Foothills Congregational Church The Rev. Matthew Broadbent

United Church of Christ Reformation Sunday

461 Orange Ave., Los Altos 94022 October 28, 2007

Heartfelt Prayers

Luke 18:9-14

I went to the Pharisee Ball and what did I see but a long line of robed and beribboned men striding down the center aisle through the sanctuary. Actually it was an ecumenical Thanksgiving service in the early 1970’s in Concord, Massachusetts, in a beautiful, Georgian-colonial church, with tall clear glass windows with arched sunburst shades at the top, a central tear-drop pulpit with a tiny communion table beneath that stood in for an altar, and a brass cross that hung above it like an apostrophe declaring a humble possessiveness of place.

After the clergy were seated the Right Reverend Episcopal Priest knelt before the tiny altar, lifting his arms to the heavens and invoked God’s presence through the time honored words of the Book of Common Prayer, 1789: O God, our Refuge and strength, who art the author of all godliness;

Be ready, we beseech thee, to hear the devout prayers of thy Church;

and grant that those things which we ask faithfully

we may obtain effectually; through Jesus Christ, Our Lord. Amen.

And then the Rev. Dr. Dana Greeley, immediate Past president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, and scion of the Boston Greeleys, rose to the high pulpit, and looking down upon the gathered congregation prayed that God’s grace may descend upon us like a great eagle swooping down to protect and lift God’s people. It was magnificent.

The local Irish Catholic parish priest read the scripture with a nasal brogue, and then my mentor, the Senior Minister, of the Trinitarian Congregational Church (to distinguish it from the First Parish Unitarian Church across the mill dam) who everyone knew by his nickname, “Tuck,” got up to welcome people before delivering the sermon. It was in the best tradition of our “I’m just one of you folk” attitudes. It is like saying, as we do every Sunday: Whoever you are and wherever you are on life’s journey you are welcome here.

I remember sitting in the third pew, behind the dignitaries, observing that for the best of reasons the Pharisees had dressed up and showed off their particular piety, and it was, actually kind of funny.

Reading our scripture this morning has brought back this memory. We spend a lot of time and energy dressing up our bodies and our attitudes to make ourselves acceptable to God without ever asking what God finds acceptable. You remember the question put forward by the prophet Micah: What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? There is nothing in that tri-part response about liturgy, vestments, or sacraments. Jesus, following in this prophetic tradition asks the same question. What does God require – find acceptable – in your faith and your behavior?

The story goes that two people went up to the temple to pray. One a pious, devout, religious person, a Pharisee, who prayed: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people – extortioners, murderers, adulterers – or even like that tax collector over there. I fast. I pray. I tithe all I have.”

The tax collector hung back and never raised his eyes. He beat on his breast crying, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

We have heard this parable for many years and we are already preconditioned to dislike the Pharisee because we know the Pharisees are presented as the enemies of Jesus. We also know that this Pharisee is portrayed as having the sin of pridefulness in his heart, and we don’t like people who think they are better than we are.

But, be careful what you think you are hearing and seeing in this story. This is a parable of reversals, of values turned upside down, where the exalted are humbled and the humble are exalted.

One thing we have to wrap our minds around is that the Pharisee is the good guy in the context of this story and he is a lot more like you and me than the tax collector. The Pharisees were trying to renew and reform the religious community by living a righteous life, going regularly to worship, and carefully studying the Bible; by tithing on all their income.

What’s not to like, especially during the Stewardship season when we could use your tithe? Isn’t that what it means to be religious - to live the good life and make the good donation? Well, you know, Jesus is always messing with our minds, so let’s read the parable again.

Two people were in church on Sunday. One, a lifetime member of the church, frequent teacher of the Bible Study and member-emeritus of the Diaconate, who prayed: “God, I thank you that my parents brought me up in the church, taught me the Bible as a youth (I have believed every word of it). I thank you that my parents planted in my heart a love of your church and a strong commitment to your will. I give 10 percent of all I have to the church, and that’s not after-tax money, but right off the top. I volunteer once a month with Habitat for Humanity, and I tutor underprivileged children in an inner city school. I am grateful that I am blessed and not like other people, especially that fellow in back” (I wonder why he showed up in my church?)

The other fellow was seated in the back pew, close to the exit, with his head down, trying to be anonymous. He prayed: “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” You see, when his liquor store went bust after the police found he had been selling to minors without checking ID’s, and after his marriage dissolved just before that unfortunate scrape with the law, he started coming to church. Thus far he hadn’t joined the church; no one had asked him. He didn’t exactly know why he kept coming back. He was lousy at prayer, didn’t know which words to say and wondered if he was getting through. But he was broken and in need of healing.

These two persons went home after church. Frankly, the Bible-believing Christian, member of the Board, didn’t get much out of the service. Something was missing. Nothing touched his heart. Guess the preacher wasn’t “on” that day. Oh well, maybe next week it will be better.

The other one stayed in his pew long after the benediction, crying, overcome with emotion – joy, or grief, he didn’t know which. He couldn’t explain what had happened to him during that hour. The preacher was long-winded and confusing, the choir was off-key, the liturgist stumbled over names in the scripture passage, the sound system kept squealing, and he was embarrassed when the offering plate was passed around because he only had a twenty dollar bill and he needed it for lunch that day so he didn’t put anything in the plate. But despite it all he came to believe “God loves me.” Despite it all, “despite all my failings and my rejection, God loves me.”

Two men came to worship that day. One came to get something for himself even though he was already full of himself. The other came empty. One went home unsatisfied because the service did not live up to his standards. The other went home filled with blessing because he was lifted by God’s standard.

We have often listened to this parable of Jesus as a lesson in humility. Sort of an example story: Learn a lesson from this crook, the tax collector, go home and be humble like him. Humility is a good thing, but there is a problem if we simply look at this as an exhortation to humility, because we then go home thanking God we are not like the Pharisee. We spend all week trying to figure out how to act humble. Have you ever tried to be humble? You can’t do it. When it comes to humility, you are or you aren’t, you can’t fake it, though sometimes we can be fooled by appearances.

My friend Don told an old story at last week’s retreat of the pastor who, in a fit of religious passion, rushed in before the altar, fell to his knees, and starting beating his chest, crying, “I have sinned! I am unworthy! I am unworthy!” The head Deacon happened to be in the church that day and impressed by this example of religious piety, joined his pastor on his knees, calling out, “I have sinned! I am unworthy! I am unworthy!”

The custodian watching from the hallway couldn’t restrain himself either. He joined the other two on his knees, crying out, “I have sinned! I am unworthy! I am unworthy!”

At which point the pastor leaned over and nudged the deacon with his elbow, and sneered, “Look who thinks he’s unworthy.”

You can fool others by pretending to be humble but you cannot fool God. True humility is letting go of our self as the center of our worship. This is easy to say, but hard to do because our self is our greatest concern.

Audrey West writes that “Congregational culture exerts pressure to be like the Pharisee. In discussions about successful ministries, statistical measures are cited: weekly attendance is up, new programs are in place, and we have added a worship service. These are fine things, our pharisaic friend from the parable would fit right in skewing the numbers even higher. Many of us would love to see quantifiable evidence that congregants take seriously the call to discipleship and prayer… It is tempting to put our faith in the myths of the dominant culture: bigger is better; more is superior; numbers tell the whole story of personal value and deep faith.”

We have a consumptive culture. God give us what we want, we’ve been good, we’ve been righteous, and everybody wants to be like us: successful, rich, powerful. So what if the price is constant vigilance and perpetual war over cultural values. The price is worth it – isn’t it?

I heard one commentator speak recently about the War on Terror as a policy of perpetual war, a war on an idea or a value that is not necessarily lodged in a government or nation, they just happen to get in the way. “If this is a war on terror,” the speaker asked, “then where is the real battlefield?” He suggested that the real battlefield is in the cafés of Cairo where young boys, 14 and 15 years of age, see no future for themselves, no jobs and little cultural pride, under the menacing shadow of American dominance in Mideast policy, who sign up to be trained to be

suicide bombers. Better to die a hero’s death than to be condemned to a living hell. This is where the battle is really taking place and we are no where in sight.

The battle is always for the hearts, minds and souls of people. Or, is it really us against the world? Is this our salvation to kill every insurgent, every jihadist? If so, God have mercy on us, sinners.

According to Family Systems theory, change occurs in relationships when all the members of the family come to accept their part of the problem. Reconciliation begins with honesty, with confession, with the recognition that except for the grace of God we are all damned. This is a good description of diplomacy, and cultural dialogue. It used to be that war was considered the last act of diplomacy, now it has become the first or second act. I think we should revisit traditional values – beginning with humility.

St. Bernard of Clairvaux was asked once to list the four cardinal virtues. He replied: “Humility, humility, humility, and humility.” What the old saint was getting at was that the common ground of community is our shared sense of flawed-ness. I think Jesus was pointing out that the distance between the righteous Deacon and the sinner in the back pew is about 40 feet.

The truth is we are all a lot closer to the sinner in the back pew than we think. Maybe that’s why so many of you take up those seats in the back when you first come in rather than to those who sit up here at the deacon’s bench. We don’t like calling ourselves sinners in this church, but we are, every one of us here. Sin is anything which separates you from God and God’s purposes, since it is no less than a “dreadful estrangement from God” (Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, Abingdon, p. 361). In Jesus’ parable the pious person is farther from God than he thinks he is as opposed to the sinner who knows he is.

The good news is that God loves the sinner. God loves us as we are and is willing to work with our imperfections, even our imperfect national priorities. First, we have to be willing to be honest about whom we are, then to say “yes” to God’s mercy, and respond with works of gratitude and compassion. As another great saint, Therese of Lisieux, the French Carmelite nun, said, “Genuine holiness is precisely a matter of enduring our own imperfection patiently.” And when our own imperfect lives are grounded in the loving ways of God’s reign, then we will be thankful and grateful for God’s gifts of grace and salvation.