Materials
The Life of Prayer: Prayer According to Luke
KYRIE ELYSON:
The Attitude Of Prayer
Luke 18:9-14
by R. Todd Bouldin
In his commentary on this passage Luke Johnson writes, “Prayer is faith in action. It is not an optional exercise in piety, carried out to demonstrate one’s relationship with God. It is that relationship with God. The way one prays therefore reveals that relationship.” Then he adds, “If prayer is self-assertion before God, then it cannot be answered by God’s gift of righteousness; possession and gift cancel each other.”
Prayer: Lord Have Mercy Upon Us. Speak to us this day so that we may see that even our righteousness comes as a gift from You and not as a possession of our own goodness. Lord, teach us to pray. In Your Son's Name, amen.
This is the second of two parables, both which serve as a continuation of Jesus telling the Pharisees and the disciples how to live in the absence of the Son of man. This conversation started when some Pharisees came to Jesus asking Him about the coming of the Kingdom of God. Jesus replied that the reign of God was already in their midst. Then He told His disciples that the final fruition of the reign of God would come only after the Son of man returned. But first He would be taken from them so that they might continue His ministry in His absence. The question was, would people be faithful in His absence? Would they be ready for His return? It is at that point that Jesus begins talking about prayer. It is as if prayer is how we deal with the absence of Jesus because in prayer we know His presence. It is in prayer that you will continue to know that God really is not absent from your world at all. But not only does prayer connect us with the presence of God in our world, but it transports us into another world where we are caught up in the life of God that is “the real world.”
Jesus first told a parable that was addressed to the disciples. It was the story of the widow crying out to a judge who did not care about God or humans, but because she kept bothering him, the judge finally gave her justice. “How much more,” Jesus says, “will your heavenly Father respond to your requests. Nevertheless,” Jesus asks, “when the Son of man comes, will He find faith on earth?”
Jesus seems to be saying that He will find faith where He finds prayer. It is the people who stay in constant conversation with God who keep themselves from falling into the trap of the people in Noah’s day or in the days of Sodom. Prayer allows us to move into a deeper reality of Kingdom life that is truer and more real than the life we find in the kingdoms of this world. Sin and rebelliousness is in some sense a failure to live in reality. It is to see the world as having no Creator that made it, no Savior who has redeemed it, and a God who reigns over it. So prayer keeps us in touch with the reality of God, and it is living in that reality that can keep our lives from doubt and sin. It can cause us to believe in compassion, justice and hope. The widow knew there was a reality that was truer than her own, and so she brought her whole world, and all of her need, into that truer reality.
In this second parable on prayer, Jesus goes on to address the attitude of prayer. If we are going to pray, we have to get clear about who the subject of our prayer really is. What understanding of myself do I bring to prayer? As he did in the previous parable, Luke tells us what the content of the parable is about before we read it. “Jesus also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others.” (Luke 18:9)
If you have studied the Gospel of Luke before, you know that one of Luke’s main themes is the company of Jesus among those that everyone else despises. The story Jesus tells immediately proves our expectations correct. “Two men went up to pray, one a Pharisee and one a tax collector.” The Pharisee does what righteous people do: He stands boldly and looks into heaven and gives thanks for all the goodness in his life. In fact, his prayer was one often prayed by religious people at the temple.
But there were problems with his prayer. First of all, his prayer removed him from community rather than plunging him into it. He is in a crowd of worshipers at the temple, but he is standing off to himself. I am not sure how much we can read between the lines, but we do have to wonder why he chose to separate himself from corporate worship to pray. Perhaps he just needed some quiet time. Or maybe he thought he was too righteous to stand among the others who might defile him if he stood in their company. After all, he assumed, bad company corrupts good morals. Or someone might think he is like one of “those” if he stood too close. I think it at least is fair to assume that this was a man in love with himself, for that is the reason Jesus tells the story in the first place. “He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves.” Prayer, even when done individually, always in a sense is an activity the church does together, sinner and saint, all of us redeemed by the grace of God. Prayer should never be the cause of spiritual or moral elitism that leads to separation and division. It always should keep drawing us closer together and closer to sinners. Why? Because that is just how God does things, and prayer brings us closer to the heart of God.
Listen to his prayer: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people [i.e., the ones standing over there]: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. The second problem with his prayer was that his self-understanding as a righteous person created an attitude of spiritual and moral superiority. “I sure am glad I’m better than those kinds of people: extortioners, unjust, adulterers, even that guy over there, the tax collector.” (Luke even says that such people despise others; they become bigoted in their outlook of other people). For this man, prayer became the catalyst for comparison rather than compassion. Comparison happens when we take our eyes off God and turn them to ourselves and to others. Compassion begins when we bring ourselves and every person before the presence of God.
Perhaps you find it difficult to relate to the Pharisee because you don’t really pray like this. Maybe you don’t, but I do. Have you been driving to church on Sunday morning and looked over into the yard of your neighbor and seen them sunning beside the pool while you just rushed to get the kids ready, the SUV packed, and the Sunday school lesson prepared, all by 9:00 a.m.? And you say to yourself, “Hmmm . . . that looks like a lot more fun. But God, I am thankful that I am not like those people because they don’t know You.” Or you come into the church and sit down beside a man recently divorced, and you pray to yourself, “God, I am so grateful that I am not like that commie, pinko liberal, sandal wearing, John Kerry loving Democrat.” Or “God, I am so thankful that I am not like that conservative, FOX News listening, war mongering, tax cut loving, George W. obsessing Republican over there.” Or “God, I am so thankful that I am not single like her . . . or an adulterer like him . . . or disabled like her . . . or a Muslim like them . . . or a Baptist like her . . . or divorced like them . . . or a homosexual like him.” We do not intend to pray this way, but it is so easy to find ourselves in a place where our spirituality morphs into superiority. When that happens, we might as well be standing off by ourselves because life has become all about us anyway. Prayer should never lead you to feel superior or inferior because prayer is not about you and others . . . it always is about the holiness and mercy of God.
Living to flaunt your goodness or to measure yourself by everyone else may be the greatest barrier to a deepening experience of prayer. Prayer cannot be all about you and all about God. Either He is the feature or you are. Either He is the measure of goodness or you are. Take your pick. At some point in life, we have to come to terms with the essential question of whether “He” or “me” will be the main feature of our existence.
The final problem with his prayer is that he gives himself credit for that goodness: “I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I get.” Here is a guy who not only keeps all of the religious rules, he goes beyond the rules. Remember the scandal of this story, even in the midst of our expectations. Tithing is good, isn’t it? There is no blessing in being a thief, or adulterer, or tax collecting. The question is, who shall receive credit for that goodness? Even his prayer time is a reflection of his personal piety as he asserts his own goodness before God.
You ever known people who preach their prayers? The person begins to pray in a lofty voice, and you start getting an uneasy feeling that the person praying is really talking to you and not to God. I once heard a man pray in worship at a church in Abilene, Texas in this way. He had been assigned to give the announcements that Sunday but instead decided to pray the announcements. “O God, we thank you for the potluck we will have in the fellowship hall today immediately following services. We pray that the women with the last names beginning with A-D have brought a meat, E-J have brought a vegetable.” Well, I guess we are told to pray about everything, but there was one problem with his prayer: The prayer was not really to God but to us. I have heard other people preach in prayer in a way that made me feel that the person and not God must be the righteous one. I even find myself doing it. “God, you know that I try hard to be a good person. I go to church twice a week, I give generously, I pray daily . . . now if you would just . . . [give me my health, provide me with a BMW, help me have a date] . . . our righteousness is used to bargain with God, as if we have anything to bring to the table.
Prayer is always an opportunity to boast in God and not in ourselves. Jeremiah said in Jeremiah 9:23-24, “Let not the wise man gloat in his wisdom, or the mighty man in his might, or the rich man in his riches. Let them boast in this alone: that they truly know Me and understand that I AM The LORD who is just and righteous, whose love is unfailing and that I delight in these things.” Now that is a reason to boast. Really, there is not much of me that is worth boasting about. But the longer I know Jesus, I find Him more compelling, more engaging, more surprising, more fulfilling, more inspiring, and more wise, and more loving than ever before. When I look upon Him, I see immense love, lavish grace, perfect justice, and a holy life that is worth all my boasting and adoration, and prayer takes us further into that kind of life where we pray, “Father, hallowed be Your Name.”
In contrast to the Pharisee, there is the tax collector, the one who has sold out his Jewish identity by working for the foreign government, making a living by charging more than the government requires. It’s almost as though he snuck into the Temple because everyone knows he doesn’t belong there. Being too ashamed to look up, standing far off, he beats his breast and cries out, “Be merciful to me, a sinner.” There are no righteous deeds by which he can assert himself and his own goodness before God. He can only plead for God to be merciful to him, and so he says his prayer which has become known through the ages as the Kyrie or Jesus Prayer, “Lord have mercy.” Jesus says that it is the tax collector’s prayer that was heard on that occasion, not the Pharisee’s. Jesus then repeats the proverb that we first heard in chapter 14: “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled; everyone who humbles himself will be exalted.”
“Prayer is faith in action. It is not an optional exercise in piety, carried on to demonstrate one’s relationship with God.” I sure am thankful none of us is like that Pharisee, aren’t you? The ironic twist of this parable comes when we try to figure out which character we most identify with. You see, on the one hand, none of us wants to be the Pharisee. Yet he is the one in the story whose life would fit best in this auditorium this morning. He is a man with religious convictions; a man who understands he has been blessed by God. He keeps his life focused by fasting and tithing and praying. The problem is that those attributes are not gifts from God but possessions and self-accomplishments that he lists before God. They are the jewels in his crown that he proudly displays before God. With his accomplishments there is also an attitude toward other people.
On the other hand, the life of the tax collector is no model existence to be followed, except in his self-understanding before God. What makes the tax collector “the good guy” in this story is his humility before The Lord. He understands that righteousness is a gift to be received, not a merit badge to be possessed and announced. And that is the starting place for prayer where we bend our lives toward God and away from self. If we say, “I sure am glad I’m like the tax collector and not like the Pharisee,” what have we done? All such comparisons of ourselves with other people are made for the same reasons. But before God, in prayer, we bring only ourselves, without any comparisons or rationales or excuses.
When we come before God, we have nothing that can be hidden, but we also have nothing to merit His attention or His blessing or His offer of relationship. It is not who we are in relationship to other people that matters at that moment; it is who we understand ourselves to be before God. “He who exalts himself will be humbled; he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
Prayer is faith in action. It is relationship with God. The way one prays therefore reveals that relationship. If prayer is self-assertion before God, then it cannot be answered by God’s gift of righteousness; possession and gift cancel each other out. Is righteousness a gift or a possession in your life this morning? If it is a gift, then you have come before The Lord as the tax collector this morning. If it is a possession, then you have come thanking God you are not like other people. Either Jesus is the main attraction or you are. It really comes down to that. Trusting never leads to judging. If you are finding yourself comparing more than you are confessing, then you should ask yourself who you are trusting.
To make God the center and audience of your prayers is to live in the true reality where God reigns and you do not. When you finally can stop the judgments and comparisons and enter into the presence of God with confession and humility, it will be the truest and maybe the finest moment of your life. So, this morning, let us all come into the presence of God, Pharisee and publican, and cry out, “Lord, have mercy.”
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