According to the
Pew Research Center, 55% of Americans say they pray every day, while 21% say
they pray weekly or monthly and 23% say they seldom or never pray. Even among
those who are religiously unaffiliated, 20% say they pray daily. Women (64%)
are more likely than men (46%) to pray every day. And Americans ages 65 and
older are far more likely than adults under 30 to say they pray daily (65% vs.
41%). 45% of Americans – and a majority of Christians (55%) – say they
rely a lot on prayer and personal religious reflection when making major
life decisions. The same survey found that 63% of Christians in the U.S. say
praying regularly is an essential part of their Christian identity.[1]
I wonder: what is
prayer like for you and how does it figure in your life? In our Gospel reading
for today, Jesus tells a story about two people at prayer. Listen for God’s
word to you from Luke 18:9-14…
He
also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were
righteous and regarded others with contempt: “Two men went up to the
temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The
Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘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.’ But
the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was
beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell
you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all
who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be
exalted.”
Devout Jews who
lived in or near Jerusalem in the first century had the option of attending
three prayer times daily at the Temple: one at 9 am, one at noon, and the third
at 3 pm. They believed prayer might be especially effective if offered in the
Temple. Thus, many went to the Temple in Jerusalem at these hours to pray.
Personally, I
doubt that the place where we pray makes any difference whatsoever to the
effectiveness of prayer before God. If it helps us to pray in one place vs.
another, great. But I doubt that it makes any difference to God. We can pray in
church. We can pray at home. We can pray on the golf course. We can pray in the
car. We can pray atop the highest mountain or in the lowest valley. 1 John 5:14
says, “if we ask anything according to God’s will, he hears us.” To me, that’s
what counts, not the location of our prayers, but the intention of our prayers.
However, in his
parable, Jesus tells us about two people who went up to the Temple to pray. One
is a Pharisee. As we have talked about before, the Pharisees were one of
a few different Jewish sects that existed in the first century. They were
teachers of the law and believed in following the law according to very
specific guidelines handed down by the Rabbis over the centuries.
A more literal,
word-for-word, translation of the Greek would describe this particular Pharisee
in this way: “The Pharisee standing these things to himself prayed.”
Jesus is telling
us that despite the fact that this Pharisee addresses God in his prayer, he is
really talking to himself.
Now, we have all
probably had the experience of feeling like our prayers do not rise any higher
than the ceiling. Sometimes we wonder: “Is anyone really listening to our
prayers on the other end?” That is an understandable experience.
But the Pharisee
is not in that position. He does not seem to have any doubt about his own
righteousness or that God will hear him. He is overly confident in his
relationship with God, if we can even call it a relationship. Most people I
meet these days are the opposite. They do not feel confident at all in their
relationship with God, and in fact need to have their confidence built up.
However, I have
also found that many people these days are confused about what prayer is. Many
things may go by the name of prayer which really are not prayer at all, at
least from a biblical perspective.
Someone once
described a certain preacher’s prayer as “the most eloquent prayer ever offered
to a Boston audience.” Such communication is not really prayer at all because
it is directed to the wrong conversational partner.
At rock bottom,
prayer is not talking to ourselves, or a preacher talking to an audience or
even a preacher talking to a congregation. Rather, prayer is a conversation
with God.
But the Pharisee is
not really talking to God. He is merely rehearsing his own virtues out loud.
The Pharisee’s
main problem is that he compares himself to others. He says, “I am not like
other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.”
Dag Hammarskjöld,
the second Secretary-General of the United Nations, once wrote in his book, Markings,
“To be humble is not to make comparisons.”
I like that
definition. It reminds me of what Jesus says in Matthew 18:3-4,
Truly
I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter
the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the
greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
Have you ever
noticed that little children, at least before school age, don’t make
comparisons? That is the essence of their humility. But this Pharisee lacks
such humility. He is probably comparing and contrasting himself with other
people often. What a waste of time! When we spend our lives looking down
on others, we can no longer see the One who is above us all, namely,
God.
Now, prayer,
fasting, and almsgiving were the three main spiritual disciplines for every
first century Jew. This Pharisee uses one of these spiritual disciplines (prayer)
to boast about how he is doing in the other two spiritual disciplines: fasting
and almsgiving. In fact, this Pharisee boasts about how he has gone above and
beyond the call of duty in these areas.
For first century
Jews there was only one obligatory fast and that was on the Day of Atonement,
once per year. Some Jews, like this Pharisee, seemed to think they could earn
special merit before God by fasting more often. And so, it was the habit of
some to fast every Monday and every Thursday. That’s what this Pharisee did,
and he boasts about it.
Now, in Jerusalem
in the first century, Mondays and Thursdays were market days. The city would be
full of people shopping on those days. Sometimes those who fasted would whiten
their faces and wear unkempt clothing so as many people as possible would know
that they were fasting. That’s probably what this Pharisee did.
On top of that,
this Pharisee boasts about his almsgiving. According to Numbers 18:21 and
Deuteronomy 14:22 the Levites (the Israelite tribe responsible for worship in
the Temple) were to receive a tithe (10%) of all non-Levite produce. But this
Pharisee boasts that he has gone beyond that; he tithes, gives away, 10% of everything
he receives.
Now don’t get me
wrong. Tithing on your income to give to the poor or the church or both is a
wonderful thing. Though tithing is not required by the New Testament, who am I,
as a pastor, to say anything against tithing? Our stewardship committee might
not mind if I put in a good word for tithing. But that is not what this
sermon is about.
Fasting, too, can
be a wonderful thing. Prayer can be a wonderful spiritual discipline.
But, here’s the
thing… when we begin to boast about our spiritual disciplines, I believe they
lose all value and all reality.
Now, lest you
think Jesus is giving us a caricature in his portrait of this Pharisee, let me
point out that Jesus’ picture here is not atypical of the worst in first
century Pharisaism. There is a recorded prayer of a Rabbi that goes like this:
I
thank, Thee, O Lord my God, that thou hast put my part with those who sit in
the Academy, and not with those who sit at the street-corners. For I rise
early, and they rise early; I rise early to the words of the law, and they to
vain things. I labour, and they labour; I labour and receive a reward, and they
labour and receive no reward. I run, and they run; I run to the life of the
world to come and they to the pit of destruction.[2]
Furthermore, it
is on record that Rabbi Simeon ben Jocai once said, “If there are only two
righteous men in the world, I and my son are these two; if there is only one, I
am he!”
I don’t mean to
condemn all Jews by this portrait, nor did Jesus. After all, Jesus himself was
a Jew. I simply mean to point out that first century Pharisaism had its
problems in terms of legalism and pride. But these are not exclusively the
problems of first century Pharisees. There have been Pharisaical people in
every religion, including Christianity, down through the years, people who have
gotten caught up in spiritual legalism and pride.
So, as William
Barclay sums up, “The Pharisee did not really go to pray; he went to inform God
how good he was.”
The second person
in Jesus’ story is a tax collector.
It is difficult
for us to imagine today how this story would have sounded to Jesus’ first
century Jewish audience. The reason it is difficult for us to imagine is
because we don’t view the good guys and the bad guys the same way Jesus’ first
audience did. For them, the Pharisee would clearly be the good guy. He is the
most religious. He is the guy you would want your daughter to date, and
hopefully marry. He’s the one in the white hat.
The tax
collector, on the other hand, is the bad guy. He’s the one in the black hat.
Haddon Robinson explains…
Whenever
Rome wanted to tax a province, it sold the right to tax to the highest bidder.
And once a man purchased the right to tax, he was free to take anything the
traffic would bear. He usually discovered it could bear a great deal. You
couldn’t do business without doing business with a tax collector. You couldn’t
move your goods from town to town without stopping by his desk.
As
a result, extortion was built into the job; injustice was part of the trade.
So, if we were
choosing someone to fill a valued political office, let alone a position on the
board of our church, there is no doubt that we would choose the Pharisee over
the tax collector.
That’s what makes
Jesus’ story so surprising, at least to his first century audience. The guy who
Jesus’ first century audience thought was wearing the white hat ends up wearing
the black hat and vice versa.
If the Pharisee’s
vice is pride, the tax collector’s virtue in this story is humility. Most
translations of this story do not do justice, however, to just how humble the
tax collector was. A word-for-word translation of his prayer would run like
this: “O God, be merciful to me the sinner.” The tax collector did not
think of himself merely as “a” sinner but as “the” sinner par excellence.
The Apostle Paul
apparently had the same attitude. In 1 Timothy 1:12-17 he says,
I
am grateful to Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because he
judged me faithful and appointed me to his service, even though I was formerly
a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence. But I received mercy because
I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed
for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is
sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to
save sinners—of whom I am the foremost. But for that very reason I
received mercy, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display the
utmost patience, making me an example to those who would come to believe in him
for eternal life. To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only
God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.
As we have seen,
the Pharisee compared himself to other people. By contrast, the tax collector
did not do that. Rather, he was comparing his life to the standard of God, not to
the standard of other human beings.
William Barclay
tells the following story…
Once
I made a journey by train to England [from Scotland]. As we passed through the
Yorkshire moors I saw a little whitewashed cottage and it seemed to me to shine
with an almost radiant whiteness. Some days later I made the journey back to
Scotland. The snow had fallen and was lying deep all around. We came again to
the little white cottage, but this time its whiteness seemed drab and soiled
and almost grey in comparison with the virgin whiteness of the driven snow.
It
all depends what we compare ourselves with. And when we set our lives beside
the life of Jesus and beside the holiness of God, all that is left to say is,
“God be merciful to me—the sinner.”[3]
[2]
William Barclay, The Daily Bible Study Series: The Gospel of Luke,
Philadelphia: Westminster, 1975, p. 224.
[3]
Barclay, p. 225.
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