Sermon - Rev. Judith Perry

October 26, 2025

We are working our way through the gospel of Luke. There is a three-year cycle. This is the year of Luke. Next year it will be Matthew, and we’ll begin that gospel at the beginning of Advent. 

Cartoonists take a person’s characteristics and blow them up to comedic proportions, but they are still recognizable in whatever foible in which they are involved. The artist takes it to the max.  

Jesus does that often in his parables and particularly in this one.We end up with is a characterisation – an image of someone based on one or two characteristics with everything else about them left out. 

Jesus does this in this story, two men, blown out of proportion. It’s a little story of two men who go to the temple, or some place of worship, to pray. Neither are particularly good men.  

Jesus is telling this story. Firstly, there is this Pharisee who had a very high opinion of his own moral character and in contrast a very low opinion of anyone else. 

The Pharisee was a member of the devoutly religious Pharisee party.  

In Jesus’s day though, the Pharisees were certainly not seen as the bad guys by the average Israelite. Far from it. To many people, the Pharisees were quite heroic.  

They were the ones who had led the resistance to the watering down of the faith by Greek and Roman culture. They were the energetic defenders of the unique faith and culture of the people of God.  

The Sadducees on the other hand were seen as majorly compromised. They were the ones who had traded religious integrity for wealth and power.  

The Sadducees were in bed with Rome and doing very nicely out of it, and the ordinary people regarded them as corrupt fat-cats and had very little admiration for them.  

But the Pharisees were never accused of religious laxness or compromise. They were the heroes of the true faith in those days. 

The other man in Jesus’ story was working as a tax and debt collector for the Roman occupation forces and so was despised as a traitor.  

The religious man, the epitome of righteous, struck a pose in full view of everybody and prayed out loud, saying, ‘God, I give you thanks that I am not dishonest, corrupt or perverted like other people. I especially thank you that I am better than other people and not like that traitor over there. I fast religiously twice a week and donate ten percent of all my income to You’ etc., etc., etc., blah, blah, blah. 

There is this non-too-subtle self-assurance in listing his religious observances as evidence of his virtue in case God had not been giving him enough attention. 

Meanwhile the traitor fell to his knees in a quiet corner and, with his face buried in his hands, prayed, ‘God, I know that I have failed you. Please have mercy on me! 

“Just think about it,” said Jesus, “that it was this second man rather than the other, who was right with God when he headed for home.  

This is how it is, those who righteous prigs will end up with hollow recognition, while those who remain down to earth and presume nothing will be promoted by God.” 

Even so this simply a short parable. Surely the second man, the collector, would have to go back to work. To make a living he had to keep some of the money he collected to pay himself.  

Further the rate of taxation was very high. I wonder if there were tariffs too.     

It is a straightforward little story. There is a scale of righteous corruption between these two characters. Where do you fit in? or not? 

Despite the fact that all the things that the pharisee listed in his own favour were undoubtedly true, it’s the tax collector who goes home with God’s blessing. 

Again, Jesus is talking about God’s radically upside down values system. The roles are reversed. The one who pleads for mercy because he has no virtues goes home justified, accepted by God.  

The one who has many virtues and who is guilty of no more than a tendency to parade them because he can, goes unheard by God. 

You folks who enjoy life and love with Jesus. know that you can’t generate such life and love by yourself. You can’t get yourself there, no matter how good you are. You entrust yourself to God’s mercy.  

This brings me to the tax collector’s prayer. He may have been a slime bag, but he got the prayer right. “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” With these words we embark on the journey of life in all its fullness, the journey to our ancient destiny, to be one with Christ Jesus our Lord. 

There is this simple prayer : have mercy on me! In this case, and often, it comes with  a confession and a request for pardon. But mercy is a much larger word.  

Have mercy is sometimes a request for healing, and sometimes it is not a request at all. Lord have mercy can be an acknowledgement that God is present.  I am here, You, God are here. We are here together. 

In the nineteenth century a little book began to be circulated in Russia. You can read it in English. It is available as a free pdf file online, “The Way of the Pilgrim”. 

A man goes to church and arriving late he enters whilst the epistle is being read and hears the words in II Thessalonians: “Pray without ceasing”.  It hit him in the heart. He mulled it over. He knew that he was compelled to pray without ceasing, but he did not know how to go about it.  

With his backpack and a bible, he began his long sojourn. He went from place to place asking how to have constant prayer. 

At last, the found a hermit who taught him the Jesus Prayer which is popular in the Eastern churches: The short version is the prayer of the tax collector “Lord have mercy” and the longer is: “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me!” 

After entreating a number of people, he encountered a hermit and asked him how could anyone pray without ceasing. Hearing this the hermit invited the man to the hermit’s cell. 

" When we entered his cell, the elder said, "The ceaseless Jesus Prayer is a continuous, uninterrupted call on the holy name of Jesus Christ with the lips, mind, and heart; and in the awareness of His abiding presence, it is a plea for His blessing in all undertakings, in all places, at all times, even in sleep. The words of the Prayer are: 'Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me!' Anyone who becomes accustomed to this Prayer will experience great comfort as well as the need to say it continuously. He will become accustomed to it to such a degree that he will not be able to do without it and eventually the Prayer will of itself flow in him.   

The pilgrim stayed around to receive guidance from the old man, but in a few months the old man died. Then the pilgrim travelled as a mendicant  pilgrim through Ukraine, Russia and Siberia practicing ceaseless inner prayer and communion with God. 

This little anonymous book has had an immense influence in the Orthodox Church. But let’s not limit it to our eastern brethren. Jesus have mercy is a prayer of the heart, almost a mantra, a place of stillness, and it is a place of growth. It opens one to the constant divine presence.