I Thank Thee.

Luke 19:1-10

Praying and researching this scripture I kept recalling two interviews I did in the library of Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland.  I was there studying how the University and the students had effected the growth of the city outside the downtown, as my senior thesis in my Bachelor of Arts.  I would interview the students about their life at the University and prior.  One day I was interviewing two, Protestants, Ulstermen, Orange Men, and/or Loyalist (which ever label you prefer) about growing up before university what they thought of the, Catholics, Irish, Nationalists, and/or Republicans (which ever label you prefer).  The answer was I thought they had horns growing out of their head, was their answer.  The next day I got the exact same answer in reverse.  Both of parties went on to explain that their time at Queen’s University had changed that perspective.  Yet I knew the majority still lived at home in their respective enclaves, perhaps only yards from their classmate separated by a wall. 

This illustration comes to mind because the scripture emphasizes not only being humble but defining oneself against someone else’s identity.   Humility is, in part, not defining yourself as what you are not, but to be yourself.  This importance is emphasized in Prophet Jonah’s experience.  We will often read Jonah as he was scared of God, and thus ran.  If you look closely at the scripture one will find that Jonah was not scared of God, but was too invested in defining himself against those of Nineveh.  See Jonah did not run because he was scared of God, but that the merciful God would save them from the doom he believed they were due.  So when Jonah did prophesize Nineveh’s destruction, the people repented.  Jonah was a great prophet to truly have them repent, that God saw and said, he would not bring the calamity upon them.  Then in Chapter 4, Jonah makes it clear, it was not God he was scared of, but having those “others” saved that made him run and even made him angry, despite it being his work that saved them.  It reads: “But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord and said, ‘O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.’ And the Lord said, ‘Is it right for you to be angry?’”  Clearly Jonah could not understand himself, even with a personal relationship with God, without defining himself as other from another.

To truly be humble we must be able to simply say “I thank thee.” And not “I thank thee that I am not…”  In today’s scripture the Pharisee is actually is more like us, in that he is doing all the proper religious things and thus reminds me that I may at times say or at least feel “I thank thee that I am not….”  And the first that comes to mind are those people who say, “I am not religious, but I am spiritual.”  I do believe from having met many people who claim that, most are saying it to change the subject of the conversation, but the small percentage, are actually perusing the divine in their own individualistic way.  It is not, for those that are truly seeking God, unlike this parable in Luke, as the tax collector is repenting without all the tradition the Pharisee does and upholds in his prayer.  The parable was told, according to Luke, to those “…who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt,” and this has been reversed by many that look on us who are religious and say, I am glad I am not like those church goers, yet we must look at ourselves and realize that despite being active in church that we are tempted to do the same.  We must with humility look at those people earnestly seeking God and find what we can learn from them as well as they can learn from us and the great Christian tradition.  Imagine if in the parable the Pharisee went over to offer the tradition of prayer, or better yet went over and learned from the man’s passionate and humble repentance.

We thus thank Thee “period.” We define ourselves with humility only through the Christ.