"NOT EITHER/OR BUT BOTH AND"

            Now I’m not going to ask for a show of hands or anything, but...I know what just went through some of your minds. Some of you immediately thought, “Oh, no...I wonder what’s happened!”  Some of you just, mentally, quickly put away the grocery list and moved up onto the edge of your seats!  Some of you thought, “Uh, huh! I figured something like this would happen with her sooner or later!”  Some of you instantly remembered your own day in court and some difficult circumstances you’ve been through. Maybe...all of those different thoughts flew through you all at once.

            We can do that, you know. We can have a lot of different thoughts and feelings all at the same time. We can juggle vastly different beliefs and attitudes at the same time.  We can notice all kinds of things about someone else even as we also realize there are a lot of things to notice about ourselves. Perhaps that’s one of the points Jesus was making when he told a group of his disciples that story about a Pharisee and a tax collector. We are ALL saints and sinners simultaneously.

            Now I won’t keep you in suspense any more. I was in a courtroom Wednesday morning because I had volunteered to go with someone who had been arrested on a misdemeanor violation and now had to go to court to clear up the fines. I was a spectator, you see. But while there was nothing going on externally that involved me, there was a great deal that went on internally that totally involved me.

            I showed up at court with my companion at the appointed time...only to discover that everybody gets the same “appointed time.” So really...it’s yet another of life’s “hurry up and wait” situations. I had come to court in a clerical shirt with the collar, in dress pants and a nice blazer.  As I looked around, I felt conspicuously overdressed! In fact, I was appalled at the dress and the demeanor of most of those around me. I found myself doing a lot of evaluation of how others were dressed...how they acted...their facial expressions and verbal attitudes. I was, frankly, shocked. How could they look and act like this in a court of law?  Tch, tch, tch.  And we wonder why our society is in the shape it’s in!

            But then, a funny thing began to happen.  Once I had scrutinized everyone else, I was left with only one other person to examine: me!  And I asked myself, “Why did you feel the need to come here in your little preacher uniform?”  I mean, did I secretly think that if the judge looked out and saw my companion seated with a minister (!) then things might go better?! You know...innocence by association?!  Well, come to find out...I don’t think anyone was impressed or even noticed.

            And I also began to realize something else. I was here strictly as an “observer” only by sheer luck and, perhaps, the grace of our twisted system of justice. Some of the people in court on Wednesday were there for traffic tickets and other similar violations.  How many of us here who drive can honestly say that we have never, ever knowingly exceeded the speed limit?  Not me!  I probably exceed the speed limit more often than not! And I’ve gone right by police officers while doing it!  Why have I never been ticketed?   Timing?  The officer’s other concerns or...dare I consider...the officer’s mood at the moment?  The age and condition of my car?  The color of my car?  The color of my skin?  My gender?  My age?  Who knows?!  Just lucky...so far.

            Then, as I listened to a lot of the people as they talked with the State’s Attorney about their various charges, at first I found myself thinking, again, “Tch, tch, tch.  How can people let their lives get so out of control?”  But then I started to think about that.  There was a time in my life when I was $12,000 in debt on credit cards because I couldn’t control my desire to buy friends and impress people. There was a time, on more than one occasion, when I skipped work or classes because I was too hung over to get through it. I don’t have a record of DUI’s or drug possession...only because I never got caught!  My life has stayed “in control” out of a mixture of privilege, position, opportunity and sheer, dumb luck!

            I also remembered times, some in recent history, when I had been in places where I felt conspicuously underdressed...when I knew that people were busy assessing me and making judgements.  At any given time, any of us...all of us...can be either the judger or the judged. We do both...and we ARE both.  Like me on Wednesday, we are all Pharisees and tax collectors at the same time.

            Now we can hear the story that Jesus told today and not really get it. After all, if you’ve been in church very much at all in your life, you’ve picked up that a “Pharisee” is a bad thing to be. But, like all biblical texts, we need to understand the context and cultural setting of what we heard this morning.

            When Jesus told this story, it was shocking!  It was a complete reversal of what people believed to be true about Pharisees and tax collectors. You see, at that time, a Pharisee was a good guy; in fact, religiously speaking, the best of the best. A lay person who devoted his life to keeping the precepts of Jewish law to the letter.  A tax collector, on the other hand, was the lowest of the low. A guy who worked for the occupying Roman government. A rascal who would not only collect the unfair taxes imposed on the people but, more often than not, would charge extra and pocket the difference. A tax collector was considered a traitor to his country and a scoundrel, a thief. 

            The scripture says that Jesus told this story for the benefit of some folks around him who “trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.”  In other words, folks like you and me who would describe ourselves as “good people.” Not like “them,” whoever the “them-de-jour” might be. But Jesus wants us to understand that no one is completely good in and of themselves, and no one is completely bad in God’s eyes.

            Neither the Pharisee nor the tax collector is the hero of this parable. There is no hero here. Jesus doesn’t end this parable with “Go and do likewise.” Both of the people in the story are “sinners” – people who have missed the target, who have failed to exhibit the perfect character of God. Actually, I’m not sure there are really two different people in the story at all. Perhaps these two caricatures, these two exaggerated types, are really just different aspects of any one of us.

            There is a dual quality to human existence that is reflected in our experiences of “good” days and “bad” days. You know...some days it’s “Good morning, God!” Other days it’s “Good God, it’s morning!” One minute we are praying, all upright and grateful, that unlike so many people we know, we have our lives together. Then, a turn of circumstances and we are reduced to begging for mercy, no strength or resources we have seem adequate.

            A Jewish theologian and mystic named Martin Buber observed that our spiritual natures have two “pockets.” When we reach into one pocket, we pull out smallness – “We are nothing but dust and ashes.”  If we reach into our other spiritual “pocket,” however, we extract greatness – “For our sake the universe was created.”

            The complex, twofold nature of humanity fills one pocket with a humbling stance before God that asks, “Who are humans that you, God, are mindful of us,” while our other pocket strains to contain the equal truth that “God created human beings only a little lower than the angels.”

            The trap we fall into sometimes is that we start to jingle the change and the keys and the other goodies in our “Pharisee” pocket in a pretty cocky way...while forgetting too easily about the dust and lint in that other pocket...where the tax collector within us resides.

            Jesus’ story was intended to be subversive...to overthrow the accepted ways of seeing the world. The story deals, in large part, with self-righteousness – with forgetting our need of God’s grace and mercy and looking only to our own “goodness” and someone else’s “badness” in order to justify ourselves.

            In fact, the story goes a little further than that – it connects such self-righteousness with an understanding of religion that serves to reinforce self-assuredness. Religion can be very dangerous. It can produce self-delusion. It can lead people to do terrible things...or worse, people can use it to inspire themselves to do terrible things...as we saw on September 11^th.

            This kind of conspiracy between self-righteousness and self-delusion comes in many forms. It shows itself when we find Christians thanking God that they are not like “those Muslims.”  It shows itself when individuals and communities start defining their identities by their enemies; you know, like when Americans are “united,” not for something but against someone...like when “feminism” starts to demand male-bashing....like when gay “pride” means the accepted derision of straight folks...like when “our” church becomes obviously superior to “those other” churches.

            The message of Jesus is sharp and clear: bolstering our own identities by disparaging others so easily leads to illusions of grandeur and a failure to see ourselves as we really are; life becomes a constant game of “good guys” and “bad guys.” 

            The answer is not to make the tax collector into the hero or to pretend that he has done no wrong. What Jesus is asking for is that we learn to accept our common humanity and to know that our real value is in loving and accepting ourselves as God loves us and not upping our value by downing others. We can forget trying to earn credit points with God by establishing our worth on a relative scale. If we can stop doing that, we’ll have so much more time and space and energy for the giving...and the receiving...of compassion, mercy and grace...which we all desperately need. 

            The Pharisee and the tax collector: we are not “either/or” – we are “both/and.”  And we are all in need of the things that only God can truly provide!   Amen.

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