Proper 25 C

The parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector provides an opportunity for us to explore the nature of justice and mercy.

Proper 25 C

Transcribed from a sermon given

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

October 2013

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

Luke 18:9-14 C

I’d like you to imagine two neighbors coming home from work. The one man walks in and says to his wife, “It is so wonderful that I have such a great job so I can come home and be with you, and I can buy a new car for you, and I can buy you jewels, and I can be the perfect husband; not like that neighbor of ours, the one who is out so late every evening and drives around in that junky car that must be so embarrassing for his wife.” The neighbor comes home a few hours later, and he is tired. He says to his wife, “Oh, Honey, I am so sorry that I am not able to be here with you in the evening. I’m not able to have a job that will pay enough, so I need to do two jobs. And I would love to be able to buy you a new car and jewels but all we have is enough to get by. I’m doing the best I can. Maybe some day I’ll be able to get a better job.”

So I ask you, which wife feels more loved? Personally I would much rather have my husband come home a little bit apologetic rather than telling me what a great husband he is, because if my husband were to be telling me what a great husband he is, there is no room for me to appreciate who he is, because he is busy doing that for himself. This is the point of the parable in today’s Gospel.

Jesus speaks of two men. The first, the Pharisee, is probably a really good man. He does fast and tithe and do his best to follow all the commandments, but to go the temple to tell God what a great person you are? I’m sure God doesn’t need to be told what a great person this guy is.

The other one, the tax collector, just by being a tax collector means that he was disliked by the other people. You think tax collectors now a days are disliked? Back then they weren’t collecting taxes for Israel, they were collecting taxes for Rome, the occupying power. They were seen not only as money grabbing but they were seen as traitors. Most tax collectors got their pay by taking a cut. And most tax collectors took more of a cut then they really deserved. So tax collector was about the worst thing you could say about somebody. And the tax collectors knows that he is not living the life that he would like to be living. That he is not in the right relationship with God and he is willing to acknowledge that.

Jesus says that he comes away justified. Justified is an interesting word so I looked up the Greek and the translation is justified. Justified in English has two meanings. One is a printing concept. Justified means that things are all lined up. You know how how on your computer you get to choose whether things are left justified or right justified or even on both sides. So one sense of justified is that things are lined up correctly.

But most of the time justified is used in terms of justice. It is a derivative of the word “justice.” So the question becomes what is justice? There have been lots of different theories of what justice is - what a just world looks like. And the one that I liked in thinking about what Jesus said in the parable comes from Plato where he talks about justice as being the right relationship. So a just world is one in which the people are in right relationship with each other and with the government. That it is a just right relationship.

That brings us to the questions what is the right relationship with God? What is justice? Usually when we talk about justice we talk about the justice system which is more the punishment system in our country. What do we do when things are out of whack, when there is a break in a relationship, when an injustice has been done? What do we do when someone has been stolen from? Or killed? Or injured? How do we handle that? How do we move it back to a right relationship?. How do make justice from that? Our society focus mostly on punishment, that there has to be a balance. You’ve done something wrong and therefore you need to be punished to balance that out. And that is one way of trying to achieve justice. But it doesn’t always lead to a right relationship again. Sometimes people, if someone has been hurt or killed they will say, “We want justice.” What does that mean? They want that person to be punished so they can feel better. But that is just one form of understanding justice.

There is a whole group of people now in our society concerned about restorative justice, where they take this concept of justice, of right relationship, and say it is not enough just to punish someone. They ask how do we help that person when they are finished with their legal consequences of their action to reestablish a relationship again? So they often work with both the victims and  the perpetrators to restore a relationship. The relationship and the restoration is always based on the perpetrator taking responsibility for what has been done. What we would call an apology, an acknowledgement. Because then the victim can stop being a victim and have mercy, can have a relationship again. Of course it is much more complicated than that but it is important.

The whole idea is how do we get back into the right relationship again, and what is our right relationship with God? Now obviously we are talking about this tax collector as feeling out of relationship while somehow this Pharisee that has been following all the rules isn’t in right relationship. So what does it mean to have the right relationship with God and how do we get back to that?

There are certain things that are obstacles to the right relationship with God. Right relationship with God is a relationship of love and communion. If we close ourselves off to God we are not in right relationship, and that is really what sin is. It is missing the mark. It is breaking the tie. It is not living in the way that God intended for human beings to live. It is not being loving. It is not loving God and loving our neighbor, and loving ourselves. When we are  not loving we are cutting ourselves off. For example, if we lie, whether we lie to someone else or we lie to ourselves, we cut ourselves off from the truth. The truth is of God. If you have ever had a friendship where someone has told a lie, either you or the other person, you know that from that moment on the intimacy is limited because you have to keep a part of yourself separate or they are keeping a part of themselves separate. So when we sin, when we miss the mark with God, we put up an obstacle for that relationship. So our relationship, this openness, this intimacy with God gets disturbed by what we call sin, or missing the mark.

The problem in the relationship between God and human beings is that none of us are perfect. None of us use the free will that God gave us in a loving way all of the time. All of us get selfish. All of us get fearful. All of us hurt others. All of us hurt ourselves. All of us deny God, deny the creation. We all do it. Not a single one of us. Not even that Pharisee who was standing there saying I followed all the law is capable of being perfect in the sense of Christ’s perfection of loving one another as God loves us. And so we all mess up. We all mess up in our relationships with other human beings too.

This is nothing new. The question is what do we do when we mess up? First, we acknowledge it. We go to our friend and say “I messed up.” And if it is a real friend they’ll forgive us. So what do we do when we mess up with God? We say “God have mercy on us.” “God have mercy on me a sinner,” are the words that come out of the tax collectors mouth. He knows the truth about who he is. He is asking for God’s mercy. You see for the other side of this relationship with God in which we inevitable let God down is that God has this incredible, enormous unconditional love for us and will always be ready to say, “You are forgiven.” God is always yearning for this relationship to mend itself and is just waiting for us to take down those barriers that keep ourselves separate.

There is an interesting balance in this relationship with God. We will mess up and if we ask for forgiveness God will forgive. So we are living in this wonderful dynamic, and if we can acknowledge and accept God’s enormous mercy and love we can also be honest about who we are, and we can keep become whom God longs for us to be.

Proper 23 C

What set the one leper apart? Could it be his Attitude of Gratitude?

Proper 23 C

Transcribed from a sermon given

October 11, 2010

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

Luke 17:11-19

Psalm 69:1-11

Once upon a time there was a rich man who was taking his dog for a walk. It was a Saturday so he was dressed in his jeans and his flannel shirt. As he was walking along he came across a group of beggars who said, “Please sir, give us something, anything, to help us.” So he reached into his pocket where he had a whole stack of envelopes and he gave an envelope to each one of them and said, “Take this to the bank.” Well the first one who got it said, “An enveloped, I don’t know, there is just a piece of paper in here, and he threw it away.” The next one took it out and saw that inside the envelope there was a check that could be cashed at the bank for a thousand dollars. He went, “That guy couldn’t possibly have enough money to be giving us all a thousand dollars, and he threw it away. The next man said, “Wow, a thousand dollars, that man probably doesn’t have much money in the bank so I better hurry up and get there first before everybody else gets there.” Another one said, “Well I can use this thousand dollars.”  And he headed off to the bank thinking, “Well it’s about time. Finally, my luck has changed. My luck has changed! Hey, I’m going to give a call to my bookie because today is my lucky day. I can make it even more lucky.” Another one said, “Oh, I owe some money to my dealer and this will give me some more drugs.” So he went out to share it with the person from whom he bought his drugs. Another said, “Party!” Then he called all his friends together and had a great party. Another went and cashed the check and took it to his family, and they all celebrated and were happy. There was one that when he saw what was handed him turned around and looked for the man who gave it to him. He had to go all over the park to find him, and when he finally found him, thanked him and thanked him. He said, “This is wonderful! This will change my life. With this I can get into a room and take care of my wife and it will give me a new start in life. Thank you!” And the rich man said, “Where are the other ones that I gave the same thing to?” He responded “I don’t know, they all disappeared.” The rich man said, “Well, you know what, I have a couple of positions open in my company and I really need some good people to fill them. Will you work for me? I’ll make sure you get paid enough to live well, and you will always have security because you are just the kind of person that I want to have work for me.”

Now that is what happened with Jesus and the lepers. There were ten people with leprosy. Remember that back then leprosy was a greatly dreaded disease. There was no cure, and if you had true leprosy the nerves died and the circulation died going to your extremities, so they would start to get gangrene, smell bad and look terrible. People were terrified of others with leprosy because it indeed was very contagious. So if you had leprosy you had to stay 50 yards away from others. You couldn’t come close. You also were considered ritually unclean. You couldn’t go to the temple or to any worship services because you were unclean. And if you did heal from the disease, back then they didn’t make a distinction between different kinds of skin disease, you had to go to the priest and show yourself to be certified as no longer having the disease in order to be ritually clean and to be welcomed back into society. That is why when Jesus looks at the ten lepers he says go and show yourselves to the priests. Go and show yourselves that you are clean so you can come back into the society. And they all go off. We don’t know what the other nine were thinking. But one, when he realized that he was cured, turned around and came back praising God and giving thanks. Then Jesus says to him, “Your faith has healed you.” Now it is an odd thing for Jesus to say because all ten were healed and presumable the other nine did not have that kind of faith. So what was going on?

Well there are several different kinds of healing. There is healing of the body, and I have seen prayers that have transformed people and the doctors were amazed. So I do believe that prayer can be physically healing. There is also mental healing, peace of mind, healing of mental disorders, anger, hurt guilt, and that is a powerful kind of healing. And then there is spiritual healing which means reconciliation of the person with God and other people. When we pray for healing it can be any one of those three that are answered. For example, I think we all know people who have major illnesses perhaps a chronic disorder, and yet they are filled with life. There bodies might be falling apart, but their spirits and their minds and their hearts are open. They are full of gratitude to God for what they do have, and love and joy that is shared in a way that transforms people around them. We also know people who are physically what one would consider healthy and yet they are depressed, lonely, and complaining all the time. So there are different kinds of healing.

What happened is that Jesus healed the body of all ten lepers, but there was more for the one who had faith. The Greek word that is translated as faith, is not faith in the sense that you believe a set of precepts. It is not that you ascent to the Nicene Creed. It is not that you believe that Jesus is any particular thing. Faith represents relationship and trust. Faith means that there is harmony in the relationship with God. A wholeness in the spiritual life.

The one that turned around and came back to Jesus with thankfulness had his relationship with God healed; he became spiritually whole. This is because he had what in the twelve step programs they would refer to as an attitude of gratitude. That no matter what is happening there is much to be thankful for. You see that in the psalms. In the psalm we had today there is a wonderful expression of that. When we read it it starts out, “Be joyful in God all you lands; Sing the glory of his Name. “ What we are supposed to be doing is singing and praising God all the time. The psalm goes on to describe how God brought the people across the sea on dry land. But it doesn’t just talk about the wonderful things, the happy things. It also includes, “You tried us just as silver is tried. You brought us into a snare. You laid heavy burdens on our backs.” And yet, and yet, we will praise you because even in those difficulties and in those dark times you were with us, and you helped us to learn from them, to grow from them. That’s gratitude - when we acknowledge God in everything and give thanks to God at all times. Always. When we realize that every breath that we breath is a gift from God. When we say thank you Lord for this beautiful sunny day, and thank you Lord for those cold foggy days. And thank you Lord for my health today and thank you Lord for getting me through whatever I am suffering. Because it is that attitude, that relationship with God, in which we are wholly present with God and we remember to acknowledge God in all things at all times. That is the foundation of true healing and true health.

May you remember to praise God and to sing of his glory.