Luke 18:9-14
9 Jesus told this parable to certain people
who had convinced themselves that they were righteous and who looked on
everyone else with disgust: 10 “Two people went up to the temple to pray. One was a Pharisee and the
other a tax collector. 11 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. 12 I fast twice a week. I give a tenth of everything I receive.’ 13 But the tax collector
stood at a distance. He wouldn’t even lift his eyes to look toward heaven.
Rather, he struck his chest and said, ‘God, show mercy to me, a sinner.’
14 I tell you, this
person went down to his home justified rather than the Pharisee. All who lift
themselves up will be brought low, and those who make themselves low will be
lifted up.”
I’m almost into my third month of
my new job where I work as a peer in mental health. I am the youngest of all the team between two
houses, one of the most educated, and the resident spirituality export (or as a
professor said “theologian in residence”.
I like to think of myself as a low judgmental person, but I can tell you
that I am quick to judge. I feel very much like the Pharisee who gives thanks
for what is not happening to him. I have my anxiety managed, I have health
insurance, I have a job where I don’t need to hide my illness, I can afford and
have easy access to my prescriptions, I go to therapy every week, I have people
or supporters as my job training would call it! I am called to this when I see
my co-worker peers telling there stories or having a day where they symptoms of
there diagnoses comes nocking at the door. I say to myself and unintentionally
to God “thank you that I don’t have paralyzing anxiety like she does” or “wow I’m
glad that I was never interested in dope like he was, what a mess of things he
made”. I am thankful that my symptoms
are not as bad as someone else’s. Not thinking of how to support the person
into having symptom reduction or even reduction.
It is an interesting
parallel, because we celebrate recovery and the resurrection of the person and
not the patient (going from patient-hood to personhood). Yet our struggles also
keep us down, and have caused me to think about myself and my place in this
group of people a lot. I am still cocky
and feeling like I’m hot stuff and excited that I’m the first of my seminary friends
graduating this year to have a ‘grown up job’.
We celebrate success and moving forward however it comes as an agency
value. And yet I find myself still living in the judgment of ‘I’m doing awesome,
whoot!’
Yes I do a
lot of the things that my faith demands of me, in the ways that suit my life, myself
and beliefs and I sometimes brag about them. Yes I brag and it can be bad
sometimes, very bad. But I know I brag because more often I feel like the tax
collector, “God I’m sorry that I have to ask this person to explain why they
came to a food pantry”, “Can’t you just create a compound, element, something
to take this persons pain away? ‘Why do you let me suffer?’ Learning to question
God both in angry ways demanding to know why God has done or not done this or
that is something that has become a new practice for me. But the questions of
why that come with my repentance of what feels like diminishing someone’s
imago-dei are the ones that most make me feel like I’m separate from God a
sinner who has missed the mark completely.
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| From http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/22/Astronomy_Amateur_3_V2.jpg |
Yet at the same time, I know that
relationships are part of the process to restoration of the spirit. Maybe “hearing
the person in to being”* even in the shame, stigma, and doubt is siting in the
mud with the person, helping them to rise to there own feet and to tell them
they are the beloved. To invite them instead of looking down in life, when
everyone is already looking at you as ‘another welfare case’ at the social
security line, or the disability, line or at the local homeless or outreach
center. I can point to the way that will lead them to look up to see there
imago-dei there lives filled with Grace so big they don’t yet know it. I know that I am not the one who will fix the
world, that’s God’s job. Nor am I the last person who will point to look up and
out but I aspire to be one who helps to prepare and prime the soul for the journey
ahead
*Inspired by a favorite theologian of my seminary Nell
Morton (she is amazing BTW, I wish I had known her outside of her writing)
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