The Rev. Austin K. Rios
23 October 2022: Proper 25
Joel 2:23-32
Psalm 65
2 Timothy 4:6-8,16-18
Luke 18:9-14
A short but potent phrase from today’s Gospel was my constant companion this week.
“God, I thank you that I am not like other people.”
The Pharisee who utters this phrase in the Temple, before listing out some specific categories of people to illustrate his point, is often the villain of this parable.
In Jesus’ day, the tax collectors who collaborated with Rome to oppress their own people were a convenient object of derision within the Jewish community.
As were thieves, rogues, and adulterers.
Jesus makes the tax collector the vehicle of his teaching because a large part of his Gospel message is about rethinking the boxes into which we’ve divided peoples, and exposing those arbitrary categories as illusionary when it comes to living according to the reign of God.
Generations of preachers and interpreters have unhelpfully demonized the Pharisee in the parable, effectively replicating his mistake from the pulpit.
“God, I thank you that I am not like this Pharisee who trusts in himself and regards others with contempt.”
Not wanting to add to this error, instead of asking myself this week how I was not like the Pharisee and the tax collector, I spent a lot of time asking myself how I AM like other people.
When I read the news these days, so many of our intractable global problems can be traced to the false belief that we humans are irreconcilably different.
Ukrainians are not Russians, Republicans are not Democrats, Africans are not Europeans—whether we are talking war, politics, immigration or any other human to human interaction—the perception that difference should lead to division is the oldest of lies with which we’ve wrestled as a species.
When the serpent in the Garden of Eden fabricated the desire for the forbidden fruit saying, “You will not die if you eat it, but you will be like God, knowing good and evil,” we believed the lie and took our first steps in seeking distinction that leads to division.
From an evolutionary perspective, we can see how regarding difference as dangerous led to our survival as a species in millennia past.
But what Jesus knew so well, and sought to communicate to his followers who would be part of a new evolutionary human age, is that this old lie, as protective as it might have been, had to give way to the truth if the reign of God were to permeate this world and transform its structures, its methods, and its people.
There are ways in which each of us are not like other people, because each of us have been created in the image of God and carry forth the blessed mixture of divine and human DNA that makes us unique.
No one can live inside your skin, inside your mind, and inside your soul except you, and God has blessed us with the free will to make of our brief lives what we will.
As followers of Jesus, we passionately affirm the blessedness of our diversity and see our uniqueness as both a cause for rejoicing and a gift to be explored in community.
The problems arise when we begin to believe that the differences among us are barriers to interaction and understanding instead of gifts to be shared.
Such distorted thinking leads to us forming rigid characterizations about others, rather than encountering a person as they are.
And in the saddest and most extreme cases, such thinking leads to the calcified sins of racism, classism, and nationalism and tilt those under the sway of this lie toward violence and hatred of the other—whomever the other is considered to be.
This distorted and dangerous view of other human beings was crucified with Jesus on the cross, and because of Jesus’ resurrection, all our human relationships have been reoriented toward life in this new evolutionary age.
Today’s parable provides us an opportunity to both assess how we are living into this new creation as a community and as individuals, and to see our work in this area as hope for our larger world.
There is a way for us to positively give thanks for the ways in which we are not like other people—to embrace those unique gifts of language, country of origin, and life experience that we each have—while simultaneously acknowledging that in most ways, we actually ARE like other people.
I’m Austin Rios, proud and critical of my American origins, married with one child, experiencing life as a priest in the only Episcopal Church in Rome and executive director of the Joel Nafuma Refugee Center—details that are unique to my life.
And yet, I’m also Austin Rios who has too often believed the lie that I’m better than the thieves, rogues, adulterers and tax collectors of our day.
I’m the same Austin Rios who has looked with contempt on those who vote different from me, on those who worship differently than me, and on those whose ignorance and sins grate on me most because they inconveniently hold up a magnifying glass to my own.
In the past, I tried to approach these annoying revelations of my shadow side by projecting my frustrations on “the other” and by leaning into the Pharisee’s prayer, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people.”
And I’m ashamed to admit that it was often all too easy to justify my actions under the banner of “doing justice” while maintaining the kind of contempt for the other that makes true reconciliation in relationships impossible.
The Gospel indeed calls us to work for justice, and there is much work that remains to be done in our day and age.
But we must not forget our call to be reconciled with God and with one another in order to incarnate the promise of this new creation, this new communion, and this evolved humanity we have been shown in Christ.
In my experience, the journey of spiritual maturity begins when we are humble enough to acknowledge our own shortcomings, empowered enough to work on them in community, and wise enough to see the failings of others not as an opportunity to condemn or categorize them, but as a chance to find forgiveness and common ground with them.
The more we realize that actually, we ARE just like other people—beloved by the same forgiving God with all the gifts and deficiencies that make up our common humanity—the more we live into the evolved reality that we call the kingdom of God in the here and now.
The more we see that we are like other people, the more we may actually grow to like them—warts, quirks, and all.
We may begin to see that communion and common cause with them doesn’t depend on them having to look like us, or think like us, or speak like us, but instead depends on whether we can love one other as God intends and see our destiny as shared instead of separate.
Dear friends in Christ, if we can learn this evolutionary lesson, and resolve to be the stewards and teachers of its wisdom in this current age, then perhaps our species may yet survive and be strong enough to overcome the threats of nuclear war, climate change, and hopelessness.