October 26 2025 Sermon
Despite my usual pattern of preparing for a sermon, the prep, the reading what other commentators might have to say, the prayerful reading of the scriptures and other resources; despite all those usual practices, I find myself standing here today in kind of a different space. I don’t have all the words before me.
The image that comes to my mind is of being in the midst of one of those corn mazes that you see at this time of year. Dropped down into this puzzle of a parable, not knowing what the exit is, what is the message that needs to be shared.
As I attempted to sort through the two protagonists in this parable, this Pharisee and this tax collector both have done a good thing. Both have gone to the temple to pray.
But as I searched both of these characters, I found good and bad. The Pharisee lists all sorts of wonderful praiseworthy actions, the tithing, the offering, fasting, the, you know, just giving of himself. Pharisees, they get a bad rap, have gotten a bad rap over the years. Generally, they were outstanding people in the community who were trying to connect everyone to God. Not just the elite priest in the temple, but they were trying to bring God and his prophets to all of the people. But this one seems a little self-occupied, a little too self-focused. His prayer is not so much to God as it is to himself, patting himself on the back for being a good person. He looks down on the tax collector who had come to the temple to pray.
All the tax collector’s prayer was “have mercy on me”, which surely was an appropriate prayer for a tax collector. In Jesus’s day, the tax collectors were ruthless. They were Jews who were authorized by the Romans to collect the tax from their fellow Jews. They had to collect a certain amount for the area in which they had responsibility. They could use whatever means they had available to themselves to collect the tax. And should they happen to collect more than they needed to turn into Rome, well, that was to their profit. Surely this tax collector is feeling some remorse to be looking to God for mercy. And we are told as we are so often reminded, God is merciful to those who repent. But this particular tax collector in Luke’s gospel, unlike fellow tax collectors Zachaeus and Matthew, we don’t hear what he does after this episode. The others became Jesus’s followers. We are left with the ambiguity of this tax collector rightly ashamed of his actions whether he changes or was he there just for a moment of solace, being reassured, that God would forgive a repentant sinner.
So I am left in this gospel without knowing who to imitate, who’s doing right, who’s doing wrong. They both are a mix of each. And so are we. Aren’t we? It’s certainly reflected in our liturgy for which we gather. We have moments for confession. Several times we cry out for mercy. Perhaps you have a favorite. Is it to kyrie? Lord have mercy. Is it that prayer of humble access? We are not worthy so much as gather up the crumbs under thy table. But thou art the same Lord who offers mercy. Surely the Pharisee is right to have given thanks to God. Well, he was right. He gave thanks. Not sure it was to God or himself, but properly we are to give thanks. And we do that too in our service. But most fully we give thanks at the eucharistic prayer for that one great perfect sacrifice by which we are forgiven.
You can see I’m stepping outside of the reading to find an answer to some of the puzzles that it leaves with me. I turn to our liturgy. I turn also to that little acronym that Father Ted offered last Sunday with respect to prayer. The word ACTS – adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. That is a full prayer.
There’s a wholeness in ACTS that is missing in the Pharisee’s or tax collector’s prayers. Our liturgy also exemplifies for us adoration as we all stand facing forward singing glory to God in the highest. What a wonderful focus point for us to adore God and then to gather our voices with the angels at the Sanctus – Holy, holy, holy.
And of course, we offer our supplications in our intercession. And unlike these two fellows in the temple, these supplications are for the world, for the church, for those who are sick and dying and in need of our prayers.
I take a warning as well from this this passage. A warning for us, we who love the Anglo-Catholic tradition, who recognize its wholeness, its goodness. We who have felt its nourishment over many years. But Anglo-Catholics can be noted for being a bit too spiky, a bit too sure of themselves, perhaps like the Pharisee. And can you imagine if the tax collector had known what the Pharisee was thinking of him? Would he have even darkened the door of the temple knowing how he was looked down upon I had a parishioner ask me earlier this week, why don’t more of the people from our neighborhood come to our service? I surely hope it is not because they sense they are less worthy than you and I. I surely hope that our actions reveal that we have no contempt for them. That we are not looking down our noses at anyone.
But I turn to another passage from Luke’s gospel for how to close this puzzle of a sermon. It’s another case of a sinner asking for mercy. It’s where Jesus is gathered in the home of the Pharisee, Simon, for dinner. Into that dinner party comes a woman who anoints Jesus’s feet with oil. She is a known sinner. It took great courage for her to come into Jesus’s presence, into the presence of those who were looking down upon her. She broke that jar of oil over Jesus’s feet, saying nothing herself, Jesus says,
“Your sins are forgiven.”
The anonymous mystic, the author of The Cloud of Unknowing. When he wrote these words, he understood that woman to be Mary Magdalene, a woman who traditionally spent a life in sorrow for her sins, but a life at the same time always filled with a deep, unshakable love for Jesus, her savior. The anonymous writer writes this, “Our Lord said to Mary, who stands for all sinners that are called to a life of prayer, ‘your sins are forgiven you’. This was not because of her great sorrow, nor for her awareness of her sins, nor yet for the humility that she had at the sight of her wretchedness. It was because, surely, that she loved much. Here then can we see what this hidden impulse of love can win from our Lord over and above every other exercise that any man may think to perform.”
More than the prayers, more than the tithes, more than the hymns of praise, it’s love. Love God. Love neighbor. We rehearse it every Sunday. Let us take up that call as we come before the Lord in prayer; that he would empower us by his spirit to be living flames of love here in this place and in the places in which we live our lives.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.