Two Thankful Men – and How Each Was Right and Wrong

November 22, 1964
Rochester

Two Thankful Men – and How Each Was Right and Wrong

Reading: Luke 18 9/14

This parable is less an exhortation about prayer and more a parable about confused human personalities – how we should deal with ourselves. Jesus’ parables were gems of literary creation. One of the signs of their value is the summer in which they have stimulated persons in all succeeding generations to think upon the human condition and how we may improve the ways we deal with life. On this Sunday closest to Thanksgiving, will you think with me about this parable, because it suggests the necessity of establishing wholesome distinctions between self-confidence and arrogance; between humility and self-abasement.

To be thankful is to feel a sense of gratitude and obligation. Thanksgiving is a holiday when such thankfulness is expressed culturally and individually.

Consider the Pharisee. First of all, one must be alert to resist the stereotype, unfortunately anti-Semitic, which has gathered around this parable. Because the Pharisee in the parable is hypocritical, all Pharisees were hypocrites – or so the slander has persisted. To condemn an entire group for the wrong-doing of one, is not only wretched logic, but also in the case of the Pharisees, quite unhistorical. Anyone who is at all perceptive can find hypocrites among ministers, elders, merchants, middlemen and managers. But to generalize on a whole class is both wrong thinking and applied injustice. Furthermore, the Pharisees in Jesus’ time were the liberals of the day. They did not want to discard out-of-hand the old Law and ancient traditions, just because times had changed. They sought ways to reconcile the old laws with new conditions by thoughtful re-interpretations. Neither the reactionary nor revolutionist ever approves such reconciling efforts. But the achievement of working consensus in any time of trouble is usually the result of efforts of persons who cherish the same ameliorating attitude of the Pharisees. It should be clear that in discussing the parable, I am referring only to this individual Pharisee and not to his class.

This particular Pharisee, however, is the personification of smug complacency, “God, I thank Thee that I am not like other men.” Jesus commented that the man exalted himself but would be humbled by God.

The lucky majority in our nation who are well off in this world’s goods – and this includes most of us here without a doubt – should exert care that our Thanksgiving responses do not reflect, “better than thou,” and “holier than thou” attitudes. (too many times these attitudes of assumed superiority really should read, “luckier than thou.”) Do we not tend to exalt ourselves as a nation where the granaries burst with plenty and the counters overflow with commodities? We are proud of our pre-eminence of wealth and power. We no longer boast of “manifest destiny,” but we tend to think of ourselves as the “great people” who have the wisdom, wealth, weapons and power to instruct the rest of the nations what the best decisions are.

We should be disciplined by the recognition that the rest of the world does not believe that our nation holds all the keys to the kingdom of man’s finest destiny. An historian of India (see reference, H. J. Muller, USES OF THE PAST, p. 324) takes for granted that any view of world history will still be chiefly concerned with Asia because Asia is the source of all the world’s great religions and has maintained a high culture for a much longer period than the West.

In the old parable, the arrogant one used the word, “I”, five times in two short sentences. One does not have to be a psychologist to guess that such an outburst is much [more] the expression of overblown ego than it is a prayer of thankfulness. Perhaps your prayers are not so self-centered, but inasmuch as the person who gives me the most trouble is myself, I assume that your condition does not greatly differ. Therefore, let us all be cautious in reciting our accomplishments, for their virtue may be exaggerated [and] our self-satisfaction unjustified.

There is another sentiment in the Pharisee’s prayer which is even more petty than the recital of alleged accomplishments. “God, I thank thee that I am not like other men, extortioners, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.” Dr. Paul Fornier, the Swiss psychiatrist who is one of the most persuasive in finding Christian truth in the insights of psychiatry wrote, “The person who represses his conscience often tries to shift his discontent upon innocent victims. The weak are well designed to play the role of scapegoat.” (THE WHOLE PERSON IN A BROKEN WORLD, p. 14/15). The hypocrite’s prayer in the parable would seem to be a good example of such transference of guilt.

It is not only that the weak are made scapegoats, but also there is a secret and unhealthy temptation to experience a perverse sort of satisfaction when ill-fortune befalls someone else. Wise men recognized the condition long before the psychologist and psychiatrist recognized that secretly we hold some unlovely wishes. Thales (640 b.c.e.), sometimes called the first of the philosophers, said, when he was asked how people best bear adversity, “By seeing your enemies in a worse plight.” (quoted by Henderson, PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION, p. 2).

Although there is no need to dwell on the subject, the hypocritical Pharisee was right, also. We should be grateful that we have not become extortioners, unjust, adulterers or grafting tax collectors. We may attribute it to our individual virtue, when we should be at least as grateful to our parents and the social environment in which we were reared, but every person should feel a certain quiet pride in living up to high standards of morality and obeying the regulations of his religion.

Those of us who may not be impressed with fasting or tithing should not feel superior to the person who is committed to a faith requiring much religious discipline. When a person lives according to his best lights, he has set an impressive mark for the rest of us.

Frequently a person must trust his own capabilities and depend on his self-confidence. Otherwise he fails to accomplish all he might. There was an old, orthodox Sunday-school song which said it well,

“Dare to be a Daniel,
Dare to stand alone
Dare to have conviction
Dare to make it known.”

Second, consider the tax collector who, standing far from the altar with his eyes cast down, prayed, “O God, be merciful to me a sinner.” Now those of you interested in a side excursion in the attitudes toward tax collectors, should not that nowhere does Jesus indicate that this man was a dishonest tax collector. He may have been a grafter, but such is not indicated. Apparently just to be a tax collector for the Roman Empire in an occupied nation was sufficient onus to place one in the company of extortioners, adulterers and the unjust. So you see taxation has been a most unpopular practice long before the income tax came to the U.S. in the 20th century.

Anyway, although the tax collector is the favored one in the parable as it has come down to us, I have long been somewhat disenchanted. There is something phony about being loudly humble in public.

We should recognize that using the tax collector in the parable was another way that Jesus proclaimed his central message, which appeared again and again in the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke: “Repent, the Kingdom of God is at hand.”

But even allowing for this teaching emphasis and for the parable style, a style not that of the novel or even the short story, humility is a vice when it exists only for its own sake. There is a variety of twisted arrogance which hides beneath a veneer of pretended humility. Charles Dickens’ character, Uriah Heep, is a wonderful illustration.

There is also an old legend about a king who was told by a seer that the king would live to a great old age if he would live with great humility. The king discarded his stately robes, royal luxuries and dressed in rags, left the palace and moved to a rude hut. He issued orders that no one was to show him reverence. Then in barren solitude he tried to examining his own feelings with as much self-honesty as he could muster. He realized that he was much more vain of his seeking humility than he ever had been proud of royal privilege and power.

Whereupon he took wiser advice, “dress like a king; live like a king; but be humble in the secrecy of your heart. Nietzsche was a bitter philosopher who gave Christianity little quarter or even fairness, but did he not touch a sensitive spot, at least for some, when he wrote, “A Christian’s thinking is perverted, even when he humbles himself. He does so only to be exalted. His great delight is the mean and petty pleasure of condemning others.”

In Christianity and other religions as well, there have always been some who believe the chief way to glorify God is to abuse and humiliate themselves. You may recall the story of St. Simon Stylites, who lived for years on the top of a pole, suffering continually in filth and pain. He believed that in debasing himself, he was pleasing God. The Hindu fakir, supposedly in religious ecstasy, sits on hot coals or walks barefoot on sharp nails. It’s an ironic comment on much distorted humility that our English words “fake” and “faker” come from a word supposedly signifying religious humility - “fakir.”

Humility is wise when it exists only for its own sake.

But there is a need to say emphatically that repentance when sincerely offered is an emancipating experience. Some might say, “If you repent, God forgives you.” That is what Jesus meant when he said that the tax collector “went down to his house justified rather than the other; for every one who exalts himself shall be humbled, but he who humbles himself shall be exalted.” Others who might be less ready to concur with the theological proposition that God forgives he who repents, would agree that to express one’s errors, and be truly sorry for them, is to be free from the burden of secret guilt we may have been carrying. To tell all is to be forgiven all – although one can still compensate for injuries to others and allow changed behavior to be the goal of a new start in living. To unburden oneself – not necessarily only to the psychiatrist or the psychologist, although that is called for in many instances – to unburden oneself is to experience an openness of living which will not only help you, but help others, who will relate to the attitude of expressed self-honesty.

The tax collector was right in his attitude of humility, too. When humility is authentic and not exhibition, it can guide us to productive perspectives. Humility is accepting certain facts about our universe, primarily a modest estimate of our place, talent and permanence. We should recognize our name and our fame, if any, is of very transient importance and temporary duration.

Michelangelo is probably the world’s most famous artist. His achievements as a painter, sculptor, architect and poet represented a life of genius almost unexcelled. Those who visited the Pieta at the World’s Fair were deeply moved by its superb form and color. Yet one of his biographers, Papini, commented on Caprese, the village where Michelangelo was born. The village is ti... a few houses and the church of San Giovanni, where Michelangelo was baptized. Papini wrote that it was significant that the village of Caprese was better known for the fine quality of its chestnuts than as the birthplace of Michelangelo. If the greatest artist of the ages ran second to the flavor of chestnuts in his home town, then perhaps we should feel, as well as act, modestly. We should have humility as well as self-confidence. We should see ourselves in the perspective of the uncountable age of the planet and the brief time we consciously will live on it.

Of course while I have been talking about character in an ancient parable, you must have guessed that I was not thinking about two different kinds of individuals, but rather two tendencies with wrestle within ourselves. There is a struggle within each of us between the hypocrite and the penitent. We have a tendency to be smug about our possessions or position; we are also conscious on occasions that we should cry out to whatever gods there may be, “have mercy on me for I have been very wrong; I have missed the mark.” If you have never known the pains and discomfort of such feelings, you probably stopped listening after the first minute anyway.

Sometimes we ride a personality curve upward; we feel complacent, assured, successful. Then the curve turns down, we wonder if we can ever come near the goal of our dreams or rid ourselves of those terrible feelings which strike us when we should have done better and could have done better, had we been less lazy, greedy or self-centered. Can we do better?

Ezekiel, that OT prophet of the fantastic visions, knew an experience of his God which may be instructive to us, even though Yahveh of the OT neither speaks to most of us nor is real to us. After a dramatic and picturesque vision of God, Ezekiel wrote (1/28 – 2/1), “Like the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud on the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness round about. Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. And when I saw it, I fell upon my face, and I heard the voice of one speaking; and he said to me, ’Son of man, stand upon your feet, and I will speak with you.’”

We can stand upon our feet, wrestling with our own vanity as well as guilt. In the mythology of the Norse people, my ancestors, there was a strong belief in fate – one’s end was ordained from the beginning of time. They believed, however, that while fate will decide the moment and manner of death, fate will not decide how you will face it. You will decide how you will face it.

So with us. There are all variety of situations we will not control – the situation will happen to us – some will be good luck, some ill fortune. But if we stand upon our feet with a minimum of hypocrisy and an absence of self-abasement, in the long run we will know that life deserves our fulsome thanks.