ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET

Sermon preached by the Vicar, Fr. Alan Moses at High Mass on the Last Sunday after Trinity, 28th October, 2007

Readings: Ecclesiasticus 35.12-17; 2 Timothy 4.6-8,16-18; Luke 18.9-14

"Two men went up to the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, the other a publican."

A worldly-wise parish priest might wish for nothing better than a congregation of Pharisees: serious-minded believers who keep the rules, turn up for daily prayers, give sacrificially. There would be no empty seats, no financial worries. A cohort of assistant clergy and office staff and vergers would see to the smooth running of the place, freeing him from having to worry about mundane things. He would be able to feel virtuous, while trying not to look too smug, when handing over large chucks of cash to the diocese for the Common Fund. If the church needed restoring, all he would need to do would be to mention how many millions were needed; then sit back and watch them come rolling in. Churches like this do exist - but the Lord has never sent me to work in one of them!

Of course there are downsides to such paragons of virtue, as today's parable warns us. They can be self-righteous in the extreme. They are often censorious and mean-spirited towards other parishes which seem not to be pulling their weight, or have the wrong kind of theology. They want to control the way "their money" is spent, forgetting who it came from in the first place, and not allow the wider Church to decide. They have even been known to turn on pastors who don't measure up to their exacting standards.

This is no new problem, as Jewish writings from the time of Jesus tell us, as well as his own parable. The Pharisees were the serious believers, the twice-born evangelicals of the time.

Just in case we might think at this point that we are off the hook; not many of us tithe, we don't fast much outside Lent, if then, let's look at the parable more closely, because it is not just addressed to Pharisees in the first century or puritans in the 21st.

When we hear this parable, we unconsciously interpret it in ways distorted by our western individualism. We assume that these two characters went up to pray as individuals, as we might pop into church to say a prayer, or light a candle on our way to work. In spite of several hundred years of the Book of Common Prayer, we think of prayer as an individual activity not a corporate one.

Of course, each character in the parable does offer a private prayer but does this have nothing to do with no public worship?

We know that devout Jews would go up daily to the temple: to be present at the worship, to receive the priestly blessing bestowed at the end of the service, and to pray during the burning of incense.

The offering of incense took place during the sacrifice which was offered morning and evening to atone for the sins of the people. It was the appropriate time for personal prayer because it took place after the sacrifice had covered the sins of Israel. The way to God was open. The faithful could now approach him.

Even if we cannot be sure that the two men were there at the time of the daily sacrifice; their prayer in the temple takes place against this background. Believers offering private prayers in the temple stood in the presence of the altar with its burning sacrifice and the smoke which rose up before the face of God. They knew that it was possible to address God with their private needs only because the atoning sacrifice had taken place.

"The Pharisee standing by himself was praying thus".

His reason for standing apart is easily understood. He considers himself righteous and "despised others". Strict observers of the law believed they could become ritually impure, and thus debarred from worship until they had been purified, just by touching the clothes of those who did not keep the law. These they called the "people of the land". There were few more obvious candidates for this description than the tax-collector. The Pharisee's state of ritual purity is so important that he stands aloof from those others who gather round the altar in order to preserve it.

His physical separation would also be a statement to those nearby. He would feel it his duty to set them a good example; to show them how to be a proper Jew. At the same time, he could point to the tax-collector as a living example of how not to do it.

So, during the offering of incense when people would be expected to pray out loud, for that is how Jews prayed, he uses his prayer to instruct the great unwashed nearby. Most of us have heard prayers which are really sermons; ordinands are rather prone to delivering them.

One of the nicest compliments I was ever paid was by the priest of the first parish I was attached to when I was at theological college. He said it was nice to have had a student whose sermons and prayers were not veiled attacks on the Rector! Perhaps I knew what lay ahead of me.

The opening of our Pharisee's attack on the tax collector reveals more about himself than he perhaps intends. Jewish prayer had two principal elements :