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For families this week

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Hespeler, 23 October 2022 © Scott McAndless
Joel 2:23-32, Psalm 65, 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18, Luke 18:9-14 (click to read)

Jesus once told a parable about two men who went to the temple to pray, a Pharisee and a tax collector. And anyone who has ever heard that parable has adopted an automatic dislike for the Pharisee. The thing about the prayer of the Pharisee that really gets to us is that at least half of it is not really a prayer. It is simply a man who is talking himself up. “I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.”

We all know that anyone who, half the time, can only talk about themselves and what wonderful things they do is absolutely insufferable. That’s the kind of person you avoid at a cocktail party. So I’m pretty sure that, when he included this in the man’s prayer, Jesus was indicating that we are not supposed to like this guy. And, of course, he also lets us know that God is really not all that much interested in listening to him either because the end of the parable implies that God was not impressed with his prayer.

The Actual Prayer

But all of that part where he’s talking about himself, is not really what you would call a prayer, not any more than a situation where someone is just talking about themselves is what you would call a conversation. No, the actual prayerful content comes before that. It is a prayer of thanksgiving, which is normally seen as a really good thing, right? But here is that actual prayer of thanksgiving: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people.” And then he goes on to list all of the objectionable kinds of people that he is not like.

And that is the prayer I would like to focus on today. In telling this parable, Jesus gives us all the signs and indications that we are not supposed to like this guy or what he prays. Most of us wouldn’t really think of that as an appropriate prayer. But I’ll tell you something – it is a prayer that I hear all the time.

The Fundamental Prayer of our Time

Oh, people don’t pray it in so many words, but if you listen to what they are saying, you can often find that prayer in the background of it. In fact, when I think of it, I would say that that Pharisee’s prayer is the fundamental prayer of our time and perhaps of any time. When you know what you are listening for, you hear it everywhere. And, as Jesus strongly suggested in this parable, it is not a very helpful prayer.

For example, one of the major crises we are seeing in our society right at this moment is a housing crisis. More people do not have adequate shelter in our society today than we have seen in a very long time. And it is especially disturbing because it has become so visible. Major cities all across this country, including our own, of course, have large homeless encampments, many right out where everyone can see them.

Talking about People without Shelter

As a result, the subject of this crisis tends to come up a lot. People are talking about it over coffee or beer. And you know what I hear people saying? I hear people saying, “Oh, that’s just people who don’t want to work.” I hear people saying, “People live in encampments like that because they choose to.”

And do you know what people who talk like that are really saying? It is a prayer. They are saying, “God, I thank you that I am not like those other people.” Because, when people look at those who do not have adequate shelter, that is all they see because that is all they are looking for. They only see how such people are unlike them. And so long as that is all they see, that makes them feel very safe because it makes them feel like they will not find themselves in the same situation. So, a person looks at themselves and says, “Well, I’ve always been willing to work, and I don’t want to end up homeless, so obviously such an outcome will never befall me.” Or, in other words, “God, I thank you that I am not like them.”

The Overdose Crisis

Of course, the housing crisis is only one of the areas where we react like that. There is an overdose crisis that has been plaguing our cities for about ten years now. This has led to thousands of deaths and near deaths from fentanyl and carfentanyl, pain medications of extraordinary potency. So that is also a topic that often comes up for discussion and I can also tell you what kind of comments you will hear when it comes up. Folks talk about how some people just don’t have any control these days, how people of a certain ethnic group or age group are only interested in indulging themselves and that’s why they get hooked on these drugs.

And people will especially talk about how they never got hooked on tobacco or alcohol or any illicit substance. Or, if they ever were, they’ll talk about how they got off them through their own sheer willpower. And do you know what they are saying when they say such things? That’s right, they are praying, “God, I thank you that I am not like those other people.” They are only interested in how such people are unlike them and cannot see any similarities because they do not look for them.

It’s Just Not True

Here’s what I find particularly objectionable about that prayer. (I suspect that Jesus may have had the same problem with it.) When we pray like that, we are being thankful for something that is simply not true. The people who struggle, whether it be with drug addiction or lack of shelter, whether it be of unemployment or broken relationships or any number of other issues that are plaguing our society today, they are always much more like us than we want to see and so we don’t see it. We don’t see it because we don’t look for it.

Now, looking at the crisis in shelter, I would not say that it is never true that people end up in such a situation because they have a problem with employment. Nor would I suggest that there aren’t some people in shelters or encampments because they have, in some sense, chosen to be there. But I will push us all to consider that the problem is definitely much more complex than that.

More Complicated

Just ask, for example, somebody who is complaining that unhoused people just don’t want to work whether they would hire somebody who had no fixed address and no reliable transportation to get to work. I suspect the answer to that question would be no. So it’s got to be more complex than just a simple desire not to work.

And if some people choose to be unhoused, which some may do, do we ask what other option they might have had? What if the only other option is to be in a relationship where they are abused? What if they know that they are susceptible to addiction and the only living situation available to them means that they will be constantly exposed to drugs? Can you not see where it might be a better choice to be unhoused when those kinds of things are your only other options?

But most of all, any of us who observe the housing crisis from afar likely got into the housing market at a very different time than what people are dealing with today. The prices we were able to pay and the equity that we were able to build up have made us feel much more secure, but do we really think that if we did not have those advantages or if we were just starting out today with housing prices as they are that we would end up all that differently?

Who Gets Addicted?

And when it comes to addiction, you would absolutely be amazed to see the statistics about who got caught up in the latest overdose crisis. They are not marginalized people in the majority. The statistics indicate that that crisis cut across every demographic of society equally – wealth, race, age and gender. They are just like you, and they are just like me. And, in many cases, the addiction crisis is also how many people who are just like you ended up without shelter because the two crises are connected.

No, when we look at it all openly and honestly, we do have to come to terms with the simple truth that we may not be as unlike the people who struggle with these things as we thought. But of course, we cling to the idea that they aren’t like us because the alternative, frankly, is terrifying. But that makes the prayer, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people,” not just a bad prayer but a delusional one.

What Should we Pray?

But that leaves us with the question: what should we then pray? The realities of this life being what they are, the hard truth is that any one of us could find ourselves dealing with the same kinds of disasters that happen to others. Any one of us could lose our shelter or our wealth or our health as a result of some random conglomerate of disasters or unforeseen events. We can’t exempt ourselves by saying that such things only happen to people who aren’t like us. That is why the Pharisee’s prayer is so unwise. But we need a prayer, for otherwise where can we find hope and comfort?

The Tax Collector’s Prayer

So let us turn instead to the prayer of the tax collector. Jesus tells us that he went up to pray that day too. And we should not forget that the people in the audience listening to Jesus were very much predisposed to hate the tax collector. He was exactly the kind of person that everyone else was happy not to be like. He was a collaborator who worked with the foreign occupying government. Think, for example, of a Ukrainian working with the Russians in the territory they occupy today. That’s how people saw him.

And yet Jesus tells us that he prayed and not only that he prayed but that God was disposed to listen to him. Perhaps it helped that his prayer was simple: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”

But let me tell you something about that prayer. It was brief and humble, but that was not what made it so acceptable to God. I believe that God appreciated its honesty. But its honesty was not found in the notion that this man was somehow worse than everyone else because of who he was. It was honest because it is true of all of us.

Where to Find Comfort

I know that we like to insulate ourselves from all of the bad things that could potentially happen to us in this world by thinking that we are somehow better than everyone else to whom such things befall. That is why we pray like the Pharisee. But since we are all much more alike than we dare to think, we cannot take comfort in our own righteousness. Where do we find comfort then? Only in God’s mercy and in God’s grace. Finding comfort in how we are unlike those who suffer is a fool’s errand. Finding comfort in God’s grace is the source of true and lasting peace.

The End of the Parable

Jesus famously ended his parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector by saying this about the tax collector, “I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other.” And I know how people often read that. We seem to have learned to read all of God’s promises exclusively in terms of what happens to us after we die. And so I know that many hear Jesus saying that the tax collector got to go to heaven and the Pharisee didn’t.

But I actually think that Jesus was saying something much more important than that. You see, what happens to us after we die, that doesn’t depend on us just following certain formulas or even on us praying certain prayers. That depends entirely on God’s grace. And when the Bible says that we are saved by grace through faith, what it is actually saying is that we need to trust in God’s grace. That is always a wise thing to do. In the gracious hands of God is the safest place you will ever be.

Getting Through the Trials of Life

So, Jesus wasn’t making a pronouncement about who would get into heaven and who wouldn’t. He was talking about the kind of prayer that you can pray that will actually assist you to make your way through the various trials of this life. The prayer of the Pharisee might make you feel safe by fooling you into thinking that bad things only happen to people who aren’t like you. But the prayer of the tax collector helps you to face up to the very real and dark side of life in this world, and it lets you know that you need not face it alone – you have a God of grace who loves you as you are and who will be with you.

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Hespeler, 9 October 2022 © Scott McAndless – Thanksgiving Sunday
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7, Psalm 66:1-12, 2 Timothy 2:8-15, Luke 17:11-19 (Click to read)

I was a Samaritan – a Samaritan who lived in a narrow strip of land that was a kind of cultural no man’s land that ran along the border between Galilee and Samaria. Most of the people who lived there were Judeans who had been brought in to displace us centuries ago. But my family had somehow managed to remain there.

And, surrounded by a sea of Jewish people, we did what we could to hold onto our Samaritan culture and faith. We worshiped the God of Israel in our own way on Mount Gerizim. We followed our own laws according to our own scriptures that we also believed came to us from Moses.

A Despised People

But the Judeans didn’t care about any of that. They despised us, called us infidels and accused us of strange practices. They would not speak to us, and they certainly wouldn’t do things like share meals with us. So, I was pretty much used to being considered an outcast by most of the people I met from my youth.

And then you start to hypercorrect. You go out of your way to be deferential and polite to the people who are constantly criticizing you. You are always saying please and thank you and praising people who have done little more than be slightly civil to you. It can be exhausting. And worst of all, no matter how much you do it, you know that you will never belong. That was the life I was used to. And then things got so much worse.

Doubly Outcast

One day my entire world fell apart. I woke up to discover strange blotches on my skin. They itched and they burned and nothing I could do would make them go away. My family looked upon me with horror and cried out that I was a leper.

Once that had been settled, everybody knew what came next. Before the sun had set, I had been expelled from my home and the small Samaritan village where we lived. From now on, everyone who saw me would recoil with fear. Anyone who approached me, I was required to call out to them, to announce that I was unclean and that they must shun me. I was expected to live outside of all society. If I was lucky, I might be able to stay alive by begging, but, honestly, few people seemed to care whether I lived or died.

A New Community

And then, there was a miracle of sorts. I wandered around a fair bit in those days and, in my wandering, I passed through the outskirts of one of the larger towns in the region. People like me tended to congregate in the graveyards and garbage dumps that surrounded such places. And that was where I came upon the others. There were nine of them – men and women, old and young. Each one was suffering from a skin condition of some sort. Somehow, in the common experience of being cast out, they had discovered that the things that had once divided them – differences in wealth, status, age and even gender – no longer mattered nearly as much. Abandoned by everyone else, they had found a community with each other.

But even as I looked at them, it seemed to me impossible that there could be a place in such a group for me. They all had one thing, apart from their disease, in common. They were all Judeans and that had to be more important than any bond they might feel because of their shared condition. I felt certain that my Samaritaness was one thing that they would be simply unable to overlook. So, I turned and prepared to go on my way.

But they called out to me. When I explained who I was and where I came from, they said that it didn’t matter. They had all been rejected by the people around them. None of them belonged anywhere. But, in that situation, they had all found something. They had found each other, and they now had a community. If I was willing, there was a place in it even for a Samaritan like me. And so I joined them.

The Healer from Nazareth

One day several weeks later, one of our group came back to wake the rest early in the morning as we slept on the outskirts of a village. He had been restless and unable to sleep as his hives had been particularly bothering him of late. He rose in the early darkness and went down to the well hoping that he could bathe his sores before anyone came out of town to chase him away.

But the space around the well was not empty as he had hoped. Several men had gathered there early and were preparing for their day as they talked excitedly among themselves. The leper drew as near as he dared, hiding behind bushes so as not to be seen. And so, he had heard what it was they were so excited about.

“It is the healer,” he announced to us. “It is that man from Nazareth who has been seen everywhere in recent months performing wonders and miraculous healings. It is said that he is going to pass through this region this very day. My friends, we have to speak to him. They say he is compassionate and caring even to people like us. I believe that if anyone can make us clean, it is him.”

Not all of us shared the same enthusiasm as our brother leper. I myself felt particularly doubtful. Oh, I did not doubt that such a man could do something for people in our situation, but a lifetime of people refusing to do anything for me because of who I was had left me skeptical that he would. But we had all formed a pact. Where one went, we all went together. And I was not about to break the only solidarity I had ever found in my life. We decided that we would go and beg this man for help before he entered the nearby village.

Jesus’ Strange Response

And so we found him. As he approached the village, we began to call out together, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” It was the last thing we would ever do in unison. He looked up and he saw us. And when he did, he said, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.”

Now, you’re probably wondering, like I did, what that was supposed to mean. To my ear it almost sounded as if he was brushing us off. According to the Jewish law, after all, it fell to the priests to examine anyone who claimed that their skin condition had healed up and determine whether it was true or not. So, was Jesus simply saying that it wasn’t up to him to say whether we were clean or not – that there was nothing that he could do?

So it seemed to me. And I was hardly even disappointed as I turned away with the others. But, before we had gone very far at all, something began to happen. One by one, my fellow lepers began to shout out. One declared that his itching had stopped. Another said that the scales on her arms had fallen away, and the skin underneath looked pink and smooth. Soon the truth was inescapable to all of us – it seemed, somehow, that we were clean!

Excluded Again

As they realized this, all of the others began to speak together about what they were to do next. What Jesus had said was true. They needed to be seen by a priest before they could return to their families and villages and resume their lives. They began to talk excitedly together about making the trip all the way to Jerusalem.

But as soon as they began to speak practically about their journey, I felt a familiar sinking feeling in my stomach. My skin might have felt like that of a newborn baby, but I felt as if I was dying inside. For, as they spoke of the journey, they simply took it for granted that they would not take the shortest route because that would mean passing through Samaria and no good Judean would ever think of associating with Samaritans.

They didn’t even realize that they were doing it. All of a sudden, now that the one thing that the ten of us had had in common was gone, it was as if I no longer existed. I tried to tell myself that it didn’t matter. I mean, there was no way that I could go with them to see a Judean priest in Jerusalem anyways. I would not have been welcome there. But I will tell you something. It really hurt and I don’t think I’ve ever felt more alone than I did as I watched them head off on their journey without even realizing that they had left me behind. I looked around and wondered what I was supposed to do now.

The Leper Returns

Just a few minutes after Jesus enters the village – even as the local crowd is beginning to form – everyone is surprised to see a man run through the gate shouting praise to God at the top of his voice. As he approaches Jesus, he throws himself to the ground in an extreme display of gratitude. It is one of the lepers who had accosted Jesus earlier.

And when Jesus sees him, he cannot help but ask the obvious question. “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” Because it is plain to everyone at this point what it is that sets this man apart from his fellows other than his gratitude. They can tell that he is a Samaritan. Don’t ask me how. Bigots always find a way. And once the bigoted mode of thinking has been engaged, you can know absolutely that people are going to find some way to complain about how the outsider group behaves.

Judgement

So, they look at this individual who is an outsider for two reasons. He is a leper and he is a Samaritan. And they note that he is the only one out of his group of lepers who has done what they consider to be the right thing and said thank you to Jesus. But, of course, they are not about to praise a Samaritan for doing the right thing, that goes against all logic of bigotry. And so, they choose, instead, to target the other outsider group: lepers.

“Ah, isn’t that typical. These lepers are constantly bothering us with their needs and disrupting our lives with their sickness and uncleanness. And here somebody does something nice for them and out of ten, only one can even bother to come back and say thank you.”

Jesus’ Response

But I would just like you to note that Jesus’ response to this man was a little bit different. First of all, Jesus did not even remark that he was the only one to say thank you. I’m not sure that Jesus really cared about being thanked. What he did notice, however, was that this one, the outsider, the Samaritan, was the only one who knew how to give proper glory to God. And when he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well,” he was definitely doing more than brushing him off.

He was recognizing that he was different from the others, that he couldn’t go off and show himself to a priest in Jerusalem. And so, Jesus gave him an extraordinary gift, Jesus stood in the place of the priest and declared him clean right there. But more than clean, he declared him acceptable, whole and included and that was something that that man had rarely experienced in his life.

How we Talk about Thanksgiving

This is Thanksgiving Day, and it is, in many ways a celebration of the act of Thanksgiving. Bringing an attitude of gratefulness to our lives is a very good thing. It can help to change so much about our approach to life in positive ways. And we do have much to be thankful for.

But I’ve got to tell you something. Many of the discussions I hear about thankfulness these days are not quite as affirming as that. Most of the time, when I hear people talk about thankfulness, they are complaining. They are complaining about how certain people are not thankful in the ways that they think they should be.

The groups that people complain about vary, of course. Sometimes it’s young people who don’t say thank you in the right way. Sometimes it is people in society who are receiving some sort of help or assistance. Sometimes it is certain racial groups or minority groups who people criticize for complaining about how they have been treated. So often our discussion about thankfulness is all about how we think that certain people just aren’t good enough at it.

More than Thankful

And I think that this story in the gospel can help us to unpack that a bit. It is a story of a double outsider – a leper who also happens to be a Samaritan. And people have tended to turn it into a reason to complain about people who are not sufficiently thankful. I’m convinced Jesus didn’t see that man that way. Jesus simply celebrated him for who he was and how he gave praise to God.

The thankfulness that that man exercised; Jesus didn’t need it. It was only for the benefit of the man who experienced gratitude. I hope you can celebrate gratitude yourself this Thanksgiving. But if you encounter people whose gratitude is not exactly what you expected or not expressed in the way you are accustomed to, that really has nothing to do with you. It might be their loss. But if you choose to treat people like Jesus did, take them as they are and celebrate whatever they have to offer, I think you can experience something wonderful both for yourself and for them this Thanksgiving.

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