This is one of the parables of Jesus we would rather not hear.

On Tuesday, some of us heard the Moderator of the Kirk give a lecture on how we should live as Christians in a multi-faith Scotland. Sheilagh Kesting’s background is her work as the Ecumenical Secretary for the Church of Scotland . She spoke of her own experience in that role of sitting in dialogue with Jewish people, and the difficulties encountered – difficult, because deeply ingrained in the Jewish folk memory is the knowledge that for 2000 years they have been reviled by Christians. Why? Because they have been constantly blamed as being the people who put Christ to death.

She told a delightful story which she had heard herself from Malcolm Rifkind, who is, of course, a Jew, about his grandfather. He had been attending an event in a certain town, and was walking along the street when a man ran out of his house and smacked him in the face. As he staggered from the blow, he said ‘Why did you do that?’ The man replied ‘Because you are Jewish, and your people killed Jesus.’ ‘But that was 2000 years ago’ said Rifkind’s grandfather. ‘Aye, maybe’, said the assailant, ‘but I only heard about it yesterday!’ It was told to amuse, but it reflects an attitude which Jewish people find hurtful.

We have to admit that the Jews get a very bad press in the New Testament, especially their religious leaders, for Jesus himself, though a Jew, was scathing in his condemnation of religious cant and hypocrisy. At the top of his list were the Scribes and Pharisees. Now, if we encountered them today, we would probably think that they were decent enough chaps, living a good life, though a little over-zealous, maybe, in the observance of the feasts and fasts. They were a bit like fastidious, ultra high Anglicans, perhaps, or even fastidious, ultra high Methodists! They were in the eyes of Jesus, however, quite OTT.

And herein lies a problem for Christians in 2007. Like everything else (almost), the Jewish faith has moved on. Whilst there are, of course, fundamentalists in that religion, as there are in all religions, the mass of the faithful today would be more like our Chief Rabbi, say, than a Pharisee from 2000 years ago. And we Christians need to take that on board before we start hurling innuendo and insult around concerning our Jewish brothers and sisters.

When Jesus had a go at the Pharisees, for example, his intention was not to give gratuitous offence. He was making a point about his own view of what true religion should be like. So it was in the story we heard in our gospel reading just a few moments ago.

The problem with the Pharisee in that story was quite simply that he saw himself as one of ‘the first’, the ‘exalted’, in the eyes of God. We are told that he went to the Temple to pray, and though he started his monologue by addressing God, he was really only interested in himself. He wasn’t really praying at all. All his verbs are prefixed by ‘I’ – they are in the first person singular. He lists a catalogue of negative virtues (I’m not like this, I’m not like that that) and nit-picking pieties. This was probably quite a normal litany for such a person at such a time, but formal observances always carry with them the danger of spiritual pride. There are numerous examples in the writings of the Jewish Rabbis which illustrate this. Let me give you one example from the Jewish Prayer Book. It goes like this:

‘Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who hast not made me a Gentile……..(or) a slave………(or) a woman.’

Now, any Jewish person who happens to be listening, or reading this on the internet would probably snort in derision and say ‘not that old thing again!’ Fair comment. But can you see that Christians too can get like that? This is a story about spiritual pride, when you think you’ve got it all sorted, you are enlightened, and the rest of the congregation is stumbling around in the dark. This is the sin of contempt. There’s a lot of it about, as the Archbishop of Canterbury will tell you.

By contrast, Jesus commends the other man, who was a real piece of dross in the eyes of the ultra holy. He is definitely one of ‘the last’, ‘the humble’! He comes to the temple naked before God. He brings nothing in his hand, or even in his heart, for he all too readily sees his own shortcomings, and feels that he is not fit even to be in God’s presence, let alone address him. But that is exactly what he does. His mind is fixed on God, and he knows himself to be unworthy. Now, of course, that attitude too can be dangerous, a sort of Uriah Heep-ish grovelling is not a pretty sight!

He was a tax-collector, a kind of Jewish Quisling, seen as a traitor by his fellow Jews, employed by the Romans to gather in their dues. They were much despised by the fellow countrymen, and yet, they were still Jews, and still practised their faith as best they could. This man knows he is disreputable, but by his honest humility, he finds his way into the presence of God. Jesus says he is the one who is justified, that is to say, he is treated by God as if he were a righteous man. The Pharisee, however, for all his fine words, makes no impression at all.

This is not because the tax collector is good, and the Pharisee is bad – far from it. It is because the tax collector has done the one thing which God requires: he has faced the truth about himself and cast himself on the mercy and compassion of God. Maybe his repentance was shallow - who knows? But God will accept even a smidgeon of faith, and use it. As Jesus said on another occasion – his faith had made him whole.

This parable tells us that if you are proud, you cannot pray. If you despise your fellow human beings, you cannot pray. True prayer can only happen if we set our lives alongside God. The question is not ‘Am I as good as my neighbour?’ but ‘Am I as good as God?’

For about a hundred years, Methodists have sung, as a hymn, a poem by Christina Rossetti. It is still in the current Methodist hymn book, and some of you may know it. The first verse sums up today’s gospel. She says:

None other Lamb, none other Name,
None other hope in heaven or earth or sea,
None other hiding place from guilt and shame,
None beside Thee.

That, as they say, is the bottom line. We trust God, God alone, for the grace to let us do no more than to cling to Him, however weak
our faith. Isaac Watts, paraphrasing Isaiah’s image of a guttering candle, put it like this:

He’ll never quench the smoking flax
But raise it to a flame;
The bruised reed he never breaks,
Nor scorns the meanest name.

That is the God we worship. Blessed be his name, for ever!

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