(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on October 23, 2016, Proper 25)
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What Makes a Proper Horror Story?
This time of year, there are many distinctive delights that we enjoy: the leaves aflame on our trees, the hearths aflame in our homes as the nights cool off, the indulgence of pumpkin and apple and cinnamon-flavored culinary pleasures, football under the Friday night lights or on the warm glow of our televisions—and in just a week or so, Halloween. Children will dress up as ghosts and witches. All of us will eat a bit more candy than we should. And some of us—a peculiar subset of our society—will take a strange delight in watching scary movies.
Personally, I have little taste for scary movies. But having passed dutifully through the stage of adolescence, I’ve watched my share. And in conversation with friends, I’ve speculated on what it is that makes a proper horror film. What is its fundamental ingredient? Is it the grotesqueness of the evil character? Is it the dark unknown? I’m not sure that the horror movie can be reduced to one individual element, but I am fairly certain that one element it cannot do without is the familiar. Horror movies take familiar experiences and then infuse them with sinister meanings—blank phone calls, flickering lights, inexplicable noises at night, the quiet neighbor who never says “hello.” The reason that a horror story is so scary is that it is familiar enough to be our own story.
In other words, a horror story is a story that threatens to repeat itself in our own lives.
A Story That Repeats Itself
Today’s parable is not a horror story—at least not in the conventional sense. But in an almost sinister way, it repeats itself in our own lives.
Imagine you’re watching a horror movie. In the movie, the phone rings, and the frightened woman on the screen picks it up. There’s no answer on the other end. Then, in your own home, the phone rings. You pick it up. There’s no answer on the other end.
It’s the stuff of goosebumps. And it’s no different when we read this parable.
On the surface, the story is simple. There’s a Pharisee and a tax collector. The Pharisee is a type that we all know. He’s self-righteous. He’s smug and superior. His prayer is little more than a way for him to pat himself on the back, “Thank God I’m not like other people” (18:11). And on the other side, there’s the wretched tax collector, crying for God’s mercy. Before Jesus even reaches the end of the story, we all know what’s what. We know that the Pharisee is going to get his, and that the tax collector is in fact the hero.
In other words, we’re all feeling a bit smug and superior to that Pharisee. We’re all patting ourselves on the back, saying, “Thank God I’m not like that Pharisee.”
Can you feel the goosebumps? The story has repeated itself already, in our very reading of it. In the instant that we condemn the Pharisee, we in fact become the Pharisee, sure of ourselves and exalted over others.
In this way, the parable turns our world upside down. We point the finger all too readily at the Pharisee, only to discover that we’re pointing at ourselves, at our own pride, at our own self-certainty. There’s a reason the word “churchy” means what it means. It is because of people like the Pharisee and people like us who go to church, people whose faith sometimes freezes over into arrogance, people for whom the name God really means “what I believe in,” “what I know is right.”
Even More Topsy-Turvy
As if this alone weren’t enough to convict us, when we read the parable with Jesus’ original audience in mind, we discover that it has an even more revolutionary flavor, an even more topsy-turvy shape. Because when Jesus originally told the parable, his audience would have been expecting a conclusion opposite to the one they heard.
When Jesus originally told the parable, the audience would have actually regarded the Pharisee with a healthy measure of respect. His prayer, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people,” actually follows the model of some prayers that we find in the Old Testament.[1] So you could say that his prayer was dutiful; he was affirming the law of God, saying that the law was good, and he was expressing gratitude to God that he was on the right side of the law. Beyond his prayer, folks would have seen in the Pharisee what many people see today in a respectable churchgoer. They would have seen a model congregant, the kind of fellow you’d want teaching your children in Sunday school. They would have seen a good influence, the kind of guy who speaks sense in meetings. And not least, they would have seen a big donor, someone who tithes on everything that he acquires. This Pharisee, in other words, is a principled and generous man. If it weren’t for him, there probably wouldn’t be a building to meet in. This kind of man is the bedrock of many churches.[2]
And the tax collector? Well, the less said about him, the better. For the original audience, they would have seen only a man who had sold his soul. He was a traitor. He collected money for the Roman empire—the same empire that oppressed his own Jewish people—and then he’d collect a little more for himself. His money-grabbing hands reeked of greed and were stained with the blood of his own people.
For the original audience, then, this story is yet another kingdom reversal, another upside-down depiction of God’s world: the wretched tax collector is justified, but the upstanding Pharisee is not.
To Be Left without a Prayer Is Where Prayer Begins
However we hear today’s parable—whether we point our accusatory finger at the Pharisee and his smugness or the tax collector and his disgrace—we also come to find out that we’re pointing the finger at ourselves. By the simple act of presuming who’s right and who’s wrong, we do the very thing that Jesus warns us against: we trust in ourselves and we regard certain others with disapproval. We exalt ourselves over others.
Did you notice what the Pharisee says when he prays? “God, I thank you that I am not like…this tax collector” (18:11). In other words, the Pharisee is praying with his eyes open. He sees that tax collector. Maybe not literally. Maybe his head is bowed the same way we bow our heads. But he’s praying with his eyes open all the same. He’s praying as though he can see everything that matters, as though he knows what’s what. To pray with one’s eyes open means to trust in oneself and to exalt oneself over others. The problem with praying with our eyes open, of course, is that we’re not really praying. We’re simply outlining our own plan for the world, our own program for the way things should go. You know how some people dominate conversations by interrupting, cutting off, and amplifying their voice? They’re really just having a conversation with themselves. And that’s what an eyes-wide-open prayer is. There’s no room for God.
The alternative is to pray blind. To pray blind is to pray like the tax collector. Because we sit outside the story, we know the result of the tax collector’s prayer. But the tax collector, remember, does not know the result. He does not pray with presumption like the Pharisee. He does not have a plan for the world or a program for the way things should go. He only knows that he is helpless. Like the widow before him, or like the children who Jesus says lead us into the kingdom, he cannot do it on his own.
Maybe blindness is the condition for prayer. Maybe to be left without a prayer is precisely where prayer begins.
A Timely Reminder for This Election Season
It is a timely reminder in this election season. When folks cast their ballot in just a couple weeks, many of them—many of us—will pray in that voting booth as the Pharisee prayed in the temple, trusting in their own righteousness and regarding others with contempt, saying, “Thank God I’m not like those crazies voting on the opposite side of the ballot.” Their votes will be little more than a way to pat themselves on the back. Chances are, some of these folks are the same ones who speak so forcefully and controllingly about the elections, interrupting each other, cutting each other off, amplifying their voices.
Are they not exalting themselves?
This last Wednesday night, at Common Table, a small group of us reflected on the furor of this election season. The conversation we shared was surreal. There were no loud voices. There were no do-or-die sentiments. There was no hopeless feeling that the future of the world hangs in the balance of this election.
Instead, there were profound expressions of hope. What if this dark time were also a holy chance, a sacred opportunity for the church to live differently than the world around it? What if while the world divides and polarizes, the church helps to heal and reconcile? What if while the world exalts itself, trusting so surely in its own policies and positions, the church humbles itself, responding to the fist of power with a heart of love?
How To Pray Blind in the Election Season
If today’s scripture tells us anything about how we live during election season, it is that our trust is not in the ballot but in God. Recently I’ve been reading the work of David Lipscomb—one of our Disciples forefathers from the 19th century, whose parents hailed just a stone’s throw from here in Louisa—and he goes so far as to say that “to vote or use…civil power is to use force…. [It] is to distrust God.”[3] Whether or not you agree with David’s conclusion, his larger point is difficult to shake. The ballot tempts us to trust in ourselves rather than in God. It tempts us to exalt ourselves over others, to think we know better than others. It is a way to claim power over others.
I’m honestly unsure whether Jesus would step inside a voting booth today, had he the chance. But that’s a point of great speculation. Whether we step into a booth or not, the call of Christ is to pray blind, not presuming place or power, not imposing ourselves on others, not pushing our plans on the world. The call of Christ is not to trust in our own righteousness, mediated through the ballot or whatever powers the world has to offer, but rather to live like a child, a widow, a desperate tax collector, allowing ourselves to be small so that the greatness of love might have mercy on us and reign in our world.
Prayer
God,
Be merciful to us.
Where we exalt ourselves over others,
Humble us gently.
Where we humble ourselves,
Bless us:
Make our selfless love
A courageous witness
To your reconciling kingdom.
In the name of our brother, Jesus Christ.
Amen.
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[1] See, e.g., Deut 26:12-15 and Ps 17:4-5. See also the rabbinic “blessings of identity” (i.e., thank God I’m not a gentile, woman, or slave).
[2] This characterization of the Pharisee was inspired by Paul D. Duke, “Praying with a Sideward Glance,” The Christian Century 112 (1995): 923.
[3] David Lipscomb, On Civil Government: Its Origin, Mission, and Destiny, and the Christian’s Relation to It (Library of Radical Christian Discipleship—Stone-Campbell Series Book 4; First Kindle Ebook Edition, 2012), ebook loc. 2507-2509.
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