So this is sort of the third part of a sermon series today.  We talked two weeks ago about fostering a deep underlying gratitude in our hearts as a necessary foundation of a joyful Christian life and a peaceful heart.  Last week, we heard the Lord’s parable about the necessity of praying always.  So, with respect to prayer, we’ve talked first about why we must, and then last week, that we must.  And now we talk about how we must pray.  

This gospel today is kind of funny, but boy should it make us uncomfortable, and it should really brace us against the temptation of turning our prayer into some kind of self-congratulatory monologue.  And we are all subject to this temptation, which can be rather subtle at times, and we all have been since the Garden of Eden: that instinct to self-absorption and deflection of our weaknesses.  You see it all the way back with Adam: “the woman you gave me, she made me do it.”  It's a double passing of the buck; it wasn’t just “the woman,” it was “the woman you gave me…It’s your fault, God!”  How ridiculous is that.  But, let’s be honest, we’ve all said and thought things at least that preposterous, if not much more so. 

Now, this is quite subtle, actually.  Getting back to the gospel: the tax collector, who is the example of the healthy type of prayer: he is also praying about himself.  We can do that.  We should do that.  We should pray about our own situation and our needs and our hopes and our fears, of course.  But always from a posture of humility.  Never from that condescending position of self-righteous contempt for others.  Now, as I said, this can be quite subtle.  So, before you say to yourself, “I thank you God, that I would never be condescending like that, like other people seem to be.”  See? There’s another whole level there.  This is very timely, because our culture pushes us so strongly into camps and tribes and teams.  Social media does this to us; politics does this to us; even things that are totally delightful like our sporting allegiances do this to us.  We’re conditioned to think of anyone who’s not in my tribe, as my enemy. 

So, the Pharisee spoke this prayer to himself: “O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity -- greedy, dishonest, adulterous -- or even like this tax collector.  I fast twice a week, and I pay tithes on my whole income.”  Now, let’s take, say, the politician whom you find the most personally repulsive or off-base from a policy perspective.  You’re perfectly within your rights to have those perceptions.  But is there maybe a little bit of “God, I thank you that I’m not like so-and-so  -- greedy, dishonest, adulterous -- or even like members of that political party.  I do this and do that, unlike them.”  It's so easy for reasonable conviction about principles to turn into a condescending contempt for other people.  That’s an attitude that’s in all of us because of original sin, and it’s compounded by the fractious culture that we live in; but it is not a Christian attitude, and we have to fight it.  So, take that politician that you dislike the most, and see if you can accept this: God loves that person and wants to be with that person forever in heaven, and you need to want that too.  Christianity is not easy.  In the early first century, if you had a pharisee and a tax collector, like we have in the gospel today: the pharisee is the respectable one; the tax collector is the social pariah, but it’s the tax collector that gets this right.  This is completely topsy-turvy.  When all is said and done, the person who was actually closest to Christ, might very well be a big surprise to us.  We tend to expect to be given the benefit of the doubt, but we feel free to assume the worst about the intentions of others. 

So, the key is to judge my own behavior only against the perfect holiness that I am called to, and never judge my behavior against what I perceive, probably inaccurately, about the behavior and virtue of others.  I love that old saying that “Minding my own business is a full-time job; and in my free time, it’s my hobby.”  Our prayer, whether it’s for ourselves, or for others, or for the whole world, should always be rooted in a profound humility, a presumption that others are more virtuous than they appear, and making my own, the desire that Almighty God has, unconditionally and without exception, to be united in bonds of love and charity with every single person, no matter what.  It's a tall order.  The Christian Faith is not for the faint of heart.  But it is the path to conversion of mind and heart; it is the path to salvation; and it is the path to true joy and freedom of heart, both in this life and in the life to come.  As the scribe said so beautifully in today’s first reading from the Book of Sirach, “The LORD is a God of justice, who knows no favorites.  Though not unduly partial toward the weak, yet he hears the cry of the oppressed. The Lord is not deaf to the wail of the orphan, nor to the widow when she pours out her complaint.  The one who serves God willingly is heard; his petition reaches the heavens.  The prayer of the lowly pierces the clouds; it does not rest till it reaches its goal, nor will it withdraw till the Most High responds, judges justly and affirms the right, and the Lord will not delay.”