Sunday of the Publican and Pharisee
Scripture: Luke 18:10-14
I joined Facebook in October of 2004, when you still needed an “edu” address to join. Facebook had only just launched a few months before with the goal of uniting you with your classmates. You told Facebook what classes you were taking and, presto, you saw everyone else taking that class. This allowed you to work on group projects, share notes, and connect with our classmates in sorts of new ways.
Today, social media has become far more than classroom networking. Facebook, Instagram, SnapChat, Youtube, and TikTok have taken over our lives. It’s the first thing we look at in the morning, and the last thing we check before we go to bed.
But, we don’t just spend our time looking at other people’s posts, we also spend a lot of time crafting our own image.
We selectively chose the photos we post. We fret over what someone may think of an article we’ve shared. We worry how a comment may be perceived by people we’ve never met.
We want the world to see us, but only that part of us that we want to be seen.
We have, effectively, turned ourselves into a private brand. And everything we post—from what we ate for dinner, to our political opinion, to an inspiring quote, to bad news—has become something to be consumed by others with a thumbs up or a thumbs down.
As Tish Harrison Warren argued in a New York Times article argued last week, there’s a dark downside to living our lives as brands. She writes,
“Plenty of public leaders, artists, writers, scholars or politicians have become visible not through branding but by way of their skills, accomplishment, dedication to service or good governance. But the point of online branding is often less about doing excellent work, building healthy institutions or contributing to society and more about gaining notoriety through personality or spectacle.”
In short, we’ve devalued what it means to be a person.
Our sense of self is no longer tied to what we’ve been able to do, learn, or create; nor is it tied to healthy relationships with others or even God. We’re simply a product to be consumed by the world.
Warren continues in our article,
“To reduce ourselves to brands, however, is to do violence to our personhood. We turn ourselves into products, content to be evaluated instead of people to be truly known and loved. We convert the stuff of our lives into currency.”
Though social media may have amplified the problem, it’s nothing new—just look at the Pharisee from today’s gospel reading. He wanted to be seen by people and by God as the perfect example of piety. Just as we curate our image for social media consumption, he curated a brand for the world to eat up.
He wanted to be evaluated by what he projected to the world rather then by who he really was.
But, when we became a brand instead of a person, we have a problem. God doesn’t save brands. He saves persons in communion with him. He saves people who are authentic and true.
How do we do that? Luckily, we have an example of such a person in today’s Gospel reading: the tax-collector.
Tax-collectors in the fist-century were, in many ways, like the Pharisees. They were rich and lived well. But, in contrast to the Pharisees, they were also known as cheats, thieves, and traitors. They didn’t care what their fellow countrymen thought of them. And, as a result, they weren’t afraid to take advantage of their neighbor.
From a branding perspective, tax-collectors were a disaster. But, it didn’t matter. They had cozied up to Roman power and were willing to wield that power to get their way.
But, the tax-collector we see in today’s Gospel is different. He knew he was a disaster of a person. He could’ve branded himself and hid behind excuses, but he didn’t.
Instead of presenting a false image, he exposed himself as he truly was, and he offered to God the only thing he had: his failures and weaknesses.
He couldn’t even look up to heaven. But, because he offered to God his true self, God was able to acknowledge and rehabilitate him. In the end, he went home justified.
The tax-collector is an image of repentance, someone who not only is sorry for past failings, but someone who acknowledges that his life needs to follow a different path. When he went home, I’m sure his family and neighbors looked at him and saw the same person that they’d alway seen: a husband, a father, a tax-collector, a traitor, a cheat, a Roman sympathizer.
Yet, something was different.
In actuality, he was a new person. God had looked upon him with favor. God had accepted his prayer as being “in the right,” and, in turn, God had made the the tax-collector himself to be “in the right.”
As a result of opening himself up to God, the tax-collector had entered into a relationship with the divine, and he had become a person. Someone who is seen. Someone who exists. Someone who is validated. Someone who is worthy of love.
In the end, though, isn’t that what we all hope that social media can give us? When we brand ourselves on Facebook or Instagram, aren’t we really just looking for love? I suspect, though, that the likes we accumulate really don’t make a different deep down. We’re still left with a void and a shallowness that’ll keep us searching. However without Christ, our search will be in vain.
The Good News from today’s reading is that we don’t have to keep searching.
What we’re looking for is right in front of us, for God is love.
When we’re willing to be true with ourselves and with God, God’s love can overpower any short comings we may have, because God’s love transforms.
So, let’s stop lying to ourselves and to the world about who we are. As we approach Lent, let’s be real and acknowledge that we are sinners in need of God’s salvation. Let’s open ourselves up, follow Christ to the cross so that we can experience the power of love that comes through resurrection. Amen.