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First Friends
Meeting
Luke 18:10-14
‘Personality and Prayer, Part 2’
Doug Gwyn
Am I Tragic Yet?
Doug Gwyn, June 2002
I go this way and that way, but they all lead deeper into loss
and every calculation underestimates the cost
and what looks at first like destiny turns out at last to be fate
and the moral of the story comes too late
tell me, am I tragic yet?
or do I still have more to regret?
will I grow wise, or just learn to forget?
tell me, Lord, am I tragic yet?
tell me, when does simple confidence become the deadly sin of pride?
and why does heaven’s providence make me want to run and hide?
and as I plow through these long, strange years of middle age
is there enough to say about it to fill a single page?
tell me am I tragic yet?
or do I still have more to regret?
will I grow wise, or just learn to forget?
tell me, Lord, am I tragic yet?
no, it’s not that I’m sensitive, it’s not
that I can’t take a poke
it’s just that after all these years, I still don’t
get the joke
meanwhile, heaven and hell are firing all these flaming darts
in a contest to see who can light up this old fart
tell me, am I tragic yet?
or what would it take to make this fool wise?
is all this ruin only grace in disguise?
tell me, Lord, am I tragic yet?
please tell me, Lord, am I tragic yet?
I want to continue this morning on the theme of personality and
prayer. Last Sunday, I suggested that, when we pray, we pray
to a God who is in some sense a person. A God who we believe
loves us, who wills good things for us. Of course, the full
reality of God is surely way beyond anything we can understand or
recognize as personality. But the near side of God is
personal in some sense. And the closer we draw to that near
side of God through prayer and meditation, the more we develop as
persons – integrated, loving, moral, whole persons.
Charlie has read us the parable of the Pharisee and the tax
collector. It’s one of the classic parables of
Jesus, the kind that got him in trouble. It’s a
strong criticism of religion – or at least the ways religion
can go wrong. Two men are praying in the temple one
day. The Pharisee, the religious man, stands apart from the
rabble. He extols himself before God. Hey, Lord,
I’m bona fide, I’m one of yours. Not like
those sinners over there, or that tax collector. He goes on
to mention some of his piety – he fasts twice a week, he
tithes. The average Pharisee could probably mention many more
pious habits. Jesus just offers enough detail to give us the
picture. The Pharisee has a formula for godliness, and he
lists some of the ingredients. And Jesus would never deny
that these are good things. But they’re
things. A list of this and that.
The tax collector isn’t going to list what he does.
He knows that God knows. Whatever else he’s been up
to, he’s a tax farmer. He extorts taxes from his
own people, on behalf of the Romans. And he’s
getting rich at it. In Jesus’ story, the tax
collector won’t even look up to heaven. He just
beats his breast and cuts to the chase: “God, be merciful to
me, a sinner.” Jesus concludes that this sinful tax
collector returned home closer to God than the righteous
Pharisee. The tax collector bares his soul, he is willing to
stand naked before God as a sinful person – but a
person. By contrast the Pharisee covers himself with various
fig-leaves, the various religious observances he performs.
This parable points out a paradox. It’s a paradox
about those moments when we really confront out sinfulness, our
foolishness, our failures and foibles. Those moments have the
bitter taste of wretchedness. But they also contain the seeds
of our greatness. Our condition as humans is
tragic. We are fallible, foolish, self-centered
creatures. And yet, when we really admit that to ourselves
before God, God can begin to do amazing things with us. Our
utter wretchedness and our god-like dignity are two sides of the same
reality. This is what it means to be a real person, in
conversation with God.
The Pharisee isn’t really talking to God.
He’s talking to – or talking at – the tax
collector as much as he’s talking to God.
He’s comparing himself with an easy mark, a local villain
nobody would defend. Now, I suppose the tax collector could
have answered in kind – Thank you, Lord, that I’m
not a self-righteous, pious twit like that Pharisee over
there. I’m sure it was tempting to do just
that! But then neither one of them would be talking to
God. They would be just throwing caricatures at each
other. And the more we make caricatures out of the people we
disagree with, the more we will become caricatures of
ourselves. We don’t grow as persons, we
don’t live into the tragic greatness of what it means to be
humans in conversation with God.
One of Johann Sebastian Bach’s great, lesser-known pieces is
titled, “Oh Man, Behold Your Grievous
Sin.” The piece is flows with sadness, regret,
remorse. And there’s no happy, triumphant ending to
it. And yet, there’s something great, uplifting
about the piece. Somehow, through the deep immersion in
sadness and loss, there’s a sense of restoration, a
refreshment of the spirit. This is what tragedy really is
about. It’s not just the latest disaster in the
news. Tragedies are stories and actual events that touch
something deep and vulnerable in ourselves, and yet call us
upward. We embrace tragedy when we read the gospels and
identify with Christ in his defeat and death. Yet, as we die
with Christ will also rise with Christ to new life. We
recognize and embrace our own tragic condition as we recognize it and
embrace it in Christ.
Of course, the parable ends there. We don’t know
what happens to the tax collector after that. Does he just
show up at the temple now and then with the same show of
remorse? That doesn’t go anywhere.
That’s just self-loathing and a little psychodrama for the
on-lookers. Sometimes, Christians get hung up
there.
Years ago, when I still had hair, I had a barber named Linda.
One day while she was cutting my hair, I mentioned that I was a pastor
in town. She said she was married to a lay leader in the
local Episcopal Church. But, she went on, “I
don’t go to his Church. Now and then I go down to
that big Baptist Church. I sit there and have a good cry and
that takes care of me for the next few months.”
Now, Linda didn’t seem like a bad person. Maybe a
little catharsis now and then was all she wanted out of
religion. Maybe she was suspicious of the way Christians
often look more like the Pharisee in Jesus’
parable. Maybe she preferred to stand with the tax collector.
The life of Jerry Springer is a parable for these times.
Springer was once the Mayor of Cincinnati. But he fell from
grace when he paid a prostitute with a personal check and was
exposed. Now, we could debate which was greater, his sin or
his foolishness. But let’s go on. Rather
than slink off into obscurity, Springer opened himself to public
scrutiny and scorn. He made public appearances and weathered
through a lot of disdain and derision. And eventually, he
went on to become Jerry Springer, the television show host.
The Jerry Springer Show is just one catharsis after another.
All kinds of people confessing and accusing one another of all kinds of
venal behavior. Screaming and fist-fights erupt on a regular
basis. The strangest thing is that, for the participants, it
seems not to be a moment of public shame, but fifteen minutes of
fame. For viewers, it offers a kind of lurid
entertainment. Here the human tragedy degenerates into farce,
offered on a daily basis, with commercial breaks. Would the
tax collector in Jesus’ parable end up on Jerry
Springer’s show today? Or was that day in the
temple a turning point? Did he rise above or stoop still
lower?
The dignity and greatness of what it means to be human is somehow bound
up with our greatest failures and lapses. Those are what goad
us to do better, drive us to rise higher. We rise to the full
dignity of personhood as we bring all that we are to the Lord in
prayer. Are we tragic yet?
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