Daily Lesson for March 5, 2014 - Ash Wednesday

Today's Ash Wednesday Lesson is a parable from Luke chapter 18:

9 He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: 10 “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ 13 But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ 14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other.”

Today is Ash Wednesday, the traditional beginning of Lent. Lent is a 40 day season set apart for the disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.

What an irony then that the Church has prescribed the parable of The Pharisee and the Tax Collector as the reading of choice for this first day of Lent.

Did you notice that the Pharisee - a man of a very strict, observant, and set apart religious group - is a man of prayer, fasting, and tithing? And yet, he goes home unjustified, while the tax collector - an even more despised profession then than now - went home justified. Why? Because the Pharisee's religious disciplines led him to a place of spiritual arrogance (In an embarrassing hot-mike moment he actually said, "Thank you God that I'm not like this other guy."), while somehow the tax collector came to a much more humble recognition of his own shortcomings and sin before God.

Well, we miss the point if we now turn around and say, "Thank God we're not like that arrogant Pharisee." The truth of the matter is that there's a little tax collector and a little Pharisee in each of us. And the whole point of the story is to say that none of us is upright - no not one - and so we all are in need of God's justification and forgiveness.

I hope you'll keep Lent with me over these 40 days and I hope we will all keep it in the right spirit. Prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are good disciplines so long as we don't wear them as merit badges which tell us how good and set apart from others we are, but instead allow the disciplines to lead us into a deeper acknowledgement of what we have in common with all other people, whether saints or sinners - our absolute dependence on God's goodness and mercy.