Sirach 35:12-14, 16-18 | 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18 | Luke 18:9-14

Almighty, everliving God, increase our faith, hope and charity.  Make us love what you command so that we may merit what you promise.  Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever, amen.

Any of us that have lived a long time know that relationships are one of the most important things we are engaged in in this life, and they’re difficult.  They weren’t made to be simple.  They were made to take us to a place of joy and ecstasy and then to the darkest place of confrontation with our shadow.  It’s no different, in terms of our human relationships, in a sense, from our relationship with God.  It is supposed to be as intimate and as real as our relationship with each other.  That was God’s plan, to reveal himself as an intimate, personal God.  Unfortunately, I spent most of my life not turning to God, asking him to reveal himself to me, but I went to my church, the Catholic Church, which was very effective in helping me know about him, told me who he was.  And then when I watched what the priest did in the parish, I figured, “Well, that’s what God does.”  That was risky, but I kind of gave it over to the priest that preached and the church that taught and didn’t think that much about spending time getting to know this personal God who claims to be my Father and my brother and my wisdom.  But that’s where I’ve spent my last ten years, now that I’m entering into my eighth decade.  The 70s were rich for me, because I was retired for those ten years, and I was able to wonder and ponder and listen and think and ask questions.  And the God I see now is so different than the God of even ten years ago.  The teaching is the same.  I haven’t found him to say something that just totally disregarded everything I learned, but the understanding has changed.  There’s been wisdom given, which is his promise.  

 So when you think about us being poor — blessed are the poor.  That’s part of the scriptures today.  It’s not anything about poverty.  It’s about admitting that we don’t know that we need something more than just our own mind and energy and strength to accomplish the things that we’re here to accomplish.  We’re needy, and the need might sound like, well, we never know what to do, so we ask God to tell us what to do.  At least that seems to be the way the church approaches it.  We don’t know enough about a moral situation, as far as the right answer.  So we go to the church, and the church will tell us, “Well, this is what you have to do,” without even fully knowing what all the circumstances are, because none of us can know all the circumstances and all the parts of a complicated, moral decision.  It’s difficult.  And so rather than look for the simple answers, what I’ve learned to do and what I think God’s plan has always been is, “Turn to me in your unknowing,” if that’s a word, “And let me give you the insight.  Let me give you the wisdom you need.”  And then you have this thing that the church teaches but doesn’t seem to lean on very much, and that is we have this God-given dignity and right to make our own choices, our own decisions when it comes to moral issues.  Most people have problems with their relationship with their religion or with God over moral issues, what we can do, what we can’t do, not so much over who God claims to be, because what he’s claiming is so mysterious that it can’t be understood logically anyway.  He’s always been here.  He’s the awesome, most complete, most powerful force in the world, and yet he said, “I’d like to stay with you and marry you and get to know you.”  It’s what?  You can’t do both of those things.  And then he says something that the church never, I think, quite said to me, and that was, “I’m not here to tell you what to do.  I’m here to show you what is, and I trust you to make the right decision.  I know you can make the right decision.  I’m here to help you do that, and it’s more than just wisdom that I’m giving you.  I’m giving you a power.” 

If you want to imagine: what is the power that God gives us?  What is the thing that we need most?  Well, let’s just underscore the word need first, because we know that sin entered the world, and sin is tricky.  Sin is really a disposition.  It’s not so much an action, but the best way to describe sins is certain actions are sinful, and other actions aren’t.  It’s more difficult to talk about intention or belief or faith, but instead of looking at sin as a list of no’s, let’s look at a disposition that might best be described as autonomy.  The first book of Genesis talks about sin in probably the healthiest, most effective way.  It’s not talking about just disobedience.  Yes, Adam and Eve disobeyed and ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  They broke the rule, but what were they doing?  They were caught in an illusion, a lie from some strange figure that was there saying, “That’s not really what God wants you to do.  He wants you to know everything.  He wants you to be strong.  He wants you to be tough.  So go ahead and ask God for the gift of this tree, which is the knowledge of good and evil, so that you’ll know what’s right and what’s wrong.”  Black and white, binary thinking, it’s what we all want.  It’s what the church gets caught in.  All religions get caught in that. This is good; this is bad.  That was the danger in their disobedience.  The act of disobedience was maybe typical of children, people unknowing.  You’re told not to do something.  Sometimes it makes you want to do it, but the thing was it’s about what they chose, because it sounded so good.  “I can be all that God wants me to be on my own, and he’ll be so pleased.”  I don’t know a person who doesn’t have a struggle with that idea.  It shows up all the time when something bad happens.  You say, “Well, no, I did some bad things in the past.  I’m being punished.”  Or something happens that’s good, and you say, “Well, it’s because I was praying all these days, and I did all this extra work, and I’m in a charitable institution.”  No, it’s not that kind of cause and effect kind of thing.  It’s not that simple.  Yeah, those things are partly true, partly false.  That’s the danger of that black and white, right and wrong autonomy.

So what we hear in the first reading then is a statement from God, and it’s so clear what he’s saying.  “I’m God, and you’re human.  Your humanity —” the word human and humus, which means earth, and humility are all connected.  “You are not enough.  You’re not enough.  I don’t expect you to be enough.  I don’t expect you to figure out everything on your own.  I don’t.  So I’m here to promise you that, if you long for me in your life to be a source of wisdom, I will be there 100 percent, and when you pray for something, if you believe that I will answer it, I will answer this prayer, and I’ll answer every prayer you ever ask, except that I know you.”  And he knows that, if he gave us the power to achieve anything we wanted by praying to God and asking him for it, and he would answer every prayer, we would be egomaniacs.  And that’s the great danger, too much self, too much spirit, not enough earth, not enough groundedness, not enough human.  So his promise is beautiful in the first reading, because it says, “I will always do this, always answer your prayer, and your prayer, when it leaves a hungry, longing heart, not someone who’s full of themselves, asking for more strength — that doesn’t work, because I’ll only give you what is good for you.”  But when the prayer doesn’t seem to be answered, it’s move — I love the image.  It’s like a force that’s going around and floating in the air until it’s going to come to its proper goal, and what is the goal?  Whatever you prayed for, the answer will be what’s best for you.  It’s that simple, what’s best for you.  What more would you want? 

Paul underscores, in the second reading, his dependence on God.  He had a pretty rotten past when you think about it.  He was a Pharisee and going around holding capes of men that were slaughtering Christians, believers in Christ, because they were the enemy, and he got through all of that because of what?  Because of God’s mercy, because of his desire to open his heart to who he really was and what he was really doing, and he accepted it.  He saw, “I’m so wrong.”  When we see the faults that we’ve made and we own then and then we ask for help, it’s going to be there in a way that’s spectacular.  So what a trauma that must have caused him as he was converted to Christianity.  He got through because of forgiveness, because of God’s mercy, because he was there to listen to his prayer, and he must have prayed, “Please, forgive me.”  And he was.  Another thing about Paul that’s so fascinating, he always had this one sting of the flesh that he couldn’t get rid of, and God took care of that.  How?  Not by removing it.  By saying, “My grace is enough for you.  You’ve got to learn to deal with that.”  

So then we go to the prayer in the gospel reading, two prayers.  I love these prayers.  I love the prayers, I should say, the guys.  One sits there, and the words of the scripture are so interesting.  He prays to himself.  Now, when I first used to read that, I thought, “Well, he’s whispering.”  No, he’s praying to himself.  He is the source of everything.  He is the righteous one.  He has made an effort, a sterling effort to do every rigid law, rule, fill it and make it go, because he wants to be better.  Why does he want to be better?  Well, maybe he thought, “God wants me to be better.”  I don’t think so.  He wants us not to sin and to turn to him, but we don’t have to be better to receive him.  We just have to want him and need him.  But here’s the interesting thing about the man, the Pharisee, sitting there, praying to himself, saying, “Thank God I’m not like the rest of these creepy, awful people.”  It says that he despised everyone.  Why would anyone despise everyone that’s struggling or trying?  Kind of psychology 101, whatever you think of yourself, however you see yourself is the way you see everybody else.  I don’t care how it works.  When you see yourself as a struggling, beautiful human being trying to do their best, trying to love, and you accept that, and you feel that you are valuable, you will see that same value in everybody else.  If you see yourself as nothing, as worthless, and you have to struggle and find ways to make yourself pleasing to the world, to God, that incessant desire to be better is so often an unfortunate, unsuccessful way of getting past self-hatred.  So here’s a man who’s struggling to be perfect, do the right thing, do everything that’s good, avoid everything bad, and he finds himself at a distance from everyone.  He’s alone, because he’s separate from God, from everyone, and then there’s a tax collector, the simplest, humblest, easiest thing for us to accept — I shouldn’t say easy.  For some it’s so hard, but because it’s in our nature, it is easy.  “Lord, I just wish I was better.  I’d like to be better.  I’d like to be better at relationships.  I’d like to be a nicer person, but I can’t do it on my own.”  So mercy is a request, not just to be forgiven but to be filled in an unworthy state with all the power, all the strength we need to be extraordinary.  But once we think that extraordinary self is somebody really special and better than the people around me, you’re in trouble.  Humility is a statement, when you read it in the dictionary, that says thinking of yourself as less than someone else.  It’s a little risky.  It’s about thinking of yourself as you really are.  

Father, you have shared with your people the obligation to teach who you are, to celebrate your presence within us, to worship you.  Bless all ministers, all churches that they can effectively awaken people to the beauty of your desire to directly communicate with us and to have this intimate relationship so we’ll find that the ultimate goal of all spiritual journeys is to come into a deep, personal connection where life and wisdom flows between us.  That’s our goal.  That’s our hope.  That’s what we believe in.  Amen.