En el nombre de Dios: creador, redentor, y santificador… In the name of God, Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. Amen.
I share with you today from Mechthild of Magdeburg, a medieval mystic known for her poems, songs, and writings on spiritual matters. She was a remarkable Christian whose wisdom continues to us today. One of Mechthild’s poems speaks directly to Jesus’ parable in our Gospel story:
But now the more deeply I sink
The more sweetly I drink
Of Thee!
It’s a concept that is counter-intuitive. We don’t like to sink because it means letting go of our own efforts. It’s more natural for us to fight against sinking, kick against the current, and struggle to keep our heads above water. But Mechthild presents such a beautiful image of the truth of our lives as Christians. Drowning, as in the waters of Baptism, means letting go of self and relying totally on God for our life, our breath, our very survival.
In today’s Gospel story, the Pharisee assumes that God will be pleased by his good behavior, so he reminds God that he fasts, prays, and tithes, that he doesn’t steal, cheat on his wife, or exploit his own kind for profit. He’s not like those other people, including that tax collector over there, and for that, he’s thankful.
There is nothing wrong with being thankful in prayer, but where the Pharisee goes wrong is in his self-centered arrogance. His prayer reveals to us that he is not in right relationship with God because his attention is focused on himself, his own efforts, and that has led him astray.
As Mechthild once said: “When I … cherish some sourness in my heart… my soul becomes so dark… that I must… humbly make confession… Then only does grace come again to my soul…” The Pharisee’s prayer shows that arrogance has darkened his heart and soured the purity of his soul.
The tax collector, on the other hand, knows that his life isn’t anything to brag about, so he makes a humble confession instead, praying simply: God, be merciful to me a sinner. And this is the prayer that pleases God because this is the heart that presents itself humbly and is therefore justified – restored to a new and right relationship with God.
To be pure of heart is to be completely in the will of God, or as Jesus often said it, dead to self. The pure of heart will long for unity and work for reconciliation. The pure of heart will not stand alone in their churches reveling in their closeness to God, as the Pharisee does. They will be out there among the sinners, the suffering, and the scorned, embodying God’s love and giving generously from their gifts so that all they meet will know that they matter, and that they are beloved of God.
But we don’t want to be too hard on the Pharisee. He was faithful, and he was praying. And if we’re not careful, we might find ourselves silently giving thanks to God that we are not like the Pharisee… but we are. Everyone is …at least sometimes. Like the Pharisee, we often get distracted by our scorekeeping - measuring our value by the good things we do, the success of our efforts - rather than by the purity of our hearts, by our willingness to trust that God has a loving plan for us, and for the whole world.
Notice that in this gospel, Jesus doesn’t tell us whether or not the tax collector ever repented. That’s because a) God’s love isn’t dependent upon our behavior, and b) that isn’t the point of this story. The point is that we don’t earn God’s grace by doing good things. It comes as a gift from God.
Jesus is teaching us to love even when the one who sins, seems to have no remorse, no repentance. Anyone who has ever loved an addict knows what this is like.
Love has nothing to do with behavior, especially if we approach the word “love” in the ancient Jewish way: love as loyalty to relationship. The prophets show us a God who stands by us even when we sin. In the reading from the prophet Joel, the people of Israel have broken the covenant so habitually that they don’t even know how to be in relationship with God anymore.
The prophet calls upon them to look around and see the love of God manifested in real ways: abundant rain, threshing floors overflowing with grain, vats overflowing with wine. Joel gives voice to God’s promise of presence and power within us saying, “I will pour out my spirit on all flesh,” sons and daughters, old and young, the greatest and the least in society. God will pour out God’s spirit on ALL people.
Be forewarned… being in right relationship with God, one another, and creation often puts us at odds with the world, as Paul’s letter to Timothy shows us. Being a voice for right relationship can be lonely, even punishing. Living in right relationship with God and God’s creation may place us in a contentious relationship with those who, by their worldly power and self-centered perspective, have a different plan, one outside of God’s plan of redeeming love.
In his life, Jesus showed us the path of the pure and humble of heart. We remember that we are made acceptable through him… not by our right behavior, or even by right belief. We are made acceptable through Jesus Christ, the Savior and Redeemer of the world.
Jesus made clear that those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. To be exalted is to be lifted up - as Jesus was on the cross. We are called to do with our lives as Jesus did with his: to humble ourselves, and trust God with all we are, all we need, and all we should do.
That’s why each Sunday, as we gather for Holy Eucharist, we confess our sins against God and our neighbor. We intentionally remind ourselves that we sin, that we disrupt our relationships with God, one another, and even ourselves. Our confession is corporate, said together, because we sin not just as individuals, but also as a people.
But we also remember how God deals with us – wondrously - bringing us out of error into truth, out of sin into righteousness, and out of death into life… We hear over and over again the amazing truth that we have been sanctified by the Holy Spirit of God, freed from the power of sin, and set apart for a holy purpose.
That holy purpose may not be what we think because it isn’t anything that we do by our own efforts. Paul describes this holy purpose in his second letter to Timothy. In that letter, Paul is dying. He has been deserted by his friends, whom he has forgiven, and he says: …the Lord stood by me and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all… might hear it.
And there it is. Like Paul, our purpose is to be instruments God can use to proclaim the message through our words and our actions so that all might hear it. We can only do this by humbling ourselves in prayer and opening our hearts to let God strengthen us, then send us, showing us when, with whom , and how to serve in Jesus’ name.
Right now, I am asking all of us, in the name of Jesus, to let go of anything that has soured the purity of our hearts and disrupted our right relationships with God and one another. I’m asking us to surrender our hearts to God, by sinking deeply into this Eucharist, into the waters of our Baptism; sweetly drinking from the cup of salvation we share. Let us release our judgments, our fears, and our pride, and rely totally on God for everything – as individuals and as a people.
Finally, let us offer pure and humble hearts to God in our prayers today, so that we can receive God’s grace and become the ones through whom the Good News is faithfully proclaimed by our words and our lives.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment