The Guy We Love to Hate

Devotional, Reflection Ash Wednesday, March 2 2022

The first day of Lent

The Rev. David W. Perkins, Th.D.

Key phrases from today’s reading for reflection:

10‘Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people . . . . 13But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”

You will find the full text of today’s Gospel at the end of this reflection.

Daily Office Lectionary Readings (BCP, 951)

AM Psalm 95[for the invitatory] & 32, 143; PM Psalm 102,130

Amos 5:6-15; Heb. 12:1-14; Luke 18:9-14

David’s Reflections

Each winter, the wood heater in the living room of my Virginia mountainside bungalow reduces a rather substantial stack of oak firewood to a few buckets of ashes.  It amazes me how such stately trees can diminish into such small mounds of gray powder.  In today’s Gospel, two men present us with just such a contrast.  One, the religious leader, stands before God with confidently open arms like the stately oak with its crown of green and its expansive shade.  The other, a Jewish collaborator with the oppressive Roman overlords, shrinks into a distant corner like that mound of ashes in the floor of a wood heater. The Pharisee is the guy we love to hate, smug, pious, prideful.

Robert Bly once observed about ashes: “Ashes represent a great diminishment from the living tree with its huge crown and its abundant shade.” * In this Ash Wednesday reading, Jesus’ parable pictures two contrasting spiritual stances.  One person experiences his own spiritual situation with delight, he confidently approaches God in prayer and exhibits emotional contempt for those he believes need God and need his witness.  I am not polemicizing against delight, an appropriate celebrative spirit, so long as it comes not by comparing the best in ourselves to the worst in others.

The other person experiences his spiritual stance with a sense of desperate distance from God and others.  He grieves his situation (striking the chest was an expression of grief), understands that his choices have diminished him to an ash-like heap, and cries out in hope that God will forgive and receive him. As Jesus put it, “Blessed are those who mourn.” He’s the guy we love to love.

We, the hearers of this poignant story, easily identify with the desperate cries of the sinner and feel contempt for the Pharisee’s smugness.  That identification catches us as well.  Feeling contempt for the smug and self-righteous puts us in their tent.  A too-quick identification with either of these two people reveals our own lack of a sense of appropriate diminishment, our distance from the experience of spiritual desperation, that ash-heap desperation of the latter person. Maybe the guy we love to hate reveals our hidden-from-ourselves self elevation.

Both these people need God equally.  Something in our psyches answers to each of them.  Our own smugness and contempt, whether it targets the self-righteous or the abased and unlovely, reveals our self-elevating spirits and our need for some chest beating and ash-heap visiting. Our sense of shame and diminishment, our ash-heap feelings, speaks to our tortured memories of our history and our sense of need for God's mercy.

On this Ash Wednesday, the Pharisee’s prayer haunts us, “I thank you that I am not like other people.”  Exactly the opposite actually proves to be true in Jesus’ story.  And, the sinner’s prayer haunts us as well, “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.”  How tricky to accept our diminished and impoverished state apart from God and to find our commonality with all others exactly in that acceptance without being paralyzed by guilt and shame or inflated by pride.

Watch out for that person you love to hate. More honest to start with the person in the mirror, to paraphrase a Michael Jackson song.

I'm starting with the man in the mirror

I'm asking him to change his ways

And no message could have been any clearer

If you wanna make the world a better place

Take a look at yourself and then make a change#

*Robert Bly, Iron John:  A Book About Men (Reading, MA:  Addison-Wesley, 1990), p. 83.

#Michael Jackson, "Man in the Mirror," from the album "Bad."

https://genius.com/Michael-jackson-man-in-the-mirror-lyrics

Collect of the Day, Ash Wednesday

Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.  (BCP, 217)

Collect of the Day, The Last Sunday after the Epiphany

O God, who before the passion of your only-begotten Son revealed his glory upon the holy mountain: Grant to us that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.  (BCP, 217)

A Collect for Grace

Lord God, almighty and everlasting Father, you have brought us in safety to this new day: Preserve us with your mighty power, that we may not fall into sin, nor be overcome by adversity; and in all we do, direct us to the fulfilling of your purpose; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (BCP, 100)

A Prayer attributed to St. Francis

Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.  (BCP, 833)

In the Evening

O Lord, support us all the day long, until the shadows lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done. Then in thy mercy, grant us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last. Amen.   (BCP, 833)

A Collect for Mission

Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace: So clothe us in your Spirit that we, reaching forth our hands in love, may bring those who do not know you to the knowledge and love of you; for the honor of your Name. Amen. (BCP, 101)

Daily Offices in The Book of Common Prayer

Morning Prayer, Rite 2, page 75, The Book of Common Prayer

Noonday Prayer, page 103, Book of Common Prayer

Order of Worship for Evening (Vespers), p 109, Book of Common Prayer

Evening Prayer, Rite 2, page 115, Book of Common Prayer

Compline (Night Prayer), page 127, Book of Common Prayer

Daily Devotionals, page 136, Book of Common Prayer