author of Gulliver’s Travels. Perhaps he summed up our problem when he once said, “We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.” Again, “We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.”
Our religion – our faith – cries out to us to love one another. It pleads with us to think of someone besides ourselves. It urges us to see everyone as a precious child of God. That’s where the Pharisee came up short and that’s where the tax collector came up a winner. The peril of presumptuous prayer is that it cannot reconcile us with God. Learn to see yourself as a person in need of the grace of God. Learn to see others as persons who are loved by God as well. That journey begins when we pray for them, not prey upon them. If we can do that, we just might find our own relationship with God growing closer by the day. Amen.
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