I'm Not Like That!

I’m Not Like That!
Apples to Apples…Apples to Oranges…Tastes like chicken…We compare things a lot, because if there’s something that’s not familiar, we speak in things that are familiar. If it’s something that tastes like something else…Or looks like something else…Or acts like something else…It’s easy to speak in things that we know instead of things that we don’t know—we translate things into our own experiences.
Think about the last time that you explained something to someone else…Whether it was somewhere that you went or something that you ate or something new…How did you explain it? Did you say, “Well it’s like…” “Do you know how….well, it’s like…” And then there are those times that we use the opposite… “You know how…Well it’s not like that…”
And then there are those times when we compare ourselves to other people…And we all do it really…I was listening to comedian Jim Gaffigan and one of his bits was around this very topic. He said, “We always compare ourselves to other people…You’re doing it right now…You’re saying, ‘at least I’m not as weird as Gaffigan…And I’m thinking ‘at least I’m not as weird as the people in the loony bins’…” And while his statements are meant to be funny and meant to be a joke…They ring some truth…We compare ourselves to other people…Whether it’s a celebrity or our neighbors down the street…We compare ourselves to other people…
Sometimes those comparisons are in good fun or are harmless comparisons…but most of the time, those comparisons are mean spirited or not so harmless…Maybe there are the times when we compare ourselves to someone else to make ourselves feel bad about ourselves… “I’ll never be as good as/as rich as/as smart as/like…” and for some people that may give them motivation, but most of the time it hurts our self esteem…
And if it’s not hurting ourselves, it’s hurting someone else… “I’m so much better than/richer than/smarter than...” Maybe we say things behind someone’s back…Maybe we say it to their face, not necessarily always in words either…But sometimes actions speak louder than words…If we treat someone like less of a person because we think that we’re better than them…
And to be truthful…We’ve all done it…There have been times when we’ve all thought that we were better than someone else…Maybe it was something that we saw as harmless…Something like, “I’m a better driver than so-and-so…” which seems harmless, right? But do you treat so-and-so different in the car? Do you not let them drive you anywhere? Do you tell them how to drive? Do you make snide comments to friends? Something that seems harmless isn’t always harmless…
When I read the stories from the Bible, I like to put myself in the place of the characters that I’m reading about…To put myself in the place of the women and men that I read about and try any think about how I would react or how I would respond to God’s grace and God’s movement in my life…Would I act like one of the people that I read about or would I do something else? Is there anyway that I could do or say the same things that they did? And sometimes it’s uncomfortable to put myself in the place of some of the characters because I don’t want to think of myself in a certain way…But that’s what makes the Bible such a living document…It speaks not only to the time and place of the people then, but it also speaks to the time and place of people today…Sometimes the stories make us uncomfortable and sometimes they fill us with comfort…Jesus didn’t say that having faith was comfortable…We are always called to get out of our own comfort zone to share God’s grace with other people…
Jesus tells the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector…as the passage opens, Luke says that Jesus told this parable to some people who thought that they were more righteous than others…He doesn’t say that he preached this on a mountain or in the middle of the town…He told this to specific people who needed to hear it…And even in what may have been a private conversation…It speaks to us today, right now, in this time and place…
The Pharisee went in the temple to pray and prayed loudly, “God, I thank you that I’m not like those people…I fast twice a week…I tithe…Thank God I’m not like those people…” Now the Pharisee names who those people are for him: thieves, rogues, adulterers, tax collectors…But do we have those people that we compare ourselves to? Those people that we think we are better than? Those people who can’t measure up to our high standards? Who are those people? They may be people who look different…They may be people who act different…The may be people who talk different…Whoever those people are, we think that we are better than them…Just like the Pharisee thought that he was better than the thieves, rogues, adulterers, and tax collectors…
And there’s another person in the story that we would much rather compare ourselves with than to compare ourselves with the Pharisee…The man who went home justified…The tax collector…As the Pharisee stands in the middle of the temple, puffing out his chest and proclaiming all of the wonderful things that he does and that he is and that he’s not like…The tax collector goes into a corner, can’t look at anyone or anything and beats his chest and says simply, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.” Tax collectors at that time were one of the most despised people…There was nothing good or redeemable about a tax collector…They usually stole money from the people that they collected from, they could make up taxes on the spot…They were considered to be one of the biggest sinners, which would explain why the Pharisee would want to distance himself from them in his prayer…And the tax collector separates himself from everyone else and simply says, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” One could say that he needed to do that because he was such a sinner and he needed to confess…Which may very well be true…But didn’t the Pharisee need to confess something as well? The tax collector couldn’t even look up to make his confession…
Who do you see yourself as? Do you see yourself as the tax collector? Do you see yourself as the Pharisee? Both are uncomfortable to see ourselves as…The tax collector is a hated person and someone who is a thief, a liar, and a sinner…The Pharisee is self righteous, arrogant, and rude…Which one are you? Jesus said that the only one who went home justified was the tax collector…Because those who humble themselves will be exalted and those who exalt themselves will be humbled…
Jesus showed us what it meant to humble ourselves…Jesus practiced what he preached and reached out to the least, the last, and the lost…Jesus reached out to those people without a second thought…Right in this moment we may be like the tax collector or we may be like the Pharisee…But we can strive to be a mixture of both…We can strive to lead a life like the Pharisee claimed, but confess like the tax collector…And all the while living the way that Jesus taught us…A life full of grace and mercy…We can show the love and grace that we have experienced from God to other people…Instead of seeing them as those people we can see them as our brothers and sisters and part of the family of God…