He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 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. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ 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!’ I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Luke 18:9-14)
Beginning this Sunday, I and Jeff Groat will be leading a special, five-week Sunday School class on prayer. You can see the actual advertisement and description of this study further down in this email, so I won’t try to sell you on it here. I can’t help but notice, however, how Providential our gospel selection is for today, because this is one of those interesting passages about prayer. In it, we encounter a good prayer and a bad prayer. The good is marked by its humility, its meekness before the Lord. The bad by its arrogance and self-aggrandizing efforts. Yet the thing that is most interesting to me isn’t that there is good prayer and bad prayer (I mean, anyone who has been in a church long enough knows how “prayer requests” are sometimes just fancy ways of spreading gossip, right?), but rather that the tax collector – though humbled by his sinful, broken life – still has the wits and wisdom to come before God is prayer. I suspect, in fact, that the worst prayer is the one that goes unspoken because we feel to insecure, too self-conscious, too overly-humble to “bother” God with it. Though this tax collector is, indeed, a sinful man and, undoubtedly, he was not looking forward to this prayer, he still gathered up the courage to go before God.
I hope, as we enter this Lent – whose sermon series is titled “A Praying Lent” – that you will find yourself gathering up your own courage to pray more and more. And, of course, should you just feel confused about prayer and want to learn more, well, “The Two Jeffs” are here to help. (Oh, dangit, I tried to sell you on this study after all!).
Amen.
