Sermon by the Rev. Dr Anne Tomlinson

May I speak in the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

In Palestine in the time of our Lord, ‘tax collectors’ were synonymous with cheats and frauds. They frequently became rich off the backs of the labourers and traders from whom they extracted their toll, doing so using less than scrupulous measures. Worse still, they did so in collusion with the occupying forces. In short, they were on the wrong side, religiously, politically and

economically.

I was once at a dramatic reading of this parable at which the audience was encouraged to hiss in true pantomime style whenever the Tax Collector was mentioned and to cheer when the ‘righteous’

Pharisee was introduced. That sort of visceral emotional response, however childlike, heightened the twist in the tail of the parable when it came, a reversal of expectation which, like that in so many

similar reversals in other parables, might otherwise have been dulled in the retelling. For yet again this is a shocking story, one which turns the expected thinking - our ordinary likes and dislikes

(which we too easily equate with God’s way of thinking) - upside down. Here once again our Lord makes his central character someone from a despised, rejected and unloved group; a

Samaritan, an outcast woman, a leper and now a tax collector. Boo; hiss? Well no, actually.

As has been the refrain throughout Luke’s Gospel, our companion this past lectionary year, it is the despised, the weak and the lowly who know their need of God; who throw themselves on His mercy,

bearing their souls, warts and all. As the Message translation puts it so graphically ‘The tax man, slumped in the shadows, his face in his hands, not daring to look up, said, 'God, give mercy. Forgive me, a sinner’. Like the Samaritan woman who comes to draw water at the hottest part of the day, this man knows that he is despised, rejected and hated by society and feels he is not worthy to associate with others, so stands far off. But he is not despised, rejected or hated by God , who draws near to him in mercy and grace.

If our reading of this parable is not to remain at the level of caricature, however, we need to probe more deeply. What is it about the Pharisee that is being critiqued by this sudden reversal?

After all, he is a decent God-fearing person who fasts and tithes, attempts to fulfil the Law and is certainly virtuous according to Jewish thought. It would be a mistake to read Luke’s Pharisees as it

they were Matthew’s or as a mere stereotype for legalism; that’s far too facile.

As I listened to that dramatic reading all those years ago, the word that leaped out for me was that repeated ‘I’. ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other men - extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.’ Here is someone who has grown to trust in the efficacy of his own actions, and that emphasis has turned his focus inwards, onto the autonomous self. He has created a barricade around himself which makes it impossible for him to stand in another’s shoes - or ‘empathise with them’ as we might say nowadays. He is encased in

the concrete of self-made virtue - and that is a very hard shell to crack.

Time and time again in Luke’s Gospel, it is virtue’s blindness that our Lord found hardest to penetrate. The arrogant confidence of those people - especially religious functionaries - who know they are right about the content of their faith. Who claim to know what God wants and so fail to see Him at work in front of their very eyes. They have definite answers without the hesitancy of expectation or the glory of the possibility of change.

When I was 25, I felt called to test a vocation to ordained ministry and so was sent by the Church down to Ely for a selection conference. I had been a fervent churchgoer since my teens, was

wrapped up in the life of the congregation I attended in Edinburgh – on the Vestry, on numerous committees, in the choir; in short, church consumed my non-working hours. And those wise selectors

saw right to the heart of me and wisely counselled that before commencing training, I ought to go somewhere in the world for a year where I might ‘look, listen and learn’. ‘Somewhere’, they said,

where I had ‘no props’.

I went to Bolivia and in that chaotic, impoverished and frightening milieu became vulnerable for the first time in my life. In that place, unprotected by the carapace of intellect, education, church or social

standing, I threw myself on the mercy and protection of God. I found my need of Him.

Paul is quite clear that when we are weak then are we strong; failure and weakness are central to the Gospel. And the compassion of failure is central to our crucified faith, as it is to this parable. It is

truly a parable for the church today, for today we are weak. Congregations across this Diocese are weak – in numbers, age profile, finance, energy. Denominations in this country are weak. And that worries us, we who love the church so much. It worries you, I know. But let us look at this state of affairs with parabolic eyes.

Ann Morisey, a theologian from south of the Border who writes prophetically about the state of the Church of England, says the following in one of her books:

It is only as churches have been stripped of their power that we have begun to get the gist of the Gospel. The vulnerability that we experience today presents us with glorious new possibilities.

The vulnerability that we experience today presents us with glorious new possibilities. The Church today knows its need of God anew. It is characterised more by powerlessness than power. Gone are the Christendom days we spoke of in our meeting yesterday, of overconfidence, selfsufficiency

and a sense of virtuous benevolence that cut us off from -or even made us feel better than - our neighbours. We find ourselves like lambs in a field of wolves and this sends us back to the mercy of God, to a renewed sense that true agency resides in God, not in man-made creativity. With Joel, we are brought to our knees to hear God saying ‘I, the Lord, am your God’. With the psalmist we sing:

You O God have tested us

You have tried us as silver is tried

You brought us into the net

You laid burdens on our backs

You let people ride over our heads

Yet you have brought us out to a spacious place.

This God-facing stance throws us open to new sets of conversations with other charges in the Region or Diocese, with other denominations and faiths. Throws us open to new partnerships, to

going with open hands to social care agencies that, like us, are working for wholeness, healing and right relationships, and asking ‘what can we do with you, alongside you?’ rather than for you as in

the past. Propels us out of the church’s doors to see how we can meet people on their home-ground, not ours. Impels us to be a ‘church without walls’, as our Presbyterian colleagues so aptly put it.

Emerging out of our protective shell will make us feel very vulnerable. It is much less comfortable there than in ‘the old dispensation’. We will feel unsafe. So let us take courage from Paul, one who lived that self-giving, God-trusting life to the full, allowing himself to be ‘poured out as a libation’. Let us hear his words of reassurance and, as we likewise step out onto to the road of vulnerable missionary activity, let us take them as our own – ‘for faithful is the One who calls’.

The Lord stood by me and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. So I was rescued from the lion’s mouth. The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and save me for his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory for

ever and ever. Amen.