Written by For the second Sunday running our Gospel reading today contains Jesus’ teaching on prayer. Last Sunday he encouraged us to be persistent in placing our needs before God. Today he speaks of the attitude he wants us to have when approaching God in prayer.
He does this by telling a little story about how two Jewish people – a Pharisee and a Collector of Taxes – went about praying when they entered the Temple. When first told, this story would have left the Pharisees furious and tax collectors consoled.
Pharisees in Judaism were good people, God fearing, conscientious, law-abiding and devout and who had distinctive practices of prayer, fasting, almsgiving and tithing (donating a tenth of their income). However, what annoyed Jesus about them was their belief that being fastidious in their religious observance they deserved God’s favour. To Jesus they appeared to have little need of God other than for God to recognise their goodness.
In his praying, the Pharisee in the story focusing on himself, telling God how good he, the Pharisee, is. He’s proud of performing his religious and moral duties. He does not need to ask God for anything. He does not need God – God just needs more of him. Furthermore, his prayer is elitist and judgmental, looking down on the tax collector behind him and declaring ’Thank God I am better than him’.
His prayer calls to mind the nursery-rhyme about the equally self-satisfied and smug Little Jack Horner who
… sat in the corner, eating a Christmas pie;
He put in his thumb, and pulled out a plum, and said ‘What a good boy am I!’
The other person in the story is a tax collector. Tax agents in first century Palestine collected taxes from fellow Jews for the Roman government. They were despised by fellow Jews and the Pharisees, in particular, avoided them. Nevertheless, some of them were open to Jesus’ message and he welcomed them into his new community (the Kingdom of God). Jesus ate with them and even appointed one, Matthew, as one of his 12 apostles.
The way this tax collector approached God in worship is how Jesus wants us also to approach God. Unlike the Pharisee, we are to be aware of our shortcomings, not our virtues, and approach God in a spirit of humility. This required attitude is encapsulated in the tax collector’s posture and simple prayer: ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner’. Unlike the Pharisee, he stands far off in the Temple with his arms crossed over the chest and eyes cast downward. He strikes his breast, a Middle-Eastern gesture which people use only in cases of extreme anguish. (We use the same gesture at the beginning of Mass when we make our Act of Penance.) This man is fully aware of his short-comings, feeling he has no right to expect anything from God other than plead for mercy.
This is how Jesus wants us to approach God – to have a humble view of ourselves and an awareness of our need for God’s help. This attitude, he says, will be ‘exalted’ i.e. be viewed acceptable (or ‘righteous’) by God; and, in the words of today’s Psalm, ‘pierces the clouds’.
The short prayer of the tax collector is one that any of us can say: ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner’. If we do nothing else by way of prayer in the whole of our day, whispering those words randomly at any hour puts us shoulder to shoulder with the hero in the Gospel story.
The story is also a cautionary tale about how we can fall into the same trap as the Pharisee.
For instance, it’s easy to think that if we keep the laws of our religion that we are entitled to expect something from God in return. If you’ve lived what might be called a ‘good life’ it is easy to expect that God should spare you the tragedies and disasters that commonly strike others. With us, there can be no ‘quid pro quo’ with God … we cannot bargain with God or earn God’s favour, as the Pharisee in the story expected. With te tax collector we can only say: ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner’.
Michael Campion
Holy Name, Jesmond
27 October 2022
Sunday Mass: Saturday 4pm, Sunday 10am 