Oct. 23, 2022
Text: Luke 18: 9-14
“God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”
How often we say those words or ones like it when we are gathered for communal worship like we are this morning or in our private prayers. There are days when we are merely repeating words learned by rote or reading what is written on a page while our attention is elsewhere. Sometimes, ‘Lord have mercy,’ is simply used as an explanatory statement. There are other days, though, when it is an anguished cry, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner.’ When that is so, what is it we are asking for? What do we hope to receive? What is the mercy of God?
In the parable Margaret read to us this morning, Jesus gives us 2 characters, caricatures really, who are opposites of each other. There is the good guy and the bad guy. (And we should really be aware that the good guy and the bad guy, they are us.)
For those who first heard Jesus tell this parable the character of the tax collector brought to mind the evil of the Roman occupation and all the suffering that entailed. It brought to mind those who collaborated and profited with the oppressors, tax collectors being among them. The tax collector is a bad guy.
The Pharisee? Think of those who take care of their families, are good neighbors, support important civic institutions like the local synagogue and the temple, and give generously to help support the homeless, widows, and orphans. I mean, just look at that list of all the stuff he does. He is a good guy.
Of course, since this is a parable and Jesus is telling it, we should expect our expectations to be upended. Even without the spoiler the gospel writer gives us before recounting the story, we should know things are not going to turn out quite as we would have them. Which is what happens. We are told the bad guy is the one in God’s good graces, not the good guy. God have mercy!
You see, the Pharisee in the story has used his righteous way of living to build for himself a wall he believes will keep him safe from the evils so clearly polluting the life of the tax collector. The tax-collector, on the other hand, is someone whose protective walls have crumbled away and who knows, and can admit, he is a participant in a fallen world.
When we pray the general confession, particularly the form we are using at 10am this morning that has nestled right in the middle a sentence, “We repent of the evil that enslaves us, the evil we have done, and the evil done on our behalf,” and we are paying attention mean the words we say, we are speaking from our inner tax collector. And that, Jesus says, is a place where God, and the mercy of God can meet us.
Sometimes when I ask for mercy what I am really asking for is to forget, to make the uncomfortable feelings go away. But that is not mercy, that is amnesia. Amnesia leaves us stuck in the same place we have always been in which is no mercy at all. To repent is to ask for us to change.
The Rev. Dr. Samuel Wells, of St. Martin in the Fields, London, says mercy comes after judgement. Judgement gives a power that can be used in 2 ways. You can use the power to condemn, to humiliate, to destroy. Or you can use that power to build up, to give a 2nd chance, to be an agent of healing and growth… Mercy is the ability to use the power of judgement and make it a source of healing. *
God, in God’s mercy, can use our judgements for our healing and growth.
Of course God can do as God chooses but I think God usually waits to bring about in us some inner healing and growth until we ask. The pharisee judges himself righteous. No room for healing or growth there. He says to God. “I’m fine so have no need of you.” The tax collector sees the evil around him, knows he is part of it, and asks for help.
The ‘World,’ as the apostle Paul called it, hasn’t changed much since Jesus told the parable. Power still has power. Evil is still present. Most people just do the best they can to get by even when that means choosing between necessary evils now and then. We all know, or maybe have been, one of those people who knowingly over look practices and behaviors where they work because, while they are are not happy about colluding in what is going on, they need the job to feed their families.
That could very well be true for the tax collector in the parable.
There was and is ‘the evil that enslaves us, the evil we have done, the evil done on our behalf.’
Several years ago (the last time there was a super bowl game in the Bay Area) I attended a talk sponsored by a local church in SSF given by a member of the Bay Area anti-trafficking coalition. There were public service announcements at the time that, along with fun and celebration, the game would also bring an increase of a variety of illegal activities. Along the lines of ‘see something, say something,’ the local pastor’s association thought maybe we ought to learn a little bit of what to look for, what to be aware of in our neighborhoods. The speaker gave us a few suggestions and then went on to broaden our minds.
It is not just bad things ‘they’ are doing to other people that we, the good people, standing off over in our little worlds, need to be aware of so we can be helpful. There is evil being done that directly impacts and benefits all us all the time, he told us. If we were truly interested in combating the evils of human trafficking – well!
He told us the US Department of Labor and US Department of State produce lists of items from around the world whose production often involves forced labor and/or child labor. You can look online. The lists are very long. He reminded us that for individuals it can be almost impossible to disentangle most of what we purchase from human trafficking so it is important as a society to support the laws and policies that work to outlaw child labor and forced labor around the world.
Then he said, ‘chocolate and coffee.’ Two commodities with pathways from field to the ultimate consumer are relatively simple and two commodities that rely heavily on forced labor unless labeled Fair Trade. He suggested that as individuals a good place to start repenting of the evil done on our behalf would be to start with one or both of those products. Rather than consider what they cost us to buy, instead begin choosing by considering the cost others have already paid paid that we might enjoy them.
Fair Trade coffee. Well, I thought, I could buy only fair trade coffee. It is not much but it is a start and it’s easy. And so I did, for a while. But then the store where I shopped stopped carrying it so I had to make special trips to other stores so I got a little lazy and then I moved and there was a pandemic and I got lazier still.
Writing this sermon I remembered that talk and the little thing I committed to that night at Hillside Church of God and wondered how often my morning cup of coffee has been provided, unnoticed by me, by the hands of slave laborers.
God have mercy on me, a sinner.
Help me to transform my habits that I might do a little less evil in your sight.
The systems of evil that surround and ensnare us are thick and insidious. Only God knows why they are so much a part of this beautiful creation. It is tempting to want to put up our hands and say, ‘it is not my fault. I have no part in this. Just leave me alone.’
Richard Rohr has written:
We are all guilty with one another’s sin and not just our own.
We are all good with one another’s goodness and not just our own.
My life is not just about ‘me.’**
When we truly pray for God’s mercy we are asking that, in some mysterious way, God re-create us so that the goodness of the world might increase and the sinfulness of the world might decrease. We are asking that we might join and remain in the long struggle healing of the world.
If, in our impatience, we wonder why in God’s mercy is the healing of the world taking so long, we might want to wonder how often do we truly ask?
God have mercy on me, a sinner!
Citations
* St Martin-in-the-Fields. “Sam Wells on the Quality of Mercy.” Online video clip. YouTube. Autumn 2019. Web. 19October2022.
** Rohr, The World, the Flesh, and the Devil, Center for Action and Contemplation, 2019, p. 9
