Sunday Reflection - Last Sunday after Trinity - Year C - 26th October 2025

Jeremiah 14.7-10, 19-end     Psalm 84.1-6      2 Timothy 4.6-8, 16-18      Luke 18.9-14   

The film producer Sam Goldwyn - the Goldwyn of MGM, Metro Goldwyn Meyer - is reputed to have had this piece of advice for actors. "“I’ve found that the most important thing for an actor is honesty,” he said. “And when you learn how to fake that, you’re in.”

There are two very different ways of approaching God in Jesus' story. One is to use God in order to sell yourself to those around you. Look at me - in my integrity, I do more than God asks of me. The law tells me to fast five times a year, but I actually do it twice a week. The law tells me to give away a tenth of everything I produce, but I give away a tenth of everything I get, including income that's already had a tenth given away from for God's purposes. This is what it means to be spiritually successful. O God, thank you that I'm on the right path, unlike that poor desperate person over there.

The other approach is outwardly unattractive. Here is a person in a job that people look down on - someone who has to collaborate with the unwelcome ruling powers in order to make a living, someone suspected of being corrupt in a petty small-minded way. In a culture where people look up to heaven to say their prayers, he can only look down on the ground. He feels so unworthy to be there, he beats his breast, a sign that he is recognising his heart is the source of his unworthiness, and therefore where he needs help. He says, O God, help me... have mercy upon me... someone who's gone wrong, and keeps getting it wrong.

Jesus then invites his listeners to look beneath the surface - examine what is happening within each of these people. Only one of them is in a right relationship with God. The Pharisee in the story is actually praying to himself, not to God. His pride, and his disdain for the tax collector beneath him, prevent his prayer getting any further than his own ears and mouth. The tax collector, however, returns home in a right relationship. He is given the inner peace and assurance of being heard and accepted - and the inner joy of knowing that he is loved. If he needs to repair relationships, restore money he's stolen or to apologise, he now has the strength and capacity to do it.

This is at the heart of Paul's own spiritual journey that he reflects upon in our New Testament reading. He is looking back on his life - and at first it looks as though he is full of the self-confidence that Jesus is questioning: "there is in store for me the crown of righteousness". But that righteousness comes from a recognition of his need for God, his failure to live the life God wants him to live, his self-centred and selfish nature. In his first letter to Timothy, he says: "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners - of whom I am the worst. But for that very reason I was shown mercy, so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his immense patience as an example for those who would believe in him and have eternal life." (1 Timothy 1.15-16).

[This means that, elsewhere, rather than list his successes and achievements, he admits his shortcomings and struggles. In one such struggle, he hears the Lord tell him, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." So he goes on to say: "Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me." (2 Corinthians 12.9,10). Knowing that God, in his Son Jesus, has accepted and forgiven him, he is able to face all manner of hardship.. He continues, "That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." (2 Corinthians 12.10).

This is a recurring theme in his letters. Earlier in 2 Corinthians, he says, "We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us." (2 Corinthians 4.7)

This would be very familiar to Luke, who alone of the four Gospel writers includes this story of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector at prayer. In part of the fourth chapter of Paul's 2nd Letter to Timothy that we haven't read this morning, he says, from prison, "only Luke is with me". (2 Timothy 4.11)

The theme, though, is a consistent one through the Gospels. In John's Gospel, when the Pharisees challenge Jesus' healing of a man born blind from birth, the group of Pharisees in dialogue with Jesus ask Jesus if he is saying that they are the ones who are really blind. Jesus replies: "If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains." (John 9.40-41).]

This understanding of himself as a needy but forgiven sinner in the eyes of God frees Paul from the tyranny of self-promotion and the competitive spirit that seeks to do down other people. The Pharisee who thanks God he is unlike the down-at-heel tax-collector is a prisoner of his own ego. The work of God's grace and love in Paul’s own life means that he can be generous to those who have let him down - he says, "At my first defence, no one came to my support, but everyone deserted me. May it not be held against them." Paul's security lies not in having to think of himself as better, more spiritual, or more Christian than others. It lies in his experience of the forgiving, loving, accepting grace of God - to whom his first approach can only be, "God, have mercy upon me , a sinner." So he can say with confidence, "The Lord stood by me and gave me strength."

This is the lesson for the people whom Jeremiah addresses in the Old Testament. The whole of chapter 14 addresses a people who are suffering a series of what we would call natural calamities. But who cannot identify with the cry: "We hoped for peace but no good has come, for a time of healing but there is only terror."?

There are calamities in the world that have no easy answer - for which we plead with God for healing, justice and righteousness. But there are others that have their root in our innate human selfishness. Their resolution relies upon a collective sense of owning up - we were responsible - we got this wrong. The answer lies in the admission of failure, not in the self-confident proclamation of why we're better than everyone else. The prophets are consistently calling their people to examine their ways, admit their failings and return to God.

The Lord's word to Solomon, at the dedication of the First Temple, are these:

"When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and heal their land." (2 Chronicles 7.13,14)

Jesus' parable is consistent with this message - for a people as well as for individuals - that God's way is to be found in the prayer, "God, be merciful to me a sinner", not in the prayer, "I thank you for all my overdone virtue, and that you haven't made me like the rest."

The challenge for us today: in our prayer for ourselves, for our church and for our nation, be honest about our failings, be honest about where we need help, don't look down on others, and be open to what God wants from us. God first.

Come to God as you are, not as you would be.