Imperfect People, Imperfect Prayers

The Church of St. Paul & Incarnation, Jersey City NJ

October 27, 2019

The Church of St. Paul & Incarnation, Jersey City NJ

October 27, 2019

Year C, Proper 25: The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost

Joel 2:23-32

Psalm 65

2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18

Luke 18:9-14

Imperfect People, Imperfect Prayers

            Today’s gospel lesson picks up right where we left off last week.

            Last time, we heard an odd, and even a little bit amusing, parable about an unjust judge and a persistent widow.

The widow wears down – and maybe even threatens – the judge to get the justice, or the vengeance, that she wants.

            Jesus connected that story to the need for us to pray persistently, reminding us of the power of persistent prayer.

            And now we pick up with Jesus telling another parable – and we’re informed that this parable is told to a very specific audience: people “who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.”

            No names are mentioned, but we know the type, don’t we?

            Today’s parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector shares some themes with what we heard last week.

            Once again there are only two people in the story, and their characters are not clear-cut. We can’t really pick out a “good guy” and a “bad guy.”

            Once again prayer is involved.

            And, once again, the story does not really unfold the way we might expect - and it definitely does not unfold the way that a first century Jewish audience would have expected.

            Although the gospels usually depict Pharisees in a negative light, most first century Jews respected the Pharisees because they were a group within Judaism that was really committed to righteousness – to holiness - and they worked to get others to be committed to righteousness – to holiness, too.

            In fact, by fasting twice a week and giving away a tenth of his income, the Pharisee in today’s parable goes beyond what the Jewish Law calls for. One commentary I read suggested that first century Jews would have seen the Pharisee in today’s parable as an almost as a humorous figure, a caricature, a super-holy Pharisee.

            Anyway, we’re told that the Pharisee is praying in the Jerusalem Temple, thanking God that he’s not a “bad” person like some other people he could name – and, in fact, does name - including the tax collector who he has spotted also praying in the Temple, though at a distance.

            I wonder how the Pharisee knew that the other man was a tax collector.

            I doubt he was wearing a tax collector uniform to the Temple.

            Maybe they knew each other?

            Well, let’s look at the other character – the tax collector.

            It’s important to remember that while that Pharisee would have been deeply respected by most first century Jews, the tax collector would have been despised as a traitor to his people.

            The tax collector was collecting revenue from the Jews that went to their hated Roman occupiers.

            The tax collectors earned a living but the cost was being at the receiving end of disgust and probably even hatred from their own people.

            But, notice that even the despised tax collector is able to pray in the Temple, though he is far off and apparently so ashamed of himself that he is unable to look up to heaven while he prayed.

            Instead, he beats his breast, saying, “God be merciful to me a sinner!”

            And then Jesus turns his attention back to his audience that was full of themselves and treated others with contempt, and Jesus declares that it was the traitor tax collector who was justified and not the self-righteous Pharisee.

            You wonder what the audience thought of that twist ending, right?

            Of course this is a message that many of us need to hear, especially those of us who are very devoted to the church and might be tempted to get a little judge-y of others.

            And, that includes me.

            You know, although we’re in a big city sometimes it feels like a little village around here where we’re constantly bumping into each other on the street – including people I see nearly every day doing the wrong thing.

            It is sorely tempting for me to make unkind judgments, so this parable reminds me to not be like the Pharisee – to mind my own business and worry about my own salvation and let others do the same.

            And, maybe that’s something that others among us need to remember, too.

            But, that’s not the main message I want to share with you today.

            As I’ve been thinking about the Pharisee and the tax collector, I’ve come to see them both as imperfect people offering imperfect prayers.

            Despite his personal righteousness, the Pharisee has one eye on God and another eye on the tax collector and others who don’t meet his high standards, revealing him to be an imperfect person offering an imperfect prayer.

            Judging others and lifting those judgments up to God in prayer is a big imperfection, right?

            And then there is the tax collector.

            His imperfections would have been all too obvious to the people around him, but his prayer, for all of its sorrow and shame and breast-beating was imperfect, too.

            Yes, the tax collector begs God for mercy but there is no sign of repentance, no indication that he is going to change his ways, no recognition that that it was time to ask God’s help to start a new and, yes, holier life.

            Imperfect people praying imperfect prayers.

            Just like you and me.

            Because we are imperfect people our prayers are imperfect, too, distorted by our own shortcomings and sins.

            But, God loves both the imperfect Pharisee and the imperfect tax collector – and God loves imperfect us with our imperfect prayers – and God is able to translate our imperfect prayers into what is perfectly best for us.

            So, you know, I always like to imagine sequels to Bible stories.

            In this case, maybe God opened the heart of the righteous Pharisee to quit judging people like the tax collector, even if, especially if, they deserved to be judged.

            Maybe God helped the Pharisee to go easy on people who are weak, who make bad decisions, who get stuck by doing the wrong thing.

            And, maybe God opened the heart of the tax collector, giving him the courage to walk away from his hateful work and to start a new life.

            We don’t know.

            But, we do know that God loves imperfect people and hears our imperfect prayers, and God is able to translate our imperfect prayers into what is perfectly best for us.

            Amen.

            

The Power of Persistent Prayer

The Church of St. Paul & Incarnation, Jersey City NJ

October 20, 2019

Year C, Proper 24: The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Jeremiah 31:27-34

Psalm 119:97-104

2 Timothy 3:14-4:5

Luke 18:1-8

The Power of Persistent Prayer

            So, lately I’ve been surprising myself a little.

            I’ve mentioned to you before that, by nature, I tend to be a kind of anxious person – worrying over all sorts of things, quick to see obstacles and potential disasters ahead, both real and imaginary.

            I tend to focus on what’s missing, on the half-empty glass.

            With God’s help, I’m working on that, but I also have to accept that this is how I am and not get anxious about being anxious!

            But, anxious or not, the truth is that we’ve had a rough few weeks around here.

            A longtime St. Paul’s parishioner, the much-loved matriarch of her family, has died, and a couple of parishioners have suddenly and shockingly become seriously ill.

            Last week I told you the unwelcome news that the boiler that heats the church and the hall has reached the end of the line and a couple of days ago we found out that replacing it will cost something like $35,000.

            And, on top of that, we learned that we will not receive a grant we were counting on to cover about half the cost of the new restroom.

            Ouch.

            And…now it’s the time of year when we focus on stewardship.

            This can be a really joyful time when we take stock of – and celebrate - all the many ways that God has blessed us, both individually and as a pretty rockin’ church!

            But, it can also be a stressful time.

            Will we pledge and give enough so that we can do some great things for Jesus both in here and out in the world?

            Will we pledge and give enough so that we can pay our many bills, including the unexpected ones that keep popping up?

            Are we going to be a little club that exists mostly for the benefit of us, its members, or are we going to shine the Light of Christ boldly and generously into an increasingly shadowy world?

            We will soon find out!

            So, it’s a lot.

            But, here’s the thing:

            Despite all of these very real things to worry about, to my surprise, I actually feel pretty good.

            And, I think I know why.

            In today’s lesson from the Gospel of Luke we heard this strange, even somewhat humorous, parable – what’s usually called the Parable of the Persistent Widow and the Unjust Judge.

            As usual, we’re not given too much background information, just that there is a judge in the city “who neither feared God nor had respect for people.”

            We know the type, yes?

            And there is a widow who keeps coming at him demanding justice – or, actually, the word can also be translated as “vengeance,” which changes the feel of things, doesn’t it?

            Maybe surprisingly, the judge gives into the widow, saying to himself, “I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.”

            By the way, what’s translated as “wear me out” is actually a boxing term meaning something like, “punch me in the eye.”

            So, the judge gives in to the widow, at least in part, because she is powerful and intimidating – the parable kind of reverses the way we would normally think of things, right?

            Normally, we would say that judges are very powerful while widows, not so much.

            Yet, then and now, widows (or, really, any women on their own) have to be clever and tough and, yes, persistent, in order to defend themselves and their children and their dignity and their property.

            So, maybe we shouldn’t be so surprised that the widow got her way, even if it may have meant using a threat of physical violence.

            It’s quite a little story – and then Jesus connects it to prayer, and the need to be persistent in prayer.

            Now, prayer is not about threatening God (though we’re welcome to get angry with God sometimes - there’s a long history of that, just flip through the Psalms and you’ll see.)

            And, prayer is not about wearing down God, somehow talking God into doing what we want God to do.

            God already knows what’s best for us and is always ready to bless us in ways we can’t even begin to imagine.

            So, we persist in prayer not to change God’s mind but to change us, to allow God to draw even closer to us, to make more room in our heart for God, to give us the confidence and strength that we need to face even the biggest and most frightening obstacles.

            In the case of our parishioners who have recently taken ill, in each case I know that they can feel the power of prayer supporting them and supporting all of us who love them – and all of that love and grace and power is having a real effect on their recovery.

            Thanks be to God.

            And then there’s me.

            The other day I received an email from someone I’m very close with, someone I love very much: a parishioner from my former church.

            Over the years we have been through life and death together: the death of her daughter and later the death of her husband – and, I also had the honor of officiating at the wedding of her granddaughter.

            You go through all of that together and you can’t help to form an unbreakable bond.

            Lately, she’s been going through her own health challenges and I’ve been worried about her, praying for her.

            The other day, she emailed me, updating me on her progress.

            And, here is how she ended her message:

            “You’re always in my prayers, mainly for the strength to keep doing all you’re doing.”

            So, despite our many challenges here, no wonder I feel pretty good!

            It’s the power of persistent prayer!

Prayer doesn’t fix the boiler or pay the bills or make disease go away (at least not usually), but prayer does give us the strength and faith to face whatever comes our way, knowing that we – and, most especially, God – are all in this together.

            Amen.

            

In This Together

The Church of St. Paul & Incarnation, Jersey City NJ

October 13, 2019

Year C, Proper 23: The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7

Psalm 66:1-11

2 Timothy 2:8-15

Luke 17:11-19

In This Together

            As you know, a big part of my job is visiting the sick and since right now we have several ill parishioners, I’ve been spending even more time than usual in hospitals.

I don’t know how often you’ve been in hospitals but if you go a lot and keep your eyes open one of the things you notice is that illness is one of the great equalizers of life.

I’m not saying everybody receives the same quality of care. That’s definitely not true, especially in our country.

But, it is true that if you go to the hospital and walk through the waiting room filled with anxious family and friends, or if you walk the halls and glance into the rooms, you see all different kinds of people, united by illness and the hope for healing and health.

In our daily lives we are often split up into our different ethnic, religious, and economic groups, but in the hospital, we are reminded that we are all in this together.

 At first glance, today’s gospel lesson seems straightforward enough, but, as usual, when we dig deeper into Scripture we discover there is a lot going on here.

            So, here’s the story: we’re told that Jesus is making his way to Jerusalem, passing through an in-between place – a place that’s neither Jesus’ homeland of Galilee nor the homeland of the usually despised Samaritans.

Jesus is in this in-between place where he encounters ten men with leprosy who beg him for mercy.

            Jesus doesn’t lay hands on them and doesn’t say any words of healing.

Instead, Jesus tells them to go present themselves to the priests.

In an act of faith, they don’t argue with Jesus that, uh, he seems to have forgotten to heal them. They just go. 

            And, sure enough, as they make their way to the priests they were “made clean.”

            But, only one of the now ex-lepers returned to personally thank Jesus.

            And, as a little kicker, we’re told that the one ex-leper who returned was a Samaritan.

            That doesn’t surprise us too much because thanks to the famous parable we’ve been conditioned to think of Samaritans as “good” but a Jewish audience would have found the goodness or the thankfulness of a Samaritan to be a pretty big surprise.

            (And, since presumably the other nine lepers were Jews, there would have been the surprise that they did not thank Jesus, at least not yet. After all, let’s not get judgmental. The other nine may have been simply off following Jesus’ instruction to go to the priests.)

            Anyway, the obvious lesson to draw from this story is the importance of thankfulness, right?

            And, who could argue with that, right?

Especially us here today who have so much to be thankful for – for our lives and for each other - our lives together here as church, as this beautiful expression of the Body of Christ.

But, while not denying the importance of thankfulness, I want to back up to the start of the story and the ten men with leprosy.

Just like people in hospitals today, the very real differences among the ten men with leprosy – nine Jews and one Samaritan – those differences that would have been very real among the “healthy,” well, they didn’t matter so much anymore, did they?

No, the in-between places of illness and misfortune don’t respect our nationalities or ethnicities, how much money we have in the bank, our politics, or even our religion.

Illness and misfortune remind us of the great truth that we are in this together.

But, we often choose to ignore or forget this truth, don’t we?

In fact, unfortunately there are powerful forces at work in the world and in our country and even in our own community – powerful forces that seek to divide us in all sorts of ways – powerful forces that insist that it’s us versus them, when the truth is that there is no “them,” only “us.”

There’s no “them,” only “us.”

We are in this together.

One of the things I find a little frustrating about Scripture is very often we don’t know what happened next – we don’t know what happened to the people we meet so briefly, people who were touched by the power of God and then went on with their lives.

So, I would love to know what happened next to the ten men cured of leprosy.

Did the nine others ever seek out Jesus to thank him?

How did their families respond when they returned home, no longer disfigured by disease?

Did they go on and live their lives more faithfully, with greater compassion for the suffering, because they had received so much mercy from Jesus?

Did they become disciples of Jesus, telling and retelling their story of healing?

We don’t know, though we’re always free to imagine.

But, unfortunately, I think we can be sure that after their healing the one Samaritan and the nine Jews went their separate ways – they left the in-between place of illness and returned to their homelands, back to a sense of “us” and “them.”

Happens all the time.

In some ways, it’s kind of like church, isn’t it?

As you’ve heard me say a million times, one of the glories of our congregation is our diversity.

It’s a cliché but we really are a beautiful mosaic of all different kinds of people bringing so many different experiences and gifts and, yes, burdens, each time we gather together here to pray and to celebrate, each time we gather at the Lord’s Table.

There is no “us” and “them” in here.

But, that often changes once we leave this room – sometimes as soon as we get to coffee hour and quickly divide up into our “territories.”

Today we begin to focus more intentionally on our stewardship, how we use the gifts and blessings we have received from God.

Many of us still think of stewardship as church fundraising. And, while it’s true that we do need quite a bit of money to keep this old place running, stewardship is about much more than paying the bills – it’s about expressing our thankfulness to God – it’s about using the good gifts God has given us.

Although we are not quite there legally, over the past year and a half or so we have come a long way in uniting St. Paul’s and Incarnation.

I could be wrong, but my feeling is that most of us really do think of us as one church now – that, in that sense, there is no “us” and “them.”

Amen to that.

But, this year my prayer is that, with God’s help we deepen that unity, to recognize that we really are in this together – that there is no “them” to do what we are unwilling to do – there is no “them” to write a check and cover our expenses, no “them” to host Family Promise, no “them” to straighten up the kitchen, no “them” to raise our kids in the faith, no “them” to welcome newcomers, no “them” to fill up the food donation bins, no “them” to fight the good fight with Jersey City Together, no “them” to pray for the many people on our prayer list...

There is no “them” only “us.”

And, so as we focus on stewardship, as we move forward as a beautiful mosaic church, let’s be like the ten with leprosy at the start of today’s gospel lesson, in the in-between place, begging for the mercy of Jesus, and aware that we are most definitely in this together.

And, for that, I am truly thankful.

Amen.