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Sermon preached at Trinity Church, Newport RI.
Sunday October 23 2016
The Reverend Alan Neale

“Healthy Self-Deprecation”

Luke 18:11 “¹¹ The Pharisee took his stand ostentatiously and began to pray thus before and with himself: God, I thank You that I am not like the rest of men… or even like this tax collector here.”
“Took his stand ostentatiously and began to pray thus BEFORE and WITH himself…”. Fascinating but weird too!
There are some of you out there who leave the most sophisticated messages on your telephones; so perfect, so good that I sometimes assume this is no message but the real thing… and so I launch merrily into conversation for a few seconds and then, embarrassed but then nobody’s around… hey?, realize I have been talking with myself; somewhat humorous but devastatingly harmful in real-time relationships either with others or even with God.
The pathetic, poignant plight of the Pharisee is that he was ignorant of this one-sided conversation; in this incestuous trinitarian conversation (the trinity of “I, myself and me”) the Pharisee has become inured to the sound of his own voice and deaf to the thunderous silence of “the other.” Surely you have suffered the angst, frustration of being in a conversation with someone who simply treats our own words as opportunities to re-group and plan his/her next sentence.
The Pharisee suffers from the death-dealing blow of terminal uniqueness.
His process is one of comparison rather than identification and so whole swathes of humanity are dismissed as worthless, wretched and wasteful. In this peculiar court-room of moral and personal value, the Pharisee is prosecutor, judge and jury and all are found wanting… except for him.

But now, look carefully into the shadows of the Temple and see the tax-collector. He does not stride to the front of the Temple, he does not stand in the glare of spectators but rather he stands in the distance, in the shadows, covering his face. His prayer opens “God” and thence declares divine attributes; the Pharisee begins with “God” but rapidly degenerates into the declaration of his own attributes.

You see, the Pharisee assumes a posture, the tax-collector accepts a position.

For some while now there has been a movement named as “Spiritual but not Religious” (SBNR) and the Pharisee gives fuel to the fire of such a catchy but somewhat superficial concept. He, and others like him, gives so-called institutional religion a bad name, a very bad, bad name.
Consider: he is pompous, proud and self-preening; he chooses to live by odious comparison rather than by wholesome identification; he defines righteousness as rule-keeping rather than right relationships (and is not this one of the fundamental errors ever made?)
The tax-collector is humble (but not humiliated), he recognizes his powerlessness but celebrates God’s generosity, he views his fellows with the gift of identification rather than the scourge of comparison.

(??A personal story about my first AA meeting… could I really walk down those church steps of a NY church preceded by ‘street-person’ but then at heart was I so different??)

The Pharisee is all about himself and so the Freudian EGO becomes for him a woeful acronym – EGO Easing God Out.

Back in Philadelphia we decided to take on the SBNR and so produced these T-shirts that boldly aver SART (Spiritual and Religious Too).

While the Pharisee continues in the Temple mindless of his self-imposed isolation; the tax-collector returns home on the path to being righteous because he is in right relationship with God – Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer.

Given media conversations this past week, I have been thinking about self-deprecation. Some writers consider this a quintessential British quality, while others see it as a typical phony British ploy. I think, within limits, it is healthy because it authenticates the process of self-reflection and it insists on a big league perspective. Those who resist, resent, are uncomfortable with self-deprecation may benefit by beginning its practice.

Today’s prayer gives me an absolutely healthy perspective in which it live… “Almighty and everlasting God, increase in us the gifts of faith, hope, and charity; and, that we may obtain what you promise, make us love what you command” Amen. Amen