Richesse Oblige
Reflections on Luke 18.9-14
RCL Proper 30C
23 October 2016
Saint Faith’s Anglican Church
18.9 [Jesus] told this parable to some who
trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with
contempt: 10 “Two men went up
to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee, standing by
himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people:
thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give a
tenth of all my income.’ 13
But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but
was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ 14 I tell you, this man went down
to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will
be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”
When my family
returned from Germany in October 1963, I was enrolled in My Dairy’s Grade 5
class at Zebulon Pike Elementary School in Colorado Springs. While we had been in Germany, the Colorado
Springs school district joined in the movement of ‘streaming’ students. ‘Streaming’ meant that, at an early stage in
their education, students were identified as being ‘academically talented’ or
‘vocationally inclined’ or ‘average’.
The advantage of streaming was to permit students to do well in those
areas where their gifts lay. The
disadvantage was the tendency to put students into particular boxes that they
rarely escaped. It must be said that
racism often influenced how educators decided the stream that a student should
follow.
Mr Dairy was
the teacher responsible for the ‘academically talented’ students and he was the
first of the many teachers I had from grade 5 until I graduated from high
school in 1971. They took their job
seriously and they demanded the best of us.
They taught us to ask the traditional ‘who, what, where, when, why, how’
questions and to love the ‘why’ question above all.
But above all
they taught us that whatever gifts and skills we possessed were not personal
privileges to be hoarded and used solely for self-interest. There was little to no tolerance for
elitism. If I could give a motto for the
academic training I received, I would choose ‘richesse oblige’ --- ‘abundance
brings obligations’. Our gifts and
skills were to be used for the common good.
When I read
today’s gospel, the tenth or eleventh time I’ve heard this story in the
lectionary cycle, my thoughts went flying back to those days when I was a
student in Colorado Springs. In the
first place both men have been ‘streamed’.
The Pharisaic movement within the Judaism of Jesus’ time shared many
qualities with contemporary Anglicanism.
Pharisees loved the Scriptures but were sceptical of literal
interpretations of what the Scriptures meant.
Unlike their primary competitors, the Sadducees, a elite and priestly
party, Pharisees were primarily middle-class, professional people. The Pharisees also believed that tradition,
the lived experience of the community over generations, had a role to play in
shaping how people lived their lives in faithfulness to the God of Moses.
People looked
up to the Pharisees. Because the
Sadducees were in charge of the Temple in Jerusalem, they tended to find ways
to work with the Roman governor to keep matters in hand. The Pharisees, on the other hand, were people
of the synagogue, the local institutions where Jews gathered to study, to pray
and to support each other. If anyone
wanted to know how to live a proper Jewish life, he or she would likely ask a
Pharisee. In many ways the Pharisaic movement
abounded with ‘richesse’, whether financial, cultural or religious.
On the other
end of the spectrum of social respectability were people like our tax
collector. Here was a man who was
working the system in order to make a living.
Most Jews despised them because they were agents of the Roman government
and milked the population for tax revenues.
Some tax
collectors were wealthy, while others barely eked out a living. Some became tax collectors cheerfully, while
others took on this work reluctantly in order to survive. Some travelled with armed guards, while
others spent a far portion of the day looking over their shoulders. If trouble brewed in a community, then you
can bet that the local tax collector would likely be among the first
casualties.
And so these
two men come into the Temple to pray, one blessed with the riches of
generations of faithfulness to the covenant God made with the people of Israel
at Sinai, the other wretched in the sight of his neighbours and uncertain of
his place within the embrace of God’s compassion. Jesus does not criticize the Pharisee because
he tithes and prays and tries to be faithful to the covenant of Moses. Jesus criticizes him because he has forgotten
that the richness of his religious faith is meant to give life to a commitment
to justice --- even for a tax collector, a commitment to self-giving love for
one’s neighbour --- even a tax collector --- and a commitment to acknowledge
our equal dignity in the eyes of God --- even a tax collector.
These days we
are constantly assaulted with messages that cause us to fear the future. Will we have the resources for adequate
health care? Will we leave our children
a better world or a worse one? Will we
have adequate resources to meet the needs of a growing number of ‘baby boomers’
as they retire? Will we ever be able to
repair our relationships with First Nations?
Fear generates
a feeling of uncertainty and scarcity.
We hold tightly to our resources, whether they be financial, cultural or
social. We may even turn inward and
narrow the circles of our relationships to those who look like ‘us’ and act
like ‘us’ and share the same history as we have experienced. We forget the abundance God has given us and
the obligations that our abundance puts upon us.
We face real
challenges in a society where religious faith is a way of life that many of our
neighbours politely avoid. We cannot
deny that the character of our neighbourhood is changing. But we can affirm that we face these
challenges in the context of abundance:
a way of following Jesus that has depth and breadth, a heritage of
generosity that has given us financial and physical assets, a commitment to our
neighbours that has shaped our ministries.
Richesse oblige. The obligations of abundance are not burdens
that we bear grudgingly but opportunities for ministry that we receive
gratefully. Abundance gives reasons for
hope in what God is doing in us and through us to bring about the fullness of
God’s purposes for us and for all creation.
So let us give thanks to God who has called us to ministry and given us
the abundance to accomplish.
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