One Sunday I went up to the temple to pray....

“Two men went up to the temple to pray” Luke 18:9

Honestly, don’t you just doze off when you hear this one? It’s so obvious who is in the wrong and who is in the right and even why that is so. In religion class, even the slowest kids understood this story and would answer correctly every time. Jesus should have saved us all a lot of effort and skipped right to the more challenging story of the ten talents. That’s the trouble, though, it’s too obvious. The minute we congratulate ourselves on understanding the parable is the moment we become the star of the show.

One day, I went up to the temple to pray.I glanced around at my fellow congregants. Some people knelt. Some stood. Some seemed impatient, bored. Some seemed not to even care if we were using Rite I or Rite II. Others were deep in devout prayer. Some were appropriately dressed for Sunday; others wore jeans! One woman was smiling at a baby sitting behind her, not even praying at all. 

Such an array of right and wrong behaviors. I was happy to be counted among the properly behaving people, the prayerful, attentive ones, nicely dressed, well-groomed, on time with the responses. I tick every box, fulfill every demand. Prayer as performance art. Hooray for me. 

Over time, God gave me the grace to see myself for what I was (after he finished laughing at me) - the worst kind of Pharisee. Jesus might have pulled me out of my pew and used me as the example of the unjustified in his parable.

When we look at the context of this parable, we see that Jesus was talking to “some who trusted in themselves.” Here is the problem, then. I was trusting in myself. I know the right thing to do. I know how to behave in church. I know how to pray in a congregation. I can navigate the prayer book. It is within my power to offer a prayer, to ask God’s blessing on others.

Actually, no. It’s not.

I cannot pray without God. I cannot direct my own heart and mind to God. I cannot trust in myself. God, of course sustains my life and I can’t even breathe without him, but, more than that, it is God’s grace that turns my heart to him. The minute you trust in yourself you are rejecting God. Isn't that what Adam and Eve did when they decided to set their own course? Isn't that the basis of all sin? Isn't this the soul’s primary struggle?

Where does God end and where do I begin? 

We are taught to be self-reliant. Having confidence is considered necessary in our world. I don’t think God wants us to be incompetent. Doing our work well, managing our affairs, attending to our health, bearing our responsibilities – certainly these are important for life. Holiness is not opposed to survival. But at what point do we become apart from God? When have we begun to trust in ourselves more than God?

We need to be watchful and aware of the way we mythologize ourselves. Do I imagine that God is grateful for my worship but a bit embarrassed by someone else's? It hurts even to ask myself this rhetorically.

Check yourself in church some Sunday. Are you tabulating the right and wrong behaviors you see? How are you looking at your fellow parishioners? With judgement? With disapproval? With approval? Or with love?

Because we know how Jesus looks at us. And love is the antidote to pride. Love trumps judgment. Love puts us back in the hands of God who is love and lets us trust in him totally.

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He told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were right and regarded others with contempt: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee standing by himself was praying thus. ‘God I thank you that I am not like other people, thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week. I give a tenth of all my income.’ 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 a sinner.’ I tell you this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”