Ordinary Time 
Pause
What does it take to tell the truth about ourselves? To admit we don’t know everything. To let go of distorted images. To refuse to pretend to feel things we don’t.
What does it take to tell the truth about God? To admit we don’t know everything. To let go of distorted images. To refuse to pretend to feel things we don’t.
Humble and honest prayers begin with telling the truth to ourselves and to God — about ourselves and about God.
Let us pray.
Listen
Jesus told this parable to certain people who had convinced themselves that they were righteous and who looked on everyone else with disgust: “Two people went up to the temple to pray. One was a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed about himself with these words, ‘God, I thank you that I’m not like everyone else—crooks, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week. I give a tenth of everything I receive.’”
Luke 18:9-12
Think
Jesus doesn’t tell random stories. He tells parables — on purpose — to people who need to hear them. If they look and listen, they see and hear themselves in his stories.
Sometimes the Bible says exactly who Jesus’ intended audience is. This parable is for people who are sure of their own right-ness. They don’t have to look too hard or listen too closely to find themselves: they are front and center of the story in the character of the Pharisee, who makes sure to stand where everyone can see him, praying so everyone can hear him. His prayer points out all his own right actions and everybody else’s wrongs. And he’s not lying; he has done all those good things and avoided all those sins.
The Pharisee’s prayer shows that it’s possible to be accurate and be fooling ourselves. We can list all our good behavior and be deceiving God. We can report the facts and be missing the truth. We can be brutally honest and be full of hot air.
Nikki Finkelstein-Blair
Pray
God, forgive me for the times when I forget the truth that I am no better than anyone else.
You love me just as much as anyone, and I mess up just as much as anyone.
Help me to be truly honest with myself, and with you.
Amen.
Go
When we say “Amen,” we are saying, “Yes, truly.” We are saying, “Let it be so.”
In our silences — in our unspoken requests and questions — we hold the “Amen.”
In our stops and starts — in all the ways we move through life — we act out the “Amen.”
In our hesitations — in our uncertain ideas about ourselves and God — we remember the “Amen.”
In every silence, in every stop and every start, in every hesitant thought, God goes with you.
Yes, truly. Let it be so.
Amen.
