SPEAKER_01: A reading from Joel.
SPEAKER_01: O children of Zion, be glad and rejoice in the Lord your God, for he has given the early rain for your vindication.
SPEAKER_01: He has poured down for you abundant rain, the early and the later rain as before.
SPEAKER_01: The threshing floor shall be full of grain, the bat shall overflow with wine and oil.
SPEAKER_01: I will repay you for the years that the swarming locusts had eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army which I sent against you.
SPEAKER_01: You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God, who has dealt you who has dealt wondrously with you.
SPEAKER_01: And my people shall never again be put to shame.
SPEAKER_01: You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I, the Lord, am your God, and there is no other.
SPEAKER_01: And my people shall never again be put to shame.
SPEAKER_01: Then afterwards I will pour out my spirit on all flesh.
SPEAKER_01: Your sons and your daughters shall prophecy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions.
SPEAKER_01: Even on the male and female slaves in those days I will pour out my spirit, I will show portents in the heaven and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke, the sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes.
SPEAKER_01: Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved, for in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the Lord has said, and among the survivals shall be those whom the Lord calls.
SPEAKER_01: The word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: And only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.
SPEAKER_02: At my first defense, no one came to support me, but all deserted me.
SPEAKER_02: May it not be counted against them.
SPEAKER_02: But the Lord stood by me and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed, and all the Gentiles might hear it.
SPEAKER_02: So I was rescued from the lion's mouth.
SPEAKER_02: The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and save me.
SPEAKER_02: For this heavenly kingdom to him be the glory for ever and ever.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: The word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: The holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to Luke.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus told his parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.
SPEAKER_00: Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.
SPEAKER_00: 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.
SPEAKER_00: I fast twice a week.
SPEAKER_00: I give a tenth of all my income.
SPEAKER_00: 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.
SPEAKER_00: I tell you, this man went home to his home justified rather than the other.
SPEAKER_00: For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.
SPEAKER_00: The Gospel of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: There's a missing verse here, I think, which is when the Pharisee says he gives a tenth of all his income, Jesus would say, Good job returning in your pledge card.
SPEAKER_00: That got left down.
SPEAKER_00: But keep in mind that, because as here we are finished mentioning up Steward's season, it's a good message.
SPEAKER_00: Honestly, we hear this, and uh I think there's a really interesting reaction, depending on how long you've been going to church, we often hear this backward.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, usually you hear Pharisee and you immediately think, oh, that's one of the bad guys, that's one of those hypocritical judgmental people.
SPEAKER_00: Curiously enough, um, that is not how people at Jesus' day would have heard the parable.
SPEAKER_00: Further uh curiosity is that the Barna Group, which is sort of a think tink that amalgams like huge data for these uh nationwide studies, did a study ten years ago and they've revisited it, uh which is why is it that the church in America is really considered uh irrelevant by people who are under the age of 50?
SPEAKER_00: And the top two reasons, I don't know if you know this, are number one, Christians are considered to be judgmental, and number two, to be considered hypocritical.
SPEAKER_00: The third reason, interestingly enough, is that they're considered not just uh homophobic but homo haters.
SPEAKER_00: And that comes back to number one, being judgmental.
SPEAKER_00: And this data is still the case ten years later.
SPEAKER_00: They've revisited this.
SPEAKER_00: Um it's interesting because you can read this story and say, ah, listen to that self-righteous Pharisee and be all upset.
SPEAKER_00: And I would tell you that's probably the dominant interpretation of this passage that I was raised with, and yet people perceive the church to be exactly that way.
SPEAKER_00: It's as if we've received this reading and continue to hold on to it and live into it.
SPEAKER_00: At the time of Jesus, maybe this is helpful to hear, um, Pharisees were the people who really went over and above.
SPEAKER_00: So this is kind of dangerous to say, but the Pharisee is like somebody who's wearing one of these collars.
SPEAKER_00: They're recognizable, and the expectation is they'll be the ones to help you.
SPEAKER_00: So, just a little bit about it, when you hear the Pharisee gives a tenth, you didn't have to give a tenth.
SPEAKER_00: They're not have to.
SPEAKER_00: Pharisees gave a tenth of their stuff to make up for people who gave no stuff.
SPEAKER_00: This is really interesting.
SPEAKER_00: Um, our Jewish brothers and sisters don't believe in just individual accountability, they believe in communal accountability.
SPEAKER_00: So they believe that God is interested not just in what you do in your private life, but what the people does.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, they went over above to kind of be an insurance policy for people who gave nothing.
SPEAKER_00: These are people who didn't just do sacrifices, these are people who legislated every aspect of living because they thought God cared about every aspect of living.
SPEAKER_00: So maybe you've heard this, there's 613 rules in Judaism.
SPEAKER_00: 613.
SPEAKER_00: That's in Pharisaic Judaism.
SPEAKER_00: At the time of Jesus, there were plenty of people who had five rules, and they evolved around, they revolved around when you offered sacrifices at the temple.
SPEAKER_00: That was what religion was.
SPEAKER_00: So these people said that's not enough.
SPEAKER_00: We want relationship with God to affect how we treat our neighbors and how we treat our cattle and even how we wash our dishes.
SPEAKER_00: These were religious innovators.
SPEAKER_00: Tax collectors, on the other hand, well, I don't know if that's much different than is now.
SPEAKER_00: Very few people are like, when I grow up, I'm gonna be a tax collector.
SPEAKER_00: What do you do for work?
SPEAKER_00: I collect taxes.
SPEAKER_00: Um, usually you say things like, Well, I deal with numbers.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a popular uh thing to come out with at a party.
SPEAKER_00: And actually, um, at the time of Jesus as well, tax collectors didn't just have this reputation of being like, maybe not the most advised profession.
SPEAKER_00: They had the reputation of being literal thieves who could extort whatever they could out of you and keep it.
SPEAKER_00: And they even had goons who could physically beat you up.
SPEAKER_00: Beyond that, uh, tax collectors served the government the Jewish people hated.
SPEAKER_00: The money itself had pictures of idolatry on it, pictures of the Caesar who declared himself to be a god.
SPEAKER_00: If you were Jewish, it was really kind of awful to even touch the coins.
SPEAKER_00: And when they collected that money, they were supporting this empire that threatened over and over and over again to destroy the sanctity of the temple by sneaking in images of the emperor.
SPEAKER_00: Uh so tax collectors were kind of like Benedict Arnold thieves who were involved in a Ponzi scheme.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is really sort of the deal.
SPEAKER_00: And not just some, I mean, that was in general how these people were approached.
SPEAKER_00: Another curious thing is that we have copies of prayers, and maybe it's helpful for you to know that in general, even as Christians, we didn't start praying like this until the Middle Ages.
SPEAKER_00: Our Jewish brothers and sisters and the earliest Christians prayed standing up with their head up, expecting God to answer their prayers with their arms outstretched.
SPEAKER_00: So it's not that the tax collector has got this bowed piety that uh was normalized.
SPEAKER_00: This would be really, really surprising for people at the time of Jesus that anybody would pray with their head down, hitting their chest.
SPEAKER_00: We've got other written prayers in which this is the kind of the way we pray, where we say, God, I'm really grateful.
SPEAKER_00: And if we're honest, don't we often pray this way?
SPEAKER_00: And I don't, I'm not convinced it's wrong.
SPEAKER_00: I am really grateful I have an education and I don't have school loans.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, God, for that.
SPEAKER_00: I am really, really grateful that um, boy, I don't have a drug addiction.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm really grateful for that because I used to be a chaplain in a rehab home.
SPEAKER_00: So that was brought to my mind over and over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: I'm really grateful that um my parents are still involved in my life.
SPEAKER_00: I guess we could say, God, I'm I'm I'm glad.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the the the the other way we could frame that is, God, I'm I'm really glad that, hey, I'm not a product of a broken home.
SPEAKER_00: And God, I'm I'm glad I'm not from a county in which um eighth grade education was what I could expect.
SPEAKER_00: That's really what the Pharisee does.
SPEAKER_00: And then he sees that is not a person, he sees a label.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, God, I'm really glad I'm not that label.
SPEAKER_00: I'm really glad I'm not that guy who is an institutionalized thief in a Ponzi scheme.
SPEAKER_00: And then the tax collector just says, God have mercy on me, a sinner.
SPEAKER_00: What Jesus doesn't tell you is a couple of things that I think are really important.
SPEAKER_00: What happens if these people come back to the temple tomorrow and pray identical prayers, but don't change anything about what they do?
SPEAKER_00: What if the story repeats itself over and over and over and over again?
SPEAKER_00: Which prayer would you rather be?
SPEAKER_00: Which prayer would God rather have us be?
SPEAKER_00: So imagine the Pharisee continues to not steal or adulter and give a tenth of his stuff, and the tax collector goes and lives into his reputation and cheats and steals and represents this Ponzi scheme and then comes back to church and says, God, I'm sorry, have mercy on me.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know how it plays out.
SPEAKER_00: We just sort of know this one moment.
SPEAKER_00: And I think what's really interesting about this is Jesus says the tax collector is the one who goes home justified.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not sure he's completely right.
SPEAKER_00: Because don't you see the Pharisee has already justified himself.
SPEAKER_00: So he went home justified too.
SPEAKER_00: The question is, who gives the justification?
SPEAKER_00: And I think this maybe is an invitation, frankly, into the most fundamental kind of stewardship, and honestly, into spiritual discipline and ways we ought to consider praying.
SPEAKER_00: I say that with a little bit of chagrin because this is really, really hard work.
SPEAKER_00: And um, if it's okay to be a little bit confessional, um I mentioned to you last week this vignette from my own prayer life in which uh I was praying for an outcome for a particular woman who had cancer, and I heard God say back to me, like, why do you get to pick what happens to her?
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: And I think this is really interesting to hear the second story which happens in prayer, in which uh the Pharisee is essentially saying, I'm glad I'm not this and this and this, which I want to tell you again, I think is valid.
SPEAKER_00: On the other hand, I often have these prayer concerns for other people where I do exactly that.
SPEAKER_00: I don't phrase it this way, but I do exactly this sort of business, like God help my kid make good grades.
SPEAKER_00: I'm really grateful I didn't make B's or C's in high school.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this becomes this really interesting thing because if we're not careful about it, we have these very nice noble concerns that all of a sudden we wrap ourselves up in and they become judgment.
SPEAKER_00: There's a really old diagram uh from the Orthodox Church, and we often um don't quite get this, uh, but but I think it's helpful.
SPEAKER_00: I wish I'd drawn it.
SPEAKER_00: But as a geometry person, um the way they visualize prayer and relationships with folk is imagine in the middle that's orthocenter of an equilateral triangle, so that's equidistant from each vertice, is you, the self God made you to be.
SPEAKER_00: And then the distance to each vertice from the center is always the same.
SPEAKER_00: And the three relationships our Orthodox brothers and sisters have been aware of for a long time are God, others, and who God made you to be.
SPEAKER_00: So at any point, the distance you are from the self God imagines you to be is equal to the distance you are from God, and equal to the distance you are from your neighbor.
SPEAKER_00: That means the closer you get to God, the closer you must also get to your neighbor and to the self God made you to be.
SPEAKER_00: But this old and robust faith says, if you really grow close to your neighbor, you have in fact come closer to God, whether you meant to or not.
SPEAKER_00: What's interesting, I think, is when we do this thing that I think we can do with genuine gratitude.
SPEAKER_00: And again, I don't think it's judgmental having worked with the drug addicts to say, God, I'm grateful and have that in my life.
SPEAKER_00: I think it becomes dangerous when that prevents me from looking at somebody who struggles with drug addiction like a human being.
SPEAKER_00: And when I distance myself from somebody that way, the orthodox diagram says, I've actually retreated from God.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know if the tax collector can hear the Pharisees' prayer.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know.
SPEAKER_00: But this week I'm imagining that he can.
SPEAKER_00: And there's this really interesting thing that good spiritual people do.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not one of them, I'm going to tell you, but I've read it.
SPEAKER_00: You can read it in St.
SPEAKER_00: Ignatius Loyola's spiritual exercises, and he says, as a spiritual discipline, what one ought to do if one wants to grow closer to God and others and their true self, the one that God has in mind.
SPEAKER_00: Whenever somebody says something to you, you should try to hear it in the best possible way.
SPEAKER_00: Even if they say, I hate you.
SPEAKER_00: Now that sounds funny, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00: But this is the work of St.
SPEAKER_00: Ignatius Loyola, is when somebody says something hateful that we try to hear it in the best possible way.
SPEAKER_00: What can that mean?
SPEAKER_00: I think what that means is we actually spend a little time trying to imagine the context in which that comes.
SPEAKER_00: The question we start to ask is, God, I'm so glad I'm not a tax collector, and I wonder why this person is.
SPEAKER_00: I wonder if this was their only choice.
SPEAKER_00: I wonder if they grew up in a broken home.
SPEAKER_00: I wonder if they found themselves in debt.
SPEAKER_00: I wonder if they didn't have a positive male role model in their life, and so they gravitated toward a gang.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, really, this step is about having some compassion for the things that we can't see.
SPEAKER_00: And instead of living into judgment, we open some space for wonder.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I think I've said that a little bit wrong, and I want you to hear.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we hear that Christians, we have this problem, uh, and I said it in the data, the Christians come across as judgmental.
SPEAKER_00: I want to tell you, I didn't think God is actually worried about us being judgmental at all.
SPEAKER_00: I think what God's worried about is us condemning one another.
SPEAKER_00: We're an engineering parish, and I'll tell you how diverse we are.
SPEAKER_00: I had a dinner at my home last year and there were eight people there.
SPEAKER_00: This is the most diverse parish I think I've ever been a part of, because there were seven engineers from seven different fields.
SPEAKER_00: How diverse is that, right?
SPEAKER_00: Environmental, mechanical, uh, aerospace, electric, there was the systems engineer, and then two others, and I can't remember what kind.
SPEAKER_00: That's the kind of place that we, this is the community we live in, this is part of our birthright, whether we were born here or not, that we are supposed to think analytically.
SPEAKER_00: The problem is when we take that analysis and then attach it to worthiness, well, then we might find ourselves distancing ourselves from our neighbor, which results in us distancing ourselves from well, ourselves and from God.
SPEAKER_00: And I wonder if that isn't the invitation we're being offered today, is when we would be genuinely and justifiably upset and hurt by somebody to hold out a little bit of curiosity instead of condemnation.
SPEAKER_00: I think we can judge, we can analyze, and still make the step to curiosity instead of condemnation.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure God would be disappointed if we did that.
SPEAKER_00: I just think usually we wrap our own opinions up so tightly with dignity and worthiness in relationship that we forget this wonderful quote from George H.
SPEAKER_00: W.
SPEAKER_00: Bush.
SPEAKER_00: I have a lot of opinions, but some of them are very strong.
SPEAKER_00: I often disagree with myself.
SPEAKER_00: I actually really, really love that quote.
SPEAKER_00: I really love that quote.
SPEAKER_00: And because it has this invitation to repentance and consideration, and that we can go to a place of judgment and then back off if we allow curiosity in, so that we don't enter into a place of condemnation.
SPEAKER_00: And boy, I wonder if that wouldn't change the way we pray.
SPEAKER_00: What if instead of just asking God that so-and-so finish high school and get a 1700 on the SAT, we actually in God's presence started to imagine what it's like to carry the burdens that they carry instead of judging the way they carry them?
SPEAKER_00: What if we said, God, I don't even know if I can imagine that.
SPEAKER_00: Could you trigger my imagination so I could hold a place of curiosity for my brother or my sister?
SPEAKER_00: And if you want something tactile to do, this is really interesting.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I don't know if you do it to somebody you don't know.
SPEAKER_00: But um the surest way to help us build a bridge with somebody that we're sitting in condemnation of is to touch them for 40 seconds.
SPEAKER_00: If you've got a timer and you're looking at the timer, it still works just as well as if you are thinking about it.
SPEAKER_00: For example, if there's somebody you're prejudiced against.
SPEAKER_00: Because of their religion or skin color or XYZ, and you hold their hand for 40 seconds, all the research says after 40 seconds you start to release oxytocin and serotonin, and that's what builds bridges.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes husbands and wives hug and make up.
SPEAKER_00: 40 second minimum.
SPEAKER_00: So if you're ever wondering, why doesn't it feel as good as it used to?
SPEAKER_00: Stay longer.
SPEAKER_00: If you really want to help, the more surface area, the better.
SPEAKER_00: So don't hold hands like so.
SPEAKER_00: Interlace your fingers.
SPEAKER_00: Wouldn't it be interesting?
SPEAKER_00: I know this would be kooky, but to come back to the story last week when these people came to evaluate my spirituality to make sure it was like theirs when they came to ask me what I thought about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, I'm wondering if I could hold your hand for 40 seconds before we keep talking.
SPEAKER_00: I know it's funny because nobody does it, but what if we did?
SPEAKER_00: What if we decided before we were going to disagree that we were going to actually be united together?
SPEAKER_00: What if we decided that actually this contact was so important we could do it and disagree and do it again?
SPEAKER_00: Because the truth is at the end of the day, we have more in common as human beings than we have apart.
SPEAKER_00: Now I think this is really interesting, and I feel like I have to slip in one final thought here because we're talking about prayer and other people.
SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, I was invited to represent, I was really like a fish out of water here, uh, which is a great experience.
SPEAKER_00: I was invited to represent the Episcopal Church at the transgender unity banquet in Houston.
SPEAKER_00: So this is a room full of essentially transgender people, and there's about 12 Episcopal priests there.
SPEAKER_00: And um, I'm just not used to being the minority in the room, I'm going to tell you, and I was.
SPEAKER_00: And it was really fascinating.
SPEAKER_00: Unlike other galas I go to, it was not a fundraising event.
SPEAKER_00: They were giving awards for people who helped essentially um make uh make transgender folk uh well, like workable and employable and not dismissible uh because of those choices.
SPEAKER_00: And the speakers got up and they said, you know, we're not really talking about transgender rights.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, we're talking about human rights.
SPEAKER_00: And that was a really interesting statement.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not slow on the uptake, I've got to tell you, as your clergy person, I'm really slow.
SPEAKER_00: But going there and being in a room of people in which I knew I was the minority and hearing them say, this really isn't even just about us.
SPEAKER_00: This is about human rights.
SPEAKER_00: Boy, it was so insightful.
SPEAKER_00: And I think it was exactly why Jesus told this parable.
SPEAKER_00: This parable is not about tax collectors' rights or Pharisees' rights.
SPEAKER_00: This parable is about human rights, or maybe even better than human rights.
SPEAKER_00: This is about how we can have common humanity.
SPEAKER_00: The truth is, I know this about myself when I move out of condemnation in my own life.
SPEAKER_00: The things I do that are bad, I didn't do them to be bad.
SPEAKER_00: I did them because it was the best thinking I had at the time, which wasn't very good, I'll admit.
SPEAKER_00: But at the time, I wasn't thinking, how can I make God angry?
SPEAKER_00: I might be just wasn't even thinking.
SPEAKER_00: And I wonder if we couldn't think about other folk that way, if we couldn't start to think about ourselves that way.
SPEAKER_00: See, that's where the triangle comes together, right?
SPEAKER_00: If we extend others' compassion, we can extend it to ourselves, and vice versa, and then all of a sudden we end up a little bit closer to God, in prayer, whether we're talking or not, whether we're in church or not.
SPEAKER_00: So I invite you this stewardship week to be good stewards of the curiosity God has given us naturally, the curiosity we learned in school and apply in our vocation and profession.
SPEAKER_00: Be curious about your neighbor, especially when they make you mad.