Where might the Pharisee have started differently in his prayer?
It seemed like a good start: “Thank you, God.” Nothing wrong with a little gratitude. Nothing wrong with being thankful for the blessings in your life. But when his opening line continued, it goes horribly south, doesn’t it. “Thank you, God, that I am not like the rest of humanity…” Maybe it was true that he wasn’t like the rest of humanity – that he was not greedy, not dishonest, not adulterous. Good for him. But it is already too late for him in his prayer. It is too late because he began his prayer with the comparison game. Thank you that I am not like….
So much goes wrong when we start there, doesn’t it? Already, there is going to be a winner and a loser. I am like some people. I am not like others. And with that separation, with that making of distinctions, I have already started the judgment game. Though we might not finish the sentence, the implied result is this: “Thank you that I am not like them because they are bad. And because I am not like them, then I can justify bullying. I can justify feeling superior. I can justify dismissing them from my consideration, from my compassion, from my outreach.” I have listened to too many college students who had been devastated by the judgments of others who started with the premise of the Pharisee’s prayer. Who started with that the presumption that who they were and how they thought and what they behaved was the gold standard for living. That attitude is devastating, for the victim and the victimizer.
And I wonder, if among the many reasons that Jesus tells this story, it is because he wants us to be able to hear rightly, to discern what is ALWAYS the response from God to that statement: Oh, but you are. You are. You are like the rest of humanity. That is exactly how I created you.
The Jesus that I have come to know in the reading of the gospels always wants us to know that we are together in this journey called life. Not better, not worse, but, like the tax collector, all standing in need of mercy, all standing in need of grace. It’s much easier to vilify others if we first somehow dehumanize, denigrate or demonize them. Thank you God, that I am not like the rest of humanity, we want to pray. But God says again and again: “You are. You are.”
You are brothers and sisters all. A mixture of strength and grace and beauty with judgment and weakness and sinfulness. And, YOU all are exactly whom I came to redeem. ALL of you. Not just the most righteous Pharisee nor the most wicked tax collector. ALL of you stand in need of the mercy that Jesus came to give.
It is so easy to fall into the trap of the Pharisee, to start that judgment game; to let the words that come out of our mouths tear people down instead of build them up.
AND…Nowhere will that be played out more in the public sphere in the next months than in the Impeachment process that we are all witnessing. If we haven’t been already, we are about to be bombarded as the process unfolds, with people ON BOTH SIDES, in the name of all that is good and holy and right saying the equivalent of the Pharisee’s prayer: Thank God that I am not like those Impeachment Hungry Democrats, those Make America Great Republicans. And those will be the kind phrases. It will go downhill from there.
So it strikes me that in the face of what has been and will be a daily bombardment of people vilifying the other side in the public sphere, it is time for us to double down on two things:
1) Our prayer for our country. These are I think, unseen days for the U.S. Partisan rancor, accusations and assumptions about motives – it will be so easy to join the in the melee, adding more voices “thankful that I am not like the rest of humanity…” Instead, every time you watch a news cast, read an article about this process we are embroiled in, end with a prayer. An our Father, a Hail Mary, a Glory Be – pray we may not forget how much we belong to each other.
2) And because it is so difficult not to be affected by that relentless vilification in our political sphere, we need to watch the way it will creep into our own vocabulary, our own way of interacting with those we love. Double down on the way we address one another and ask for the prudence to avoid the mistake of the Pharisee, who started from a place of judgment, of difference rather than togetherness.
You see, the Pharisee was so close in his prayer. He just had to leave one word out – “Not”. And then it becomes a prayer to build the kingdom upon. Thank you God, that I am like the rest of humanity, in need of mercy, love and grace. It is me, it is “we”, you came to save.