The Pharisee and the tax collector - some thoughts on prayer

A sermon for the thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, from Fr Michael Bowie

Many of you may remember Bishop David Jenkins, the Bishop of Durham whose allegedly non-standard views about the Virgin birth and the resurrection were popularly supposed to have caused lightening to strike York Minster soon after his consecration in 1984.

Bishop David died a decade ago and left a legacy which might inform us this morning. He was a bit of a stirrer. Many saw him as a doubter or unbelieving bishop, but those of us who heard him lecture were often surprised by the depth of his faith, especially the supernatural elements of it. He was often misquoted in the media, most famously as having referred to the resurrection as 'a conjuring trick with bones': what he actually said was that ‘if the resurrection was no more than a conjuring trick with bones it wasn't worth much’.

This was very much a thoughtful scholarly point of view: if you listened to him speak it was clear that the resurrection was at the core of his faith, and that it was for him a fact, not a metaphor. What wound him up was pious and self-righteous religion, the pharisaic presentation of faith which is critiqued in the Gospel today. When faced with churchmen condemning women's ordination or the acceptance of gay people, I've heard him lapse into language which I'd better not repeat from the pulpit.

This morning we've heard from Sirach, the writer of Ecclesiasticus, on how God listens to the prayer of the marginalised; how he will not be bought off by the wealthy and respectable. This is what Jesus is talking about in the gospel story. Jesus describes two patterns of prayer.

The first is self-satisfied and self-congratulatory; the Pharisee famously speaks more about himself than God. In Jesus' lexicon self-righteousness is far worse than the seven so-called deadly sins. And we know it is always indulged in by people who believe themselves to be innocent of the seven. Clergy and other religious professionals are most susceptible to it. Some Pharisees, like the one in our story, succumbed to this sin, though it would be wrong to suppose that the Pharisees in general were any more self-righteous than any other religious grouping then or later. The professionally pious in any age or context are careful never to air their doubts or to disseminate ideas that might prove unsettling. When a religious leader like David Jenkins refuses to collude with this conspiracy lots of people get upset.

The second pattern of prayer, set against that of the self-righteous Pharisee, and very much within David Jenkins' comfort zone, is the tax-collector's prayer for mercy. In this cry is the seed of the Jesus Prayer of Eastern Orthodox Christians: 'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.'

The Pharisee confessed the sins of other people, while at the same time parading his own good deeds. The Tax-Collector did the opposite. He confessed his own sins, and left the sins of others between them and God. As a result Jesus says that the Tax-Collector went home right with God, whereas the Pharisee did not.

I used to hear a quite a few confessions at All Saints Margaret Street (in my first 5 years there we offered the opportunity twice a day). I noticed then how easily people fall into confessing the sins of others when making their own confession. It is one of the few moments at which I had to stop penitents and remind them of why we were there. Focussing on others' sinfulness is a displacement strategy: it diverts us from acknowledging our own sins and insists, like the Pharisee, that we are not as others are.

We sometimes play that game because most of us have been brought up to believe that we have to be, in some sense, ‘dressed up’ to show our faces in God’s church. But of course that is the opposite of what church is for. God is the one person before whom we can’t pretend: we have no option but to come before God as we are. And that is a cause for rejoicing, because it locates us in a place of complete acceptance.

Unconditional acceptance and generosity is the model of love offered by all Jesus' teaching. We see it most clearly in the parable we call 'the prodigal son'. We all have a deep need for unconditional love. Yet unconditional acceptance is less and less common in human relationships. Those of us who have not always experienced it from our own parents find it especially hard to believe that God really loves us like that. We tend to believe, and may even have been told, that God loves us only if we are good. God loves us, not because we are good but because he is good. It is our Christian calling to aspire to that level of acceptance – 'be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect'.

The Pharisee was full of himself, the centre of his own world. He had exalted himself, not God. From that exalted position he looked down on others, some of whom he despised, as God will not. We need to accept that we've all done that, even if by convincing ourselves that we are humbler or have a more realistic self-image than our neighbour.

The Tax-Collector, on the other hand, humbled himself unreservedly before God. He placed his hope in the mercy of God, not what he understood to be his own strengths, absolute, or relative to others.

Scripture tells us that God prefers a broken and contrite heart that knows its failures to the complacent arrogance which claims never to have sinned. And Jesus calls us to look at others, as God does, with unconditional love.