What A Good Boy/Girl Am I! 10/24/04
a sermon by Rev. Rebecca Segers
Joel 2:21-27
Luke 18:9-14  

How many of you remember the nursery rhyme: “Little Jack Horner sat in a corner, eating a Christmas pie; He put in his thumb and pulled out a plum and said, ‘What a good boy am I!’”  This old poem reminds me of the Pharisee in our Scripture lesson today, which is all in twos: there are two characters, two attitudes, two lessons that Jesus tells his followers they are to learn.

Let’s start with the two characters: we have a Pharisee, a man of God who takes great pains to follow the letter of the law and who is prideful in his righteousness, and we have a tax collector, an Israelite who works for the Roman government, collecting taxes for the emperor, but probably also adding fees of his own into the mix, a common practice of people in his position, thereby stealing from his own countrymen and hated by them for it.

The Pharisee, Jesus tells us, is standing by himself.  He is separated from the crowd; Pharisees did this to maintain their purity before God.  By staying away from those who might be unclean, a Pharisee made sure of his own cleanliness.  So this Pharisee is taking a position that reflects his identity – he stands by himself.

The Pharisee begins his prayer with a call to God and what looks like thanksgiving.  “God, I thank you,” begins the man, but then his prayer continues in the first person.  “I thank you that I am not like other people.”  It is a prayer of thanksgiving, but a self-serving one.  The prayer thanks God for his own righteousness – that he is not like other people and then names with contempt those other people who he regards as sinners: “thieves, rogues, adulterers” and then in the final, crushing blow, he finishes with “or even like this tax collector.”  He is aware of the presence of the tax collector, but only as a blight on the landscape, something to be abhorred and avoided, not as another human being.

As the Pharisee’s prayer continues, so does his absorption with his own virtue.  He fasts twice a week and he tithes ten percent of his income.  These are both good and gracious things.  What is not good is the man’s own pride in them.  Doesn’t it remind you, too, of the old nursery rhyme, Little Jack Horner?  He’s sitting in a corner by himself, which probably means he’s being punished for something, yet “He stuck in his thumb, and pulled out a plum, and said, ‘What a good boy am I!’”  Little Jack Horner is like the Pharisee – it is all about him.  No matter what the circumstances, the pie, the reward, the delight all centers on him.

Next we come to the tax collector.  He is standing far off, on the outskirts of acceptable society, knowing that he has no place, but what is given him by God.  “He would not even look up to heaven,” the Scripture tells us, even though the accepted way to pray back in those days was to stand upright with your face and hands lifted to God on high.  The man cannot bear to bring himself to look toward God; he is too ashamed of his own sin and inadequacy.  An interesting aside is that this Scripture passage changed the way Christians pray.  The traditional way one prayed back then was not with head bowed and hands folded, but looking up to God: 1 Timothy 2:8 tells us, “the men should pray lifting up holy hands.”  The sinner’s bodily posture during this prayer, looking down and clasping hands to breast directly affected later Christian prayer practices, leading to the humble way we hold ourselves when we pray today.

The tax collector begins his prayer the same way that the Pharisee did, “God,” he cries out, but from that moment on the prayer is completely different.  “Have mercy to me, a sinner!” he says.  “Have mercy to me, a sinner!”  The tax collector is self-describing.  No one else is calling him a sinner, at least not overtly.  He is aware of his own weakness, his own inadequacies, his own failings.  He is taking responsibility for his actions and his inactions and asking God to judge him with a light hand.

So there are our two characters: the Pharisee and the tax collector.  Their two attitudes are seen in their prayers: the Pharisee’s is proud in his own accomplishments; the tax collector’s only begs for grace.  The Pharisee asks nothing before God; the Tax Collector boasts nothing.

Let’s look at the two lessons that Jesus wants his disciples to learn.  The parable is sandwiched with an opening and a closing statement.  In the beginning, the Bible says, Jesus tells this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.  This sounds like the Pharisees in general, and certainly the example Jesus gives in the parable in a Pharisee, but usually Luke is more overt when he is making that particular point, so I think we can conclude that Jesus is simply talking about ordinary folk – disciples and believers would have been just as susceptible as Pharisees to self-aggrandizement.  As we must also confess that there are days when we feel that we are righteous, too.  That we do a good job leading a Christian life and are deserving of praise and recognition.

So the first sin that we are to be aware of is the sin of pride.  The idea that because of anything that we do, we are better than others, more deserving than others, more righteous than others.  We all know this and quite often can even catch ourselves.  It’s easy to look at how hard we worked on the Mission Church Fair, or as we move into Stewardship season, how much we tithe, or our regular attendance at church, or our participation in the choir, the UPW, the Brunch Bunch, in fixing up the manse or the church building, and think, “hey, I’m a good person.  I’m living the way God wants me to live,” and let it go at that.  But we need to really look at those feelings, and how they lead to actions or inactions.

This is Jesus ’ second point: he is telling the story to people who consider themselves righteous, number one, but secondly, to people who regard others with contempt.  Why is the Pharisee’s prayer unacceptable?  Not simply because of his pride in his own life, but because of his inability to empathize with another’s.  This is his real sin: his inability to perceive others as human, as like him, as a person in a world community of which he is a part.  He sees the Pharisee and is put off, is disgusted, is appalled by him.  He does not see a person like himself, but the opposite of himself.  A nothing, a waste, a sinner.

You see, the nature of grace is paradoxical: it can only be received by those who have learned compassion for others.  Grace embodies the nature of mercy and forgiveness.  The Pharisee had enough religion to be virtuous, but not enough to be humble.  As a result, his religion drove him away from the tax collector instead of toward him.

Vincent Jones cannot forget the first time he saw the homeless man.  He was so skinny and weak, he was holding up his pants with one hand and holding onto the wall with another.  A police officer was yelling at him, telling him he had to leave the small square of sidewalk that he called home.

Vincent Jones is a deliveryman in New York City and that day, he didn’t stop – he kept right on going past the homeless man and about his business, but later something drew him back to look for him.  Something he can’t explain – now he just says, “The look on that man’s face.”

When he saw him the second time, the man whose name is Raymond Lawrence , asked Vincent for a quarter.  Vincent gave him two.  He also bought him a bacon and egg sandwich and a cup of coffee.  His only request: that the man, please, not spend the money on alcohol.  Then he walked away for a second time; sure he would never him again.  That was four years ago.

As Vincent ’s route brought him through the neighborhood time and time again, he began to develop a relationship with Raymond .  He found out things about him, like that he had been in the Navy, had lived as far away as Alaska and had once been a talented jazz pianist.  He also learned that Raymond had a family that he had not seen in years.

Vincent worried about the homeless man.  After years of living on the street, he was sick and dirty.  He was often beaten and robbed by other street people.  One winter, his shoes were stolen and his toes became frostbitten.  He was taken to the hospital where surgeons operated and the city gave him a shiny new wheelchair, but within a week it was stolen, too.

There were weeks where Vincent thought, “I am going to watch this man die out here.”  Eventually that thought was more than he could bear; so he decided to help him find his way back home.

Years of alcoholism had scarred Raymond ’s memory, but he gave Vincent clues here and there.  Using them, Vincent found a sister living in New York City who regularly used a bus stop not far from Raymond ’s spot on the sidewalk.  He also discovered a sister in Boston , who gave him Raymond ’s mother’s phone number in a small town in Virginia not far from where Raymond had been raised.  Vincent contacted her and found that she had not heard from her son in more than three years.

One morning soon after that, Vincent walked up to Raymond sitting on his patch of sidewalk.  He held out a cellphone and told the homeless man that his mother was on the other end of the line.  Raymond took the phone, tears welling up in his eyes and said into it, “Is this really my mother?”

A woman’s voice, crying, shot back: “On October 3, 1948, they handed me a baby and told me it was you, so I guess it’s your mother, Raymond .”

That was the turning point.

Vincent was so excited he wanted to drive Raymond to Virginia right then and there.  But first he got him a haircut and a new set of clothes and a dinner of baked chicken, corn, potatoes and peas.

The next day, Vincent and Raymond took off for Virginia .  They drove ten hours straight and it was evening when they arrived at the small, white-shingled house where Raymond ’s mother lived.  The car stopped in front and she came out the front door with tears streaming down her face.  Her son walked up to the porch; she reached out her arms and hugged him for all she was worth.  For all the years he was missing, she says she looked for him wherever she went.  “It’s a wonder I wasn’t killed,” she declares, “because every time saw a skinny little man walking along the side of the road or down the street, I would turn and look real hard and I would nearly run into something and kill myself.”

Vincent saw Raymond .  Saw him not as just another body in the way, but as a human being.  Saw him not as the Pharisee saw the tax collector – “There but for the grace of God go I” – but as a person in his own right.  Saw him not as someone other, but as someone connected, someone like, someone who needed and deserved the care and attention that Vincent deserved himself.

How many of us can say the same?  How many of us avoid the eyes of the person begging on the street, rather than looking into them and seeing their humanity?  How many of us don’t go visit the cantankerous relative who desperately needs our company?  How many of us avoid the friend with the child who’s out of control?  How many of us take the easy way out and hang out with people who are just like us – from the color of their skin to the dollars in their bank account to their political affiliations to their religious beliefs?  How many of us just plain don’t want to face people who are different because we might find out that they are not?  And we don’t want to admit that we are all the sinner, the tax collector, the one who so desperately longs for and needs God’s mercy and understanding?

When we do this – and we all do – we are hurting no one but ourselves.  For, as always in the kingdom of heaven, dramatic reversal is the norm.  The one who assumes his own righteousness is found to be unrighteousness, the one who assumes his own unrighteousness is found to be righteous.  In this passage, Luke is doing what he so often does: explaining that Jesus came not to call the righteous, but to call sinners to repentance.  And he takes great pains to identify the true basis for righteousness and distinguish it from misplaced pride in obedience to God’s commandments.

To this end, Luke closes the passage with Jesus reiterating the purpose of it.  Remember, he told us at the opening that this parable was for “some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.”  The bookend to that statement is the phrase Jesus closes with: “all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

In case we thought that Jesus was only talking to and about the Pharisees in the parable, he clears up that issue right here.  Jesus is clearly addressing not only one group, but everyone.  All of us.  And all of us need to be addressed on this issue.  Because the fact of the matter is, humility is not a human strong point.  Have you ever heard the definition of humility: “a quality that once you know you’ve got it, you’ve lost it.”

Humility was something Vincent managed to maintain in reference to Raymond .  He cared about him to the point that he was no longer “other,” but was “the same, part of, friend, family.”  Wouldn’t God love it if we all could manage to look at one another with eyes of family, brother and sister, friend?

Vincent and Raymond ’s story doesn’t end with the one dropping off the other at his mother’s door a little over a year ago.  No, Vincent and a New York Times reporter went back to Virginia a year later to check on Raymond and see how he was doing.

Some things hadn’t changed much at all in the year since they’d seen each other.  Raymond was still skinny as a beanpole.  He still gets uncomfortably quiet if you delve too much into the past.  He still walks slowly and with a limp because of the toes he lost to frostbite while living on the streets of Manhattan .

But some things have changed a lot.  He has a home now: a tiny bedroom off the living room in his mother’s house.  And he has not had a drink of alcohol – even though, like most alcoholics, he feels the urge to drink almost every day.  He has learned to drive and scored a perfect 100% on his Virginia driver’s license exam.  But the biggest change is that Raymond is playing the piano again.  At first his fingers trembled, his memory failed him, he was nervous and insecure.  But now, his playing is beautiful and poetic and strong.  The tiny living room in his mother’s house is dwarfed by two large keyboards and two bulky black amplifiers that take up more room than the couch.  “If I didn’t stop him,” his mother jokes, “ Raymond would have keyboards stacked up to the ceiling in here!”  He has a job, too, directly connected to his beloved piano, as assistant music director at a nearby church and has not missed a service since he began.

And as Raymond and Vincent saw one another again, the ex-homeless man, who rarely lets anyone see how he feels, could hardly wait to give his friend a big hug as he squeezed through the door.  Vincent just grinned, saying, “Look at you, Raymond .  You look fine!”

The two men sat together and began to talk like the old friends that they regard each other as, while any troubles they’ve had seemed to slip away and disappear.  They talked about deer hunting and horse racing and truck driving.  They laughed and joked and smiled – something Raymond did little of for the years he was on the street.

And then, as he always loves to do when company comes over, Raymond sat down to play the piano.  The year before, at church, Vincent had asked Raymond to play his favorite hymn, “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior.”  Raymond remembered and began to play it once more for his friend, his eyes shut as if in a trance.

Let us remember that Jesus passes not over any of us.  And as we are called to live out our lives as his eyes and ears and mouth and hands on this earth, we, too, are not to pass over others, but to see them, to recognize them, to love them, to treat them as brothers and sisters.  Without judgment and with love, with the humility of the tax collector and the determination of the widow who came before the unjust judge, we are called to pray without ceasing and to take that prayer into action in our lives.

Then we will not need to cry out, “O what a good boy, O what a good girl am I,” for the Lord will see it and know it and smile upon it.  Amen.