30^th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year C (2019)
 
Every once in a while, (or sometimes, quite often) we hear about one of our favorite people behaving badly. 
 
Maybe it’s a co-worker who we find out has been seriously abusing her corporate expense account.  Maybe it’s a friend who suddenly is spending all sorts of alone time with someone who is not his wife.   Maybe it’s a family member who begins verbally abusing his or her spouse and children in public.   
 
And when that happens, when someone we “like” has “fallen from grace” it can make us feel, make us wonder and think to ourselves,
“I thought he (or she) was one of the good guys.”
 
Of course, implicit in this sort of statement is the assumption that people can be divided into two distinct categories: “good” people and “bad” people.  And each of us is clearly one or the other.  Moral or immoral.  Loving or cruel.  Generous or stingy.  Honest or dishonest.
 
And since there are only two options to choose from, most of us have absolutely no trouble doing what you’d expect: putting ourselves in the “good” category.    
 
And so we often work very hard to keep ourselves in the “good” category by doing what I like to call “moral gymnastics”—somehow making our dishonest practices, not as bad as those of others, or consider our lies simply a “stretching of the truth”, or defending our  lack of generosity as simply “responsibly planning for the future.”
 
And so, we almost never consider ourselves to be the problem.  We clearly aren’t what is wrong with this world.   We aren’t what really needs to change.  We’re one of the “good guys.” “And thank God, I am not like the rest of humanity.”
 
And that puts us in a very select group—one which gets a lot of “special” attention from Jesus throughout Scripture. Unfortunately, it’s just about the only group with which Jesus has a serious problem.
 
Tax collectors, prostitutes, lepers, foreigners—Jesus easily accepts them, and is kind to them, compassionately reaches out to them, and draws close to them (despite society’s stern disapproval.) 
 
But what of those people who are convinced of their own goodness?   Convinced of their own righteousness?  Convinced of their obvious moral superiority?  
 
Well, it seems that Jesus has a grave problem with those who think that way.  They’re just about the only people in Scripture to whom Jesus really gives a piece of his mind.  People who harbor thoughts like that disappoint him, and even make him angry, and that should tell us something.
 
The Pharisee in today’s Gospel had it completely wrong.  The one who had it right was the tax collector standing off to the side, afraid even to even raise his eyes to heaven.  There was only one thing that weighed heavily on his conscience: “O God, be merciful to me a sinner.”
 
The word “sin” has, unfortunately, become sort of a dirty word for even Christians.  In the opinion of some, there is this perception that was once upon a time too much of a focus on sin and not enough emphasis on the joy that comes with living a God-centered life. 
 
And yet, admitting that we are sinners does not mean we have to beat ourselves up over it, or consider ourselves worthless, or fear God’s wrath every second of every day.
 
It simply means that we are not perfect—and that each of us contributes to the world being a little less than it can be through the sinful choices we make (and contributes less and less to that best-version-of-ourselves.)
 
The fact is that there really aren’t simply “good” people and “bad” people.  There are sinners and sinners.  People who sometimes do the wrong thing and people who sometimes do the wrong thing.  People who mess up and people who mess up.  People who need God for everything and people who need God for everything. 
 
There is a thin line between the confidence of the tax collector and the arrogance of the Pharisee: it’s called humility. Confidence smiles. Arrogance smirks.