“What Not to Pray
a sermon by Kyndall Rae Rothaus,
concerning Luke 18:9-14
for Lake Shore Baptist Church, Waco,
on October 23, 2016
Allan Thiel likes to stay informed. That’s how he knows that President Barack Obama is a
foreign-born Muslim who cheated his way into the presidency to promote a globalist “utopia.” A
retired factory worker and born-again Christian, he waits on the floor of the Greenville, N.C.
convention center for Donald Trump to take stage, holding up his phone so others can see the
latest headline he had just read: “Obama Announces Plans for a Third Term Presidential Run.”
The story is not true. But right now, in this moment, Thiel believes it, just as he believes that
climate change is a hoax, that Islam is being promoted in American schools and that the
government has been bought out by drug cartels. He says that “people aren’t being taught
history anymore,” and “they’ve dumbed everybody down.” As the campaign soundtrack roars
and the energy builds, he offers a version of American history that cannot be found in the
historical record. “Our country has never had any problems for the last 200 years,” he says,
shaking his head. “We’ve never had a problem with guns or racism until the last eight years.”i
This story is from a recent Time Magazine article about how “political debate has become
unhinged from reality,” and how “it won’t stop on Election Day.”
It seems that getting to the truth of the thing is harder and harder these days.
I bring this up because I think today’s parable is partly a parable about truthfulness. The tax
collector was able to approach God truthfully, while the Pharisee came to God with the pseudo
truth about himself—a sort of half-truth that allowed him to ignore the parts of himself he didn’t
want to let out into the light.
Have you noticed how desperately we need to recover truth-telling and humility in our world
today? I’m not just talking about politicians. I’m talking about our communal need to be humble
and honest about the persistence of racism, humble and honest about the sexism that contributes
to the sexual assault epidemic, humble and honest about the millions of things we do not
understand about neighbors. What does it mean, in times like these, to be people of prayer?
In Bible study this week, Rosemary Richards questioned whether the Pharisee was praying at all.
“I want to know who he’s talking to,” she said, “because when someone talks that way, they
probably aren’t talking to God.” It’s likely a safe bet that the Pharisee wasn’t really praying. He
was merely boasting a litany of comparisons designed to make himself feel better. Maybe it was
a list he repeated to himself whenever he needed a confidence boost. It’s like there was an
emptiness in him that he didn’t quite know how to fill, and so he filled it with grandiose notions
of himself that were dependent on denigrations of his fellow man. Sound familiar?
Now let me tell you another story:
Two women went up to the church to pray, both in deep distress. The first was an educated
woman with her PhD who taught at the University, and had spent every waking day of the
election year fearing for the fate of her daughters if a proud misogynist were to win the
presidency. She came to the church looking for something to give her hope in these dire times.
She sat down on the front row and began to pray. It was a feeble prayer, but at least it was
something. It went like this: “Dear God, thank you that I am not like those Trump supporters
who spout nonsense and demean women.”
In the very back sat the second woman with her head bowed and eyes closed, just like her mama
taught her. She had spent every waking day of the last year and many years before that worrying
about how she’d get her children fed. She was a single mother of five who had recently lost her
minimum wage job as a housekeeper when her boss found an undocumented immigrant who
would do the same work for less money. She came to the church looking for something to give
her hope in these dire times. It was a feeble prayer, but at least it was something. It went like
this: “Dear God, have mercy.” That was all she could choke out past her tears of helplessness.
She was wearing a stained t-shirt she bought for ninety-six cents at the thrift store. The shirt had
been donated to Goodwill by a disgruntled Republican, and it said on the front, “Make America
Great Again.” She usually only bought clothes for the children, but something about the shirt
had reached out to her, like a sign from God that she was not alone, that there were others out
there who were working to make things better.
And I tell you, this woman went down to her home justified, rather than the other. For all who
exalt themselves shall be humbled, but all who humble themselves shall be exalted.
The truth is that this election has been a mess, but I dare say that’s only half the truth. The rest of
the truth is what this election cycle has revealed about us: what a stubborn, polarized, even
haughty country we have become. I wonder sometimes about how territorial people like me can
become; how we plant our flag on the moral high ground and claim it as ours. Maybe the
divisiveness that plagues us isn’t all “their” fault, whoever “they” may be.
I don’t say that to make us feel bad. This parable is not a parable about feeling guilty, as if what
God wants us from us is a continual outpouring of our shame and misery. No, I just think what
this parable is commending to us is that honest self-evaluation will get us further than blaming
others ever will, even, I would like to add, in an election year.
Now, I know that blame and comparison are fun, addictive sports, and most of us are pretty
skilled at them without much practice and irrespective of athleticism. It’s like the game anybody
can win! Point your finger at someone else, and feel the self-esteem rise with every pointing.
There’s no limit to how many people can play or how many points you can score. Pretty much
nothing you can say is out of bounds. And if your opponent points at you, all you got to do is
point back, or, better yet, point in two directions at once, and you’re back in the game.
I think that most of the time when I’m focusing on others’ flaws it is because I’m a little afraid to
focus on myself. It’s better to keep that part buried. Because when I get alone and quiet enough
to hear what myself is saying about myself, it’s not that great. My self tells me that I’m not good
enough. It tells that I don’t know enough, I don’t work hard enough, I don’t exercise enough, I
don’t pastor well enough, I don’t keep my house clean enough. Listening to that voice is really
not good for me. So I drown it out by saying, “Well, at least I’m doing better than that guy.”
Sound familiar? Or am I the only one who has these thoughts?
One year during Lent, I decided to fast from negative thoughts about myself. In preparation for
the resurrection of our Lord, I would stop judging myself so relentlessly.
Simultaneously, that same Lenten season, I tried incorporating a weekly practice of confession
back into the life of the church by making a prayer of confession a regular piece of our worship.
Often I wrote the congregational prayers of confession myself, and at first I struggled with the
apparent contradiction between my two Lenten goals. How was I supposed to confess anything if
I wasn’t allowed to think anything bad about myself?
Was a healthy self-esteem somehow in contradiction to a Christian practice that humbles one’s
self before God? I’d spent most of my life unconsciously accepting the two things as
incompatible, and thus I was either a devoted person of prayer who was scavenging her life for
sins to confess and feel bad about, or I was a relatively happy with myself and not nearly as
inclined to pray because I didn’t feel the need to grovel before the heavenly throne.
I finally started to figure out that confession has nothing to do with shame. In fact, confession is
the opposite of shame. Confession is the ability to trust grace enough that you can embrace your
whole self—gifts and shadows both—with confidence and without fear. I don’t think the tax
collector’s humility was an expression of him wallowing in shame. We don’t know exactly what
he was confessing or why; all we know is that, despite an acute awareness of his sins, he had the
confidence to show up in the temple as himself.
By contrast, the Pharisee was too afraid to come to the temple without his masks. He had to layer
on comparisons, like a shivering man in the snow, trying to keep warm. He prayed, not as a way
to expose himself to God, but as a way to shield himself from himself, which is always a sure
sign that one’s religion has degenerated from a vehicle of communion with God into an
instrument for avoiding the discomfort of truth. When we boost ourselves up by making
comparisons and pointing blame, we’re usually trying to cover up some shame about ourselves
that we don’t have the confidence to admit. Those who can admit their flaws and mistakes and
still love themselves and know that they are loveable—those are the strongest sort of people, and
they are just the sort of people our world desperately needs.
Our nation is facing an ugly time, and perhaps the most Christian thing we can do is not to gloat
our victory if election results turn out the way we want them to. Perhaps the most Christian thing
we can do is get on our knees and pray for mercy. Perhaps the most Christian thing we can do is
to think creatively about how to bridge the gap between rich and poor, between conservative and
liberal, between white progressives and people of color. Perhaps the most Christian thing we can
do is to evaluate what it is we can do better. Not because we are down in the dumps about who
we are. But because we believe we are loved enough that being teachable won’t diminish us but
enhance us.
I’m just thinking that when you are living in a country where lying seems more common than
truth-telling, and bullying more common than partnership, we must commit ourselves even more
devoutly to telling the truth, and telling it with grace. If we are dismayed at the way institutions
and leaders seem to care more about preserving their own reputations than apologizing for their
errors, let us lead the way by practicing confession. Let us educate the world what it looks like to
say, “I was wrong. I am sorry.”
I’m not suggesting that we take blame for things that are not our fault. I’m suggesting we give up
on blame all together as a game we will play. There must be a better way we can uphold justice,
show mercy, and walk humbly with our God. Let’s begin the better way with prayer.
Let us pray together:
O God, be merciful to us, for we are a nation, a town, a church of sinners. We don’t mean that in
a demeaning way about ourselves. We actually think we’re pretty awesome, and we thank you
for making us so beautifully unique. The problem is that we’re also hurting and confused, and so
many of our hopes have been dashed over the years, and there are a lot of threats out there that
scare us, and on top of all that, no matter how hard we try to get it right, we still end up hurting
the people we love and messing things up and learning too late what we should have done
instead. It makes us feel better to think that our mistakes aren’t that bad compared to some of the
really bad ones out there, but I know that you’re really not a fan of our constant comparisons.
What you want is for us to see how awesome you think we all are. I mean, if you didn’t think
that, you wouldn’t have made us, and you certainly wouldn’t have kept on loving us and giving
us all these second and third and fourth chances.
But I’m just gonna go ahead and say it—I don’t really know how it is that you love everybody
the same, cuz I sure find some people a lot harder to love than others. But I know that when we
gather to pray, we’re all on equal ground, whether we understand it or not. I’m really not sure I’ll
ever understand, but have mercy on my limited understanding, O God.
Have mercy on the emptiness inside myself that I try to fill by comparing myself to others rather
than trusting that your love for me is real or trusting that my worth is unshakable. Have mercy on
me, because for all my knowledge and training, I am still unknowing about many things, and
there are things I think I know that I still need to unlearn. Have mercy on the ignorance that will
always be with me, for I can never, not ever, know it all. God, have mercy on the know-it-alls,
for they are so insufferable.
What I really mean is, God have mercy on me when I am insufferable. Teach me how confidence
and humility work together to make my speech honest and my prayers authentic. Help me do my
part to love your world without too much complaint. When I complain, have mercy. O God, hear
my prayer. Amen.
i
Charlotte Alter and Michael Scherer, “The Truth Is Out There,” Time Magazine, October 17, 2016, p. 28.