Sermon by the Rev. Dr Donald Orr

This passage is direct and personal. Two men go to the temple to pray, but only one of them prayed. Prayer must be addressed to God, and the Pharisee was not really interested in God, but only himself. All his words are in the first person – he, in essence, is praying to himself and the prayer is a catalogue of negative virtues and minor pieties. His trust is in his own righteousness and what he considers as his religious achievement whereas the humble person puts their trust in God’s judgement and mercy. The result is that the arrogant man despises all those who fail to reach his own misjudged standards and is caught in a maelstrom of arrogance and conceit, blinded by what he deems as devotion but is in fact self-importance and egotism. Not all Pharisees were like this but their emphasis on merit and their strict observance of the Mosaic Law could easily carry them off on a dangerous tide of spiritual pride. If we are in the presence of the God of creation we cannot stand and congratulate ourselves on our piety, we cannot stand comfortably in the strength of all the believed good we may have done or the charities we have supported. If we do, then what we think of as goodness simply becomes a barrier between us and God. The tax collector, with all his faults and follies, places himself before God because his mind is only on God and on all the aspects of his sinful life which weigh on him. His life is not honourable and he may well be trapped in a cycle of disreputable acts and he can only find help for his situation in God. His honest humility is the one sure way, the only way, to enter into the divine presence. It is not a case of one man being bad and the other good. As we know in this life; nothing is exactly black and white. We all will tell lies, or omit the awful truth, to ease the pain of ill-health or a discovery of some fault. We will avoid having to say or do certain things to help someone through a bad patch, to encourage them in life. The Law was a document, a written testament and a guide but as such it had no subtlety, no leniency to the extent that if it was relied on to provide succor or compassion it was found wanting and the only solace offered was the fact that the individual should never have been in the situation in the first place – but then life does not operate like that, sometimes we need compassion not the law. The Tax Collector has done the one thing that God requires of us; the one thing God desires of those who seek access to the divine – he has faced the truth about himself and his life and cast himself on God’s compassion. That is the model Jesus was advocating; that is the way we should be in our lives. We do not know if the Tax Collector’s repentance was shallow or deep – in many respects this does not matter; anyone approaching God in humility, acknowledging their unworthiness will be heard, will be comforted. The Pharisee’s status and behaviour was deemed to be acceptable way of approaching God – by the Pharisee. Our status and conduct have to be considered. It is not enough just to come to church; it is how we come to church and the attitude we display before God that is vital to our lives. God be merciful to me a sinner – it’s a short prayer but contains practically all we need to say – before we rise and consider those around us that we may be able to help.