30th Sunday 2019
Ecclesiasticus 35:12-14, 16-19; 2Tim 4:6-8, 16-18; Luke 18:9-14
Who are you, then; the tax collector or the Pharisee? “The tax collector” you will say, “I am a sinner. I don’t give myself airs. I have no illusions about myself.” Mmm... I wish I could say the same.
Sometimes, every once in a while, you can find yourself in a situation in which you are confronted with truths about yourself, of which you hadn’t been conscious. Some of these truths may be pleasant: other people may reveal, for instance, that you have helped them in ways of which you were not aware. In one of my previous parishes was a lady who would frequently express her gratitude for something which I had, allegedly, said to her in the confessional about her son. From that day to this, I have no recollection of ever saying anything about her son, even to the extent of wondering whether she was mistaking me for another priest, but she was convinced, and I can only hope that, when she died, she put in a good word about me to the Lord.
On the other hand, people or circumstances may reveal to us aspects of ourselves with which we are less comfortable, things of which we may have been blissfully unaware, things which may shock us. “O would some power the giftie gie us, to see ourselves as ithers see us” as Robert Burns wrote.
If there are less savoury aspects of our character or conduct which come to light at certain times, we can guarantee that there are other such aspects which continue to remain hidden. Purgatory will, I suspect, largely entail being faced with these, coming to terms with their existence, and having them healed by God’s searing grace.
Very often, I fear, I am prepared to admit, perhaps to my confessor, certainly to myself, those sins with which I am reasonably comfortable, while perhaps burying things which would, and should, cause greater unease. When people come to the sacrament, and make the same confession which they have been making since childhood, I sometimes struggle to help them to go deeper, to recognise the deeper-lying sinfulness of which the lies and the lost temper are merely the symptoms.
And what about the Pharisee? “Oh, he’s a right so-and-so”, you may say; “self-satisfied, smug, sanctimonious, a real hypocrite.” Excuse me, but who gave you the right to judge? That’s what’s interesting about the tax collector: he doesn’t judge. He doesn’t say “I thank you, God, that I am not like this Pharisee here.” He is genuinely concerned about his own sins, his own condition as a sinner.
Can any of us say, hand on heart, that we are actually like the tax collector in that respect? You have head me criticise people who want to change the Church into a church of the scribes and Pharisees, focused on rules, rather than on the person of Jesus Christ, on the love of God and neighbour. Do I actually have the right to say that? Is it for me to judge? No, is it heck, any more than it is the Pharisee’s right to judge the tax collector; yet how many of our conversations, particularly on church related matters, are actually a litany of criticisms?
Often, when we identify with the tax collector, we are really behaving more like the Pharisee, wearing our admission of sinfulness almost as a badge of honour, using it as a stick with which to beat the Pharisees whom we see around us, failing to recognise that this is not what the tax collector does.
So should we content ourselves with echoing the tax collector’s prayer “God, be merciful to me, a sinner”? Yes, provided we mean it sincerely, and are not using it as an excuse to avoid going deep, to evade the responsibility of unearthing and facing the reality of our sins. I think that we need that prayer in conjunction with an openness which allows God, and other people, to reveal to us what, in our own individual case, it really means.
