Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle C Sir 35: 12-14, 16-18; Ps 34: 2-3, 17-18, 19, 23; 2 Tm 4:6-8, 16-18; Lk 18:9-14
Once again, Jesus turns the world upside down with the Gospel parable, giving a different spin to the interpretation of who is justified and who is heard by God. The people listening to Jesus are told that God’s reaction to the tax collector and the Pharisee are different than what they would expect, and other Scripture readings reflect this as well.
The readings from Sirach and Psalm 34 echo Jewish history and law, and are a foreshadowing of today’s Gospel parable. They identify the people to whom God listens or who have God’s ear. They are the ones whom the world has forgotten or put aside: the lowly, the oppressed, the orphan, the widow. In the Gospel, it is the tax collector.
In the Gospel parable, it is not the Pharisee’s position in life that gets in the way. The Pharisee is following Jewish Law and doing what the law requires: fasting (twice a week) and paying tithes on his whole income. What gets him in trouble is his attitude. In his prayer, he compares himself to different segments of society in general and the tax collector specifically. The Pharisee’s prayer is all inward, focused on him, evidenced by the number of times he refers to himself. His prayer is all about putting the tax collector and others down and elevating himself. The Pharisee thought he had it all sown up, and yet, it was the tax collector God justified because his prayer is directed outward to God. The Pharisee needed nothing except himself; the tax collector only needed God, and God justified him.
I suspect that most of us find ourselves somewhere between the Pharisee and the tax collector: not as self-righteous as the Pharisee and not as humble as the tax collector.
Jesus is telling us we need to be more like the tax collector, that is different than the world. Today the world is all about getting ahead, from a global, national and individual perspective. It’s about competing against one another and being the winner, and raising ourselves up by putting other people down. Jesus is telling us there is no room to be comparing ourselves to others, to be putting others down and elevating ourselves if we are authentically following Christianity isn’t a rating game. We can’t put one segment of society down, thinking and acting like they are inferior to elevate ourselves. We need to be about love and acceptance. We need to be more about elevating people, meeting them where they are and journeying with them.
The readings also tell us that the just, the lowly and those who willingly serve God will be heard. Their prayer will not rest until it reaches God, and it won’t depart from God until God responds and judges justly. Sometimes it may appear that God delays responding or that he doesn’t respond at all. This may be because our expectation is that God will listen to us and immediately respond.
However, God’s expectation is that we will listen to him. Maybe God is trying to answer prayer, and we aren’t listening. Maybe it’s through you and me that God is trying to answer prayer, but the world gets in the way. Maybe we don’t hear God because your life is all about you, and my life is all about me.
The challenge for us as Christians is to more willingly follow Jesus and find ways to prevent the world from interfering with our ability to hear God and letting God answer prayer through us.
Deacon Christopher Colville serves at Church of the Redeemer, Mechanicsville.