Self- Righteousness
“The Pharisee took up his position and spoke this prayer to himself, ‘Oh God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity – greedy, dishonest, adulterous – or even like this tax collector.’.” (Luke 9:11)
Ever since our ancestors began walking upright, a subtle lie has persisted in the human psyche. A lie that can become insidious; the beginning of a slippery slope. “Those” people outside our circle are not like us. Those -- wops, kikes, dikes, spooks, gooks, retards, nerds, spics, micks, pollocks, chinks, fags -- are different from us, less important, less worthy, even… less human. In varying degrees that lie is used to justify smugness, prejudice, discrimination, bigotry or much worse. When taken to the extreme, it becomes the basis for justifying behavior from slavery to war, hate crimes to genocide.
The attitude of holding others unlike ourselves in contempt is widespread, but, thankfully, the results are usually not so extreme. We’re all routinely guilty of it in one way or another, at least in its milder forms. It may surface, for example, when a health conscious non-smoker encounters a smoker; or on a busy four-lane highway, when a driver in a hurry follows too closely behind another one who is traveling at or below the speed limit. (I must have been the cause of that one a lot in Italy where certain drivers on the autostada, apparently believing they were competing at Le Mans, would creep up and ride my bumper until I changed lanes.) Young brothers and sisters, it may surface at school when you choose not to hang out with students who dress, act, or talk differently than you.
In our tendency to pigeonhole people, we use categories like age, sex, social standing, race, nationality, and religion to distance ourselves from those who rub us the wrong way. American history records how common it’s been for each generation of immigrants to look down on the latest wave of immigrants. My own father, for example, an immigrant from Sicily, as a young man in Rochester with a family to support during the Great Depression couldn’t get a job at Kodak or Bausch and Lomb because company policy at both openly discriminated against Italians, Latinos and other ethnic groups. Other more egregious examples are the deplorable treatment of Native Americans in the West and lynching of African Americans in the South.
So as not to fall into the trap of self-righteousness by considering ourselves morally superior to our forbears or to anyone else, let’s remember that only 65 short years ago the Holocaust happened, a horrific example of inhumanity perpetrated by professed Christians, many of whom were Catholics. Jews, God’s chosen people, co-religionists of Jesus and the Apostles, were scapegoated and demonized to the point where it became acceptable national policy to systematically exterminate them… six million of them. (Rochester’s population x 29)
Even in Rome, the heart of Christendom, city of over 900 churches, on October 16, 1943, in a square within walking distance of the Vatican, more than one thousand men, women, and children, some newborns, were rounded up, locked onto trains and shipped off like cattle to Auschwitz, a concentration camp, where only 16 survived. Two Sundays ago, Gloria and I, by chance, were in that square as hundreds of people, Jews and Christians alike commemorated that barbaric event. Such was the awful culmination of 20 centuries of anti-Semitism, some of it, regrettably, Church inspired. Ethnic cleansing, as we know, still happens in places like Kosovo and Darfur and in the Middle East, Muslims who worship the same God differently, kill each other daily.
The Pharisee in today’s gospel parable, a respected member of first century Jewish society, uses his faithful observance of Mosaic Law to distance himself from the tax collector, admittedly, a collaborator with the hated Roman authorities. They both go to the same temple to pray, but the Pharisee’s prayer, which smacks of pride, self-congratulation, and condemnation is not pleasing to God. The tax collector’s prayer, on the other hand, in which he humbly acknowledges his sinfulness and begs God’s forgiveness, brings him justification, right relationship with God.
The Pharisee follows the letter of the law, but ignores its spirit. He focuses on the tax collector’s shortcomings, while ignoring his own. To his way of thinking, he needs nothing outside himself. The tax collector, on the other hand, knows he is nothing without God’s grace. French philosopher Blaise Pascal said that there are only two classes of people: saints, who know they are sinners, and sinners, who think they are saints. And the latter category can be especially dangerous to disfavored minorities.
To be fair, it must be pointed out that not all Pharisees in 1st century Judea were like the one portrayed in the parable. Many of them were in fact devout and observant Jews. They were the progressives of their day, seeking to adapt biblical laws to the demands of everyday life. Gamaliel, for example, was St. Paul’s teacher and Rabbi Hillel greatly influenced Jesus’ teaching. Joseph of Arimathea, also a Pharisee, gave his tomb for Jesus’ burial, a risky thing to do in a police state. The gospel character today, although not representative of Pharisees in general, could represent some of us, if we too are prone to the same mistakes. First -- believing in our own self-righteousness. Second – despising anyone else.
The first reading echoes the gospel’s message. Sirach, a teacher who lived two hundred years before Christ, warns that ours is a God of justice, who knows no favorites and hates no one. His ways are not our ways, for, unlike mortal judges who may be swayed by external acts of piety, God alone sees into the human heart. This explains why of all human failings, Jesus is particularly rankled by hypocrisy. It also explains why the prayer of the lowly, the weakest and most defenseless, in Sirach’s words, pierces the clouds and does not rest till it reaches… the Most High.
Scripture warns repeatedly that it’s God job to judge, not ours. Yet that judgmental, “holier than thou” attitude of looking down our noses at others stubbornly persists, even in otherwise well-meaning people, too often resulting in terrible injustice. Jesus never wrote off anyone as hopeless or worthless, and neither can we. Besides, there’s this thing call grace, God quietly at work in all our lives. That’s why we can’t give up on ourselves or on anyone else.
A man who took great pride in his lawn found himself once with a large and recurring crop of dandelions. Although he tried every method he knew to get rid of them, they continued to plague him. Finally, in desperation, he wrote to the Cornell Cooperative Extension, enumerating all the things he had tried and concluded with the question: “What shall I do now?”
After a while, the reply finally came: “We suggest you learn to love them!
“Learn to love them.” When dealing with people outside our comfort zone, that’s good advice for all of us.
Anthony J. Sciolino
Sirach 35:12-14
Timothy 4:6-8
Luke 18:9-14
30th Sunday in Ordinary Time
October 28, 2007. (Cycle C)