20th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 25C

20th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 25C October 27, 2019 It feels to me that it has been a season of comparisons. We are fresh off the walkabout for the next bishop of this diocese, where we heard each of the 5 candidates answer questions. We also have election day coming up soon, so some of us are comparing candidates to determine who we want to vote for. And then we have this next parable in Luke’s gospel, where Jesus tells a story of a Pharisee and a tax collector. The Pharisee is doing all good things, actually doing more than he is supposed to be doing (fasting twice a week when he only has to fast once a week and giving 10% of his income), but when he lifts all that up before God, compares himself to the tax collector he sees praying in the temple near him; and the tax collector, who is quite a scoundrel, but who is aware of his sinfulness, prays for forgiveness from God. Amy-Jill Levine tells us that this parable would have been unexpected for Jesus’s original hearers because they would have expected to hear the story of a saint who was revealed to be a sinner and a sinner who was revealed to be a saint, and this does not happen. The other thing A-J Levine says about this parable that struck me is that the context of the Jewish community in this parable is actually like those horrible middle school group projects—you know, when you have one of two strong students grouped together with some not as strong or diligent students, and the more diligent students end up carrying the group. She says that righteousness in a community can be accomplished by a handful of righteous people, with the unrighteous being brought along with them. Or the converse is also true: that a handful of unrighteous people in a community can tip the balance for the whole community toward unrighteousness. And interestingly enough, this parable falls in our lectionary on this week—week two in our Consecration Sunday Stewardship program, where Jamie McCurry is going to get up here in a minute and take us through the big picture of giving in this parish and invite us to see where we fall in comparison to that. So the question I have been wrestling with is “Can there be any grace in comparison?” And here’s what I’ve come up with: that comparison just for the sake of comparison or trying to make ourselves feel better at the expense of others is what Jesus is condemning in the Pharisee of the parable. But there are ways that we can examine ourselves within the context of the community through which we can become more self-aware, and that increased self-awareness will bear all sorts of different fruit. I’ve started reading a book about the Enneagram; the Enneagram is theory which says that there are 9 different personality types and when we learn about the gifts and challenges of our particular type, then that can enrich one’s self-awareness and relationship with God through greater spiritual development. In this book titled The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery by Ian Morgan Cron (an Episcopal priest) and Suzanne Stabile (a long-time teacher of the Enneagram), I read two different quotes that get at the heart of this that I’ll share with you today. The first is “To know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around. The first product of self-knowledge is humility.”i (I’ll read that again.) That’s from Flannery O’Connor. The second is a quote from the monk Thomas Merton: “Sooner or later we must distinguish between what we are not and what we are. We must accept the fact that we are not what we would like to be. We must cast off our false, exterior self like the cheap and showy garment it is…We must find our real self, in all its elemental poverty, but also in its great and very simple dignity: created to be the child of God, and capable of loving with something of God’s own sincerity and his unselfishness.”ii So, this morning, we are going to do an exercise where we will measure ourselves against Truth and not the other way around, not for the sake of comparison but for the sake of self-awareness which will help us deepen in our relationship with the God who knows us and loves us. [Jamie McCurry] Your invitation this week is to spend time in prayer reflecting on your need to give, what you are currently giving and how you feel about that, and what a change in giving might look like in your life and in the life of your family. “To know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around. The first product of self-knowledge is humility.” Cron, Ian Morgan and Suzanne Stabile. The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery. IVP Books: Downers Grove: 2016, p 17. Ibid. p 18