“God, Be Mercy”
“God, Be Mercy”
Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, October 23, 2022
Joel 2:23-32 2 Timothy 4:6-8 Luke 18:9-14
First Presbyterian Church of Sandpoint, Idaho
Pastor Andy Kennaly
As Mickey read the passage from Joel about the LORD your God repaying for “the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent against you,” flashes of last summer went through my mind. I thought of the black current bush planted at Honey Frame Place, which is the name of our 2-acre property. This summer there were lots of grasshoppers and they ate most of the leaves from that plant, among others.
On a grand scale of locusts eating the crops; they are like a swarm of destruction. That Joel mentions God sent them is an indicator of the magic structure of early religion. Many people tried to keep the gods appeased and lived in fear of not doing enough to quell judgment. The Hebrew Scriptures sometimes reflect that type of context, except God tries to take away those fears, simply by being God.
“You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I, the LORD, am your God and there is no other. And my people shall never again be put to shame.” Honor, shame: this is a huge value system that is still at work today in many cultures. One can either get caught up in the dynamics of the honor/shame system, or come to view it as partially helpful yet missing the mark in other ways.
In Luke’s gospel, the honor of the Pharisees is shown, even as the shame of the tax collector is revealed. Both of those dynamics are normal in that context – people revered the Pharisees as being very religious, devout, and spotless in their observing of the religious law. They were held in high esteem, viewed as role models, and yet their quality is possibly out of touch for most folks, like this tax collector when he realizes his righteousness is lacking.
Tax collectors were notorious as those whose typical practice was to charge people for their taxes as an agent of the Empire, of the State, but to add on more than was required, then skim off the top and only give Rome what was needed. Tax collectors were despised because they were friendly with the occupiers, and they cheated people. They were definitely not Pharisees.
Notice the proximity, the physical set up or location of this scene. Luke describes it by mentioning, “The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus.” Standing by himself. The one deemed as righteous, as honored, could stand on his own feet, by himself, without any support. Contrast this with the other guy: “But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me.’” This is the posture of someone who is ashamed. Shamed. Standing far off, not even looking up. The honor of righteousness, the shame of corruption.
But there are two other words that can describe those dynamics. One is pride. The Pharisee was proud. His pride was what had him “standing by himself.” In other words, he assumed he was separate, and he lists out various groups of people he looked down on, that he was glad he wasn’t like. But the tax collector, beating his breast, this is the region of the heart, and he’s looking down, bowed with that other word, humility. He is humbled by his own actions, by practices that have used people for his own gain and bought into political realities that he may not have liked but he went along with them. He feels separate, but this doesn’t define his reality.
“God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” I’ve defined sin before as the illusion of separation. He’s acknowledging this illusion, and in that heart space, his pride is no longer in control. He cries to God for mercy, but as this gets played out in the lives of mystics and saints, we learn that God is Mercy. Mercy is less something God does, and more a quality God is.
Both of them lived in fear. The Pharisee overdoes it, fasting twice a week, tithing all his income. These may be required by written religious codes, but they are external measurements and don’t require any sort of change of heart. They actually demand little of us in terms of authentic transformation, a turning in the heart toward the Divine indwelling Presence. The tax collector is standing far off, perhaps fearful of what the shame may mean of not living up to standards of righteousness. Yet Jesus says he’s the one who went “down to his home justified.”
Even that points to theophany, an encounter with the Divine on a mountain. He’s on the temple mount, in prayer, and receives justification. This means that everything is lined up in proper reference. It doesn’t say all the bad thing went away and he only had good things, but somehow everything aligned in ways that worked out. Humility is the key, heart space is large enough to hold what a constricted, unhealthy ego in the mind space cannot.
The shock value is missing for us. Most people Jesus spoke to would hear this story and be shocked that the Pharisee wasn’t the exalted, righteous one in the end. That a tax collector would be lifted up is beyond comprehension, so Jesus is really turning thing over here in this story. But it’s an echo to the Hebrew Scripture’s promise that God will be God and never let the people go, and they don’t have to live in the cycles of honor/shame, or in grip of fear.
The tax collector took himself as he was, and in that he found justification, which is another way of saying forgiveness, healing, wholeness, or new life. Many people throughout Christian history have emulated this man beating his breast and claiming his sinfulness in hopes of receiving mercy. Asceticism is a form of austerity and many Christian ascetics add physical suffering to their spiritual disciplines. Like medieval floggers whipping themselves, or intense evangelicals nailing themselves to crosses, or even St. Kevin in Ireland around the year 600.
One of the places we visited on the Sabbatical in 2017 was Glendalough, which is now a National Park with a couple of small lakes surrounded by hillsides. St. Kevin lived there, but as an ascetic he chose to live in a cave on the north side of the hill just above the water because that was the harshest climate, shaded and cold most of the year. He would stand out in the cold water of the lake for hours in prayer, holding so still that legend has it that a blackbird made a nest in his outstretched hand, laid eggs, and reared her young as the patient saint held still.
But as Thomas Merton said, “Asceticism is utterly useless if it turns us into freaks. The cornerstone of all asceticism is humility, and Christian humility is first of all a matter of supernatural common sense. It teaches us to take ourselves as we are, instead of pretending (as pride would have us imagine) that we are something better than we are. If we really know ourselves we quietly take our proper place in the order designed by God. And so supernatural humility adds much to our human dignity by integrating us in the society of other [people] and placing us in our right relation to them and to God. Pride makes us artificial, and humility makes us real.”
As we see this morning, Jesus seems to be pointing out the prideful, artificiality of the Pharisee, and the humble realness of the tax collector. One involves arrogance and separation and the other sincerity and a desire for connection.
Merton wrote in his book, No Man Is An Island, that “it is supreme humility to see that ordinary life, embraced with perfect faith, can be more saintly and more supernatural than a spectacular ascetical career. Such humility dares to be ordinary, and that is something beyond the reach of our spiritual pride. Pride always longs to be unusual. Humility not so. Humility finds all its peace in hope, knowing that Christ must come again to elevate and transfigure ordinary things and fill them with His glory.” (http://edgeofenclosure.org/proper25c.html, Suzanne Guthrie, online resource At the Edge of the Enclosure, quoting Thomas Merton).
As we go into the week ahead, try a prayer practice to enter more deeply into humility. Go on a walk, and with each step, say what’s known as “The Jesus Prayer.” The Jesus Prayer is very similar to what the tax collector says, “Lord Jesus, Son of the Living God, Have mercy on me, a miserable sinner.” But this prayer, though traditional, is misguided. We filter it through the Doctrine of Original Sin, which has done tremendous damage over the centuries. We are not miserable sinners in a doctrinal way, but sin can make us miserable and we need healed from sin’s effects.
Plus, that prayer is pretty long for walking, so shorten it, each step one aspect. Lord, Jesus, Have, Mercy, On, Me. Or keep going shorter, Lord, Have, Mercy, On, Me. Or shorter, Lord, Mercy, Lord, Mercy, for this is more accurate. Mercy is not something the Lord does, Mercy is who the Lord is. We don’t need to mention me because it’s implied. Through a humble stance, much is implied, and LORD, Mercy, is about being, and being involves inherent goodness, original blessing, and relational connections with God and others. Go take a hike, better yet, a spiritual walk, a pilgrimage, a saunter that is slow enough to notice and claim Mercy with every step. And yes, I too, will practice what I preach. Thanks be to God, Amen.