Sermons from the Latins/Sermon 42
Tenth Sunday After Pentecost.
The Pharisee and the Publican.
"O God, I give Thee thanks that I am not as the rest of men ... O God, be merciful to me, a sinner . . . I say to you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other." — Luke xviii. 11-14.
SYNOPSIS.
Ex.: I. Judgments of Pharisee and Publican. II. AEsop. III. Charity the one thing needed.
I. Self-judgments: 1. Pharisee's claims to credit. 2. Court of conscience. 3. Two methods.
II. Judgments of others: 1. Virtuous and wicked. 2. Publicans. 3. None perfect nor all bad.
III. God's judgments : 1. Looketh on the heart. 2. His omniscience. 3. Our blindness.
Per.: 1. Judge not others. 2. Judge self unfavorably. 3. God's holiness our standard.
SERMON.
Brethren, we find recorded in the Gospel the Pharisee's opinion of himself, and his opinion of other men, among them the publican, and we are told how erroneous in each case was his judgment. It is interesting to speculate what may have been the publican's idea of the Pharisee, or to imagine the surprise of each had they been told later on of Christ's, of God's, judgment between them. The parable was addressed, you know, to "some who trusted in themselves as just, and despised others," and it is worthy of notice that the only one in Christ's audience or Christ's parable who succeeded in arriving at a just estimate of himself or of others, was he who humbly said: " O God, be merciful to me, a sinner." The inference would seem to be that at no time are men more prone to error than when they attempt to determine their own or their neighbor's moral status, and that in no other matter are human opinions more likely to run counter to the.judgments of God. It is Msop, I believe, who represents man as going through life with two pouches suspended from his neck, one in front and one behind, and in the former, ever before his eyes, he keeps his own virtues and his neighbor's vices, but in the latter, behind his back, his neighbor's good traits and his own faults. Never shall we judge just judgments until we have reversed the pouches, or in some way acquired the spirit of the publican. Nor is this a matter of little moment; it is a question of such human interest that it appeals even to the Pagan, and its claim on the attention of Christians is more especial still, since it deals with that new commandment Christ gave us, the very groundwork, the heart of all religion, the law of charity. " For charity," says St. Paul, " is not puffed up, nor envious, nor self-seeking, nor perverse, but is patient, is kind, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity but in the truth; beareth, believeth, hopeth, endureth all things. For now we see in a dark manner, but then face to face; now we know in part, but then even as we are known."
First of all, then, we see from the parable that favorable self-judgments are apt to be fallacious. There is not one of us, perhaps, who has half as sound reasons for regarding himself with complacency as had the Pharisee. Execrate them as we may, we are still forced to admit that the Pharisees as a sect had a noble mission, which they nobly fulfilled. From the very beginning, exclusiveness had been one of the most prominent characteristics of the chosen people. It was God's design that they should continue an unmixed race, a nation apart, and in the course of ages so firmly did this idea take hold on the popular mind and so intimately interwoven with the Messianic promises did they regard it, that we find them everywhere and always hedging themselves around with barriers to check the incursions and the secularizing influence of the detested Gentiles. How strong was this spirit in Apostolic times is evident from St. Paul's strenuous and oft-repeated efforts to abolish the distinction between the Jew and Gentile and to place all on a common Christian level, and how much of it survives to-day is apparent in the aloofness and clannishness of our Hebrew citizens. Now, to preserve their integrity inviolate was for the Jews on their return from captivity a difficult task indeed, for the bulk of the nation remained irrevocably scattered through heathendom from Babylon to Rome; Samaria, the very heart of Israel, had apostatized; the north had become the Galilee of the Gentiles; all Palestine, a prey to a denationalizing lust for empire, had fallen under the yoke of Caesar, and the entire population, by the exigencies of business and politics, was hourly exposed to heathen defilement. Then it was that the Pharisees arose to be the saviours of the nation. Self-constituted expounders of the law, they proceeded to throw around each member of their race at home and abroad such a network of ordinances concerning years of jubilee, Sabbath observance, sacrifices, purifications, his food, his clothing, fasts and tithes, that at every turn, in every little circumstance of life, his nationality and his religion were brought prominently before him. In all their outward observances, too, the Pharisees themselves were scrupulously exact. What wonder then, that having preserved intact the " remnant " of prophecy, this aristocrat, this patriot, this zealous stickler for the law, should enter God's Temple with a sense of proprietorship, and proudly elbow his way to the first place, and, standing, thank his God that he was not as the rest of men! Was he not God's champion against the heathen dogs, and the extortioners and unjust and adulterers of his own race? Did he not fast twice a week and give alms of all that he possessed? With half such good reasons, I repeat, any one of us would give way to self-congratulation, and of us as of the Pharisee would be true the words of the Spirit to the Church of Laodicea: " Thou sayest: I am rich and wealthy and have need of nothing, and knowest not that thou are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked." For no man is a judge in his own cause, not because he has not within him a voice to call him to account, but because that voice, conscience, is apt to be stilled or perverted by self-love and self-conceit. In examining ourselves we find it hard to be strictly honest, to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, to admit that a beam in the eye is a beam indeed and not a mere mote. And even when we do succeed fairly well in extracting all the evidence for and against, we still decide the case according to a standard all our own, and the prisoner in consequence is honorably acquitted or even highly commended. Sin, too, is something that is ever recurring, and the judge soon tires and grows lax with usage. Favorable self-judgments, I have said, are usually erroneous, and, in a measure, the same is true of all selfjudgments. Even the publican's estimate of himself was just only in so far as it was self-depreciatory. Christ's commendation of him, that he went down to his house justified rather than the Pharisee, is, you notice, more relative than absolute. Doubtless there were many other grades of society, the Gentiles, the harlots, the unclean, upon whom the publican, Jew as he was, would have looked as the Pharisee looked on him, and with his lips have thanked God and in his heart have thanked himself, as did the Pharisee, that he was not as some other men. Or perhaps his self-depreciation, like the Pharisee's complacency, was based on the notion that outward observance is the whole law and the prophets. We look upon the tomb's exterior and we call it foul or fair, according as it appears to us, but few of us have the moral courage to enter in and bring to light the hidden dead men's bones. The Pharisee, having told what vices he had not, proceeded to enumerate his virtues, and many of us, like him, are content with avoiding heinous sins, or with the easy outward forms of religion, to the utter neglect of the more difficult interior sanctification. Sanctity means mare than that. The rich young ruler, that would-be Apostle, soon learned his mistake, and was so frightened that he sadly turned away. To judge rightly of ourselves we must look at God, and seeing ourselves in His righteousness as in a spotless mirror, we will realize that whatever of good we do comes from Him, for by His grace we are what we are, and that whatever of evil is in us — and who shall estimate it? — is all our own. We will see then that like the Apostles on the Lake of Galilee we labor through the night of life, unprofitable servants, taking nothing, and in the presence of our God and in very terror at our unworthiness we will fall down before Him as did St. Peter, crying: " Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man," or supplicating Him in the words of the publican: " O God, be merciful to me, a sinner."
Brethren, we learn from the parable, secondly, how mistaken are usually our opinions of others. If, as St. Paul testifies, no man knows whether he be praiseworthy or blamable before God, if neither Cain nor Abel knows which is God's favorite until the heavenly fire descends, is it not rash to anticipate God by sitting in judgment on one another? Selfjudgment is nothing more than the examination of one's conscience, a sacred duty incumbent on every Christian, a powerful incentive to repentance, and a valuable aid in the production of the proper dispositions for prayer. It is of self-examination that St. Paul, writing to the Corinthians, says: " If we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged," for such salutary effects would this exercise produce in us that we would thereby escape God's weightier condemnation. But would we thereby escape human criticism? Alas! the more virtuous a man is the more fault will be found with him, and the cavilings of his critics will be bitter in proportion to their wickedness. The vicious resent goodness in others as a personal reproach. " Let us," say they (Wis. ii), " let us lie in wait for the just because he is contrary to our doings, upbraideth us with transgressions of the law, and divulgeth against us our sins. He is become a censurer of our thoughts, grievous to us even to behold, for his life is not like other men's, and his ways very different. He esteemeth us as triflers and abstaineth from our ways as from filthiness, and glorieth that he hath God for his Father. Let us examine him by outrages and tortures, that we may know his meekness and try his patience, and let us condemn him to a most shameful death." Ah, Brethren, what a commentary on human nature is this; what a picture of that malice which could torture and crucify even the irreproachable, the loving and gentle Saviour. We are by nature fault-finders and detractors. " Whereunto shall I esteem this generation?" says Christ. "They are like children sitting in the market-place, who, crying to their companions, say: We have piped to you and you have not danced; we have lamented and you have not mourned. For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say: He hath a devil: the Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say: Behold a man that is a glutton and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners."
Even when uninfluenced by envy or hatred or race prejudice or religious bigotry, our opinions of others are likely to be superficial and wrong. " Man looketh upon the outward appearance." Who of us, were he present that day in the porch of the Temple, would have hesitated for an instant as to the respective merits of the Pharisee and the publican? Would we not, in the words of St. James, have deferred to the proud Pharisee with his golden ring and his fine apparel and his stately self-importance, and said to him: "Sit thou here well;" and to the humble publican in his mean attire would we not have answered roughly: " Stand thou there, or sit under my footstool! " For the publicans were Jewish traitors who had sold themselves into the service of their Roman conquerors, for whom they harvested the public revenues, and such was their genius for avarice and extortion that their name soon became a synonym for all that was base and despicable. Even Christ classes them with harlots. I know nothing in modern society to which they may be more appropriately compared than to an Irish land-grabber, or a "scab" workman during a strike, or a soldier who betrays his country's military secrets to the enemy. An orthodox Jew, a Pharisee, could no more see good in a publican than can I in the vilest proprietor of a combined saloon and brothel. And yet this man, this publican, went down to his house justified rather than the other. Ah, Brethren, there is enough there to deter me for the rest of my days from ever presuming to pass judgment on my neighbor. " Man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart — and He resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble." No judgment of one man by another can ever be infallible; the more severe it is, the more likely it is to be false; and even when it is favorable, there is still danger of error, as we see in the opinion nine-tenths of humanity would have conceived of the Pharisee. No man nor set of men are above reproach, and no man nor set of men are utterly beneath praise. St. Paul himself tells us that he was a Pharisee and the son of a Pharisee, and SS. Matthew and Zacheus had both been publicans. Two classes of society which produced such material, and which besides, as we read in the Acts, sent hundreds of their members into the early Christian Church, could not have been wholly bad. Judge not, therefore, and ye shall not be judged, but if you persist in passing condemnatory sentences on your, fellowman, be sure you will make such glaring mistakes and work such mischief, that God's condemnation will come heavy upon you. " Judge not and ye shall not be judged."
Lastly, Brethren, the parable teaches how much at variance usually are the judgments of man and the judgments of God, They are generally as different as the grounds on which they are based; as different as was the Pharisee's fair exterior from his proud, uncharitable, sinful soul, or the publican's unpromising aspect from his humble and contrite heart. Far God is not concerned with the outward appearances of things, nor is His knowledge, like ours, acquired slowly and with much labor and easily forgotten. See what a weary process has to be gone through with in a court of justice that one little case may be decided, one little wrong righted, and consider how often even then justice miscarries and the innocent are punished and the guilty freed. And if decisions so laboriously arrived at frequently prove false, what of opinions formulated in a moment? But with God, to exist is to know, and so penetrating and so comprehensive is the scope of His vision that all creatures, all events, all men from time's beginning to time's end are ever present before Him; aye, even our very motives regarding which we manage so often and so egregiously to deceive ourselves. " Thou hast understood my thoughts afar off," says the Psalmist, (Psalms i. 38), "Thou hast foreseen all my ways. Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit, whither flee from Thy face? If I ascend into heaven Thou art there, if I descend into hell Thou art present, and in the uttermost parts of the sea. And I said: Perhaps darkness shall cover me and night: but darkness shall not be dark to Thee, and night shall be light as day; the darkness and the light are alike to Thee." So long then as there exists such infinite disparity between God's omniscience and our feeble gropings after truth, so long must our opinions of ourselves and of others be subject to error and at variance with the judgments of God. "Judge not before the time, therefore, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden" things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts, and then shall every man have praise from God."
Brethren, the lesson of to-day, briefly stated, is this: First, to be very careful and timid m the expression of our opinions of our own or our neighbor's merits. Secondly, to remember always that whatever be the state of the case, the prayer "O God, be merciful to me, a sinner" is more pleasing to the ears of God than an act of thanksgiving that we are not as the rest of men. And, finally, that the more intimately we come into communion with God the greater will be our sense of our own unworthiness, and the more hope will there be that He will have mercy and forgive. " For every one that exalteth himself shall be humbled, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted."