We have jokes that begin like that:

Two men went into a bar, one a priest and the other a rabbi…

Three men were flying in an airplane, a priest, a rabbi, and a Baptist minister…

We can anticipate what will follow, of course: there is a competition focusing around a "nugget of truth" within each – one of our own foibles, certainly! – and its disposition makes us laugh, if somewhat ruefully, as the story is played out.

So today: two men go up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.

The dichotomy is consistent with the predictions Jesus has just made regarding "some who will be taken, and some who will be left behind" in the context of the endtimes: lightning flashes, great suffering, fire and sulfur raining from heaven.

He seems to be elaborating on that dichotomy of "one will be taken, and one will be left behind" as he moves into his story about the Pharisee and the tax collector.

We can anticipate the ending – we’ve hung around the Gospels long enough to know that for Jesus – or for the Gospel writers! – it’s the Pharisee who is the "fall guy," and so the ending doesn’t shock us as it undoubtedly shocked Jesus’ listeners, for whom those same Pharisees were paragons of virtue, good and holy men thought certainly to be favored of God.

That lack of surprise at the ending is too bad: our familiarity with the characters lessens the impact of the story.

We don’t want to identify with the Pharisees.

We know what Jesus is going to say about them! Who wants to be identified as a "loser"?!!

But we also certainly don’t see ourselves as the tax collector, someone vilified, the obvious "loser" in that society – marginalized even in the temple, and abject, pleading before God. And we certainly don’t want to be needy like that!

So this story becomes a story we hear about, something that happens to someone else – rather than something we feel, something we live, here, in our own lives…

How can we put ourselves into this story?

Where do we fit?

Two people went into the church to pray…

The Priest and the Senior Warden?

The Chair of Parish Life and a Homeless Person?

A Tither and a Sporadic Giver?

An Active Parishioner and a C & E (Christmas and Easter) member?

The cadence is right, but the rest of the story doesn’t quite fall neatly into place…

We obviously need to move beyond categories or labels to the attitudes and behaviors which shape the story.

Truth be told, when we look beyond the pejorative designation "Pharisee" our Pharisee doesn’t seem all that bad:

He does, after all, go to the temple to pray.

He thanks God.

He keeps the Sabbath.

He tithes.

He fasts…

What’s not to like?

We go to the church to pray.

We thank God.

We even, many of us, try to keep the Sabbath – or, at least, we fret about it and worry about what it means to keep the Sabbath in today’s society, whether it is even possible.

We fast – or take a stab at it, at least, during Lent…

We give money, many of us wrestling with the tithe as a minimum standard of giving, and how that might be possible in today’s world, with all its financial demands – and insecurities.

Not too many of us come into the church and beat our breast, saying "God be merciful to me, a sinner."

That puts us squarely on the Pharisee-side of the equation.

Uncomfortably so: for it is the tax collector who goes to his home justified, rather than the Pharisee…

Now do we begin to feel the dissonance?

We certainly don’t expect Jesus to find us wanting… I mean, compared to lots of people…

And there we are, squarely in the story.

Let’s look at it a little more closely:

The danger, I think, isn’t in our adequacy or our observance – but in the seductive nature of that observance: when the finger points to God, there is always the danger that we begin to worship the finger!

It’s easy to fall into that Pharisaic trap of "Good Works."

We are like those who, in Edward Lear’s nonsense verse, "set to sea in a sieve" constructed of our own making.

We have an illusion of safety – see how carefully made it is? What fine strands we have created, of fasting and prayer, of generosity and Sabbath-keeping? – and we’re blind to our own vulnerability.

We don’t have the perspective to see that it isn’t the sieve which keeps us safe on those waters; it is God’s grace.

And yet – I think, whether we want to acknowledge it or not, we’re all also the Tax Collector: perhaps at those times when the sieve begins to sink! We’ve all had those times – some of which we’d rather not remember! – when we’ve been at our wit’s end, when we’ve hit bottom, when no matter what we do, life just seems to elude us, peace or health or the solution to the problem, seems just beyond our grasp, and we are desperate. We may not beat our breasts in public worship, but in private we are despairing, recognizing our own impotence, and we plead with God.

Perhaps the Pharisee-tax-collector dichotomy speaks to those contrasts existing in here, within ourselves, rather than out there, neatly dividing us into categories of people, the "righteous" and the "unrighteous," those who go up to their homes justified, and those who do not.

Certainly we’d all much rather live in our "Pharisee" spaces than in our abject and despairing spaces. We LIKE being adequate, in control.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. The danger is when we forget that we are MORE than that – and less:

We forget that God doesn’t meet us in our perfection, but in our brokenness.

The monk, St. Isaac the Syrian, tells us: "Dive down deep into your self, and there you will find the steps by which you might ascend."

Sometimes we dive – and sometimes we fall; but the steps are there, for us, as for the tax collector, to ascend.

I think today Jesus is challenging us to look at our whole selves – those disparate parts of ourselves which accompany us into the church to pray – and see not only our adequacy – something to be celebrated, certainly! – but our inadequacies.

He is challenging us to set aside our need to be perfect – or at least competent – to earn God’s favor, and instead to have faith in God’s providence, to create the openings for God to enter.

He is challenging us to remember our radical dependency on God.

He is challenging us to look deep into our hearts and see where we need to do a little spring cleaning.

We all have those places in our lives.

Even Jesus’ beloved disciple, the apostle John, in Dorothy Sayer’s radio play, The Man Born to be King, acknowledges: "When I look into my heart, I find it full of unswept, dusty corners."

Today Jesus is reassuring us: "you’ll find me in those dusty unswept corners, waiting for you."

"You don’t have to do everything alone."

"You don’t have to be perfect."

"You don’t have to be worthy of my love."

Because in those dusty, unswept corners, in those deep dark interior spaces, in our sighs too deep for words, in our acknowledgement of our shame and brokenness as we throw ourselves upon God, as we allow God to enter into our emptiness, we will experience God’s grace, God’s love and forgiveness, breaking over us.

So, today, we bring into the church to pray, those disparate parts of ourselves, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.

And God gathers us up, all of us, our brokenness and our illusion of perfection, and loves us into wholeness.

Amen.