Today’s readings: Eccles. 35, 12-14.16-19; 2 Tim. 4, 6-8.16-18; Lk 18, 9-14.
The Scriptures today address a problem that has always been a serious source of alienation in religions and even in the life of the Church. Any religious system can transform itself into an ideology and, on one hand, alienate us from the real needs of people, while on the other it can serve as a cover-up of our true self.
As we see in today’s first reading, religion can degenerate and make us less sensitive “to the plea of the injured party”, to the “orphan’s supplications or to the widow’s, as she pours out her story”. This can be bureaucracy at its worst. It still happens, turning churches into an institution distant from the people and unable to save people.
The gospel narrative is about the Pharisee and the tax collector who both go to the temple to pray. Even here, in the background there is a religious system that belies the true purpose of religion. Our communities, belonging to an institution with a proper regime of laws and rules, have always been sustained on the separation between the good and the bad, and the need to make the distinction clear-cut.
We forgot the big truth once professed by Martin Luther centuries ago that we are all “justified and sinners” at one and the same time. The criteria that determine who is justified and who is the sinner are changed in today’s gospel. The established frame of mind is literally decomposed. No wonder that the parable came as a shock to the entire religious system of the Pharisees.
But this is Luke’s gospel, which is the gospel of the open Church, and is also the gospel where Christ’s mission is inaugurated in terms of freedom from prisons prefabricated in terms of the law or prisons we built for ourselves. There is a build-up in Luke which constitutes a unity and that highlights how much Jesus defeats the religious system of his time to go forth and meet outcasts who discover themselves as insiders.
The gospel parable can be a very powerful metaphor that portrays our religious situation today, even in our country. Many are those among us who belong to the mainstream religious system on the same terms of the Pharisee in the gospel.
A Pharisee is not necessarily a hypocrite, as some may very commonly think. The Pharisees were those who believed in obeying religious laws very carefully and separated themselves from the ordinary people. Jesus addressed today’s parable to those “who prided themselves on being virtuous and despised everyone else”. The problem with the Pharisee here was precisely that religion for him was alienating.
For too long we have perpetuated the false idea that practising religion automatically amounts to faith. This is what the Pharisee represents in the gospel parable. But he ended up being just a pure narcissist, hindered from being touched by God’s mercy and love. The parable in this context is characteristic of Luke’s way of helping us unmask who we truly are, addressing directly the issue of authenticity in Christian life.
Judging by these standards the gospel is fixing, there are lessons we need to take and a rethinking we need to embark on. In our cultural and religious context, we still bank too much on perceptions, and the perception of our reality can very easily lead us to be in denial as to our true identity as a nation and particularly as to where we stand as regards values and beliefs.
The criterion should be authenticity, not religious practice. As author James Sweeney writes: “While postmodern culture may not totally silence the question of God, it is in most part religiously tone-deaf to traditional Christianity”. At the surface, our society is still very churchy. Underneath, there is a river of radical change, currents that are hidden and disclosed and in the face of which it’s high time we stop at least being in denial.