Audio
[This audio file has been edited since audio and written styles are not the same but very different ways of communication.]
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
We are beginning our serious preparation for Great Lent. Every year when we encounter the scene of the publican and the Pharisee in the Temple, we know that Great Lent will begin very soon. Nevertheless, it is important for us to remember that even if we hear this parable about the Publican and the Pharisee every year, this particular parable applies to us every day of the year, and not just once a year. It is given to us by the Church, by the Lord, in order to help us to keep aware of ourselves.
When the Pharisee in the Temple is speaking today about how he has observed the Law, and about how he has kept the fast, he is not completely wrong. Observing the Law and keeping the fast is what God asks us to do. The trouble arises here because he is inflating himself, and saying, in effect : “I am so good because I am doing these things”. He makes it even worse when he says : “I am not like other men” (i.e. I am better than other people). When we do that, every other good thing that we have done becomes dust (and maybe something worse). Obeying the Law, caring for the poor, and fasting on a regular basis that the Pharisee is talking about, are things which the Lord directs us to do. On the one hand, they are a response of love and an offering of love to the Lord. On the other hand, they are an action which keeps our hearts in balance, and keeps our lives in the proper focus.
If we are fasting on a regular basis as we have always done (these fasts are forever in our history – even before the New Testament), then we are offering to the Lord our stopping of the intake of food (or at least the stopping of certain sorts of food). Besides this, it is something that is good for our bodies.
I will make a parenthesis here about fasting. How do we fast these days ? Fasting is too easily becoming a special sort of “diet that is good for the body”. We can delude ourselves into thinking that the Church is so wise to do this sort of fasting because it is good for the body, and so forth. When we stop talking about fasting as an offering to the Lord, it becomes “me-centered”. If I am going to do this fasting (or abstinence of some sort) only because it is good for my body, and not because I am offering this abstinence to the Lord, then I am out of focus. Certainly, the Lord wants us to do things that are good for our bodies, because He created us to be healthy. He did not create us to be unhealthy and sick all the time. However, He also created us to keep things in balance and in focus. Even though fast is good for my body, that is not the first reason why I am fasting (although it is a nice by-product). The first reason I am offering a fast or an abstinence from certain foods is that I want to be pleasing to the Lord. Offering to Him this act of not eating (when almost my whole life can otherwise be pre-occupied with eating) is an attempt to take the emphasis off “me”, and to put the emphasis on the Lord instead, where it should be. The not-eating, and the doing of good works for people who need help and support of one sort or another, feeding the hungry and visiting the sick, and so forth, are all expressions of the love of God. These actions are good, and that is how a Christian must live. However, they always have to be undertaken not on the basis of “me” but on the basis of the Lord’s motivating me, and calling me to do these things.
That is why this Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee with its readings constitutes an important moment for us. The publican is a person who has understood how much he has failed the Lord, and how much he has been pre-occupied already with satisfying himself. Because the publican was a tax collector, in most cases that meant robbing other people in order to make himself comfortable. (Let us thank God that Revenue Canada does not operate like that these days.) The publican (or tax collector) had come to the bottom of everything in his life. Standing in the Temple, he says to the Lord : “God be merciful to me, the sinner”.
Our usual translations of this sentence are a bit “iffy” to my mind, because we are always saying “God be merciful to me, a sinner” when, in this pericope, the Greek text says “the sinner”. It is important for us to remember that when we say “a sinner”, we are already living in the world of judgementalism. I am already looking at other people as the Pharisee does, and saying, as it were : “All right, those other persons are sinners, too, but I am not any worse than the rest of them ; I am not so bad, after all, because everyone else is ‘in the same boat’”. I go around making excuses for myself.
Well, that is not what the Lord is asking from us. He is not asking us to make a commentary on anyone else. He is asking me to admit that I am the sinner, and that I need His help right now. This is one place where it is all right to be “I-centered”. Whether other people are in a sinful condition has nothing to do with me. It is not my business – it is the Lord’s and the other person’s business. My responsibility is to get right with the Lord, to have my heart clean towards the Lord, to have my heart full of love in, and for the Lord. It is an important matter for us to keep the right perspective. It can only be kept when we are nurturing the love of the Lord in our hearts.
We nurture the love of the Lord in our hearts by coming, like today, to His holy Temple – even in the middle of a moderate blizzard. We come to be with the Lord, and to offer ourselves and our hearts to the Lord. We open our hearts for the Holy Spirit to refresh this love in us so that when we leave here we will be better able to serve the Lord. The Lord is feeding us with His Body and Blood. He is feeding us with Himself. It is not the bishop or the priest who is feeding us. It is our Saviour Himself who is feeding us. He gives Himself to us so that we can give ourselves to Him, and to everyone around us.
Brothers and sisters, let us learn from the good side of the Pharisee and the good things that he did, and let us do likewise. Let us avoid his weakness, which was to say : “Look at me”. Instead, like the publican let us be grateful to God that He is merciful to us despite our weaknesses, despite our short-sightedness, despite our forgetfulness, and despite our deliberately turning our backs sometimes. He is still merciful to us. Let us give thanks to Him, and allow Him to nurture this love more and more in our hearts so that at Pascha we will truly be able to celebrate with the greatest joy ever, with the purest hearts ever, with the deepest love ever, and with the most focussed lives ever in our history so far, knowing that even this is only just the beginning. Let us glorify the All-Holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.