Text: Luke 18:9-14
Our story today is about the spiritual discipline of tithing (or "pledging," as we call it). If pledging is a spiritual discipline, what is spirituality? In the book Walking on Water, Tony De Mello describes spirituality as being awake. Getting rid of illusions. Spirituality is never being at the mercy of any event, thing, or person. Spirituality means having found the diamond mine inside yourself. Religion is intended to lead you there. (122)
A group of tourists is traveling through a beautiful countryside. But the curtains on the train are drawn and they don't see anything. They are all occupied in deciding who will have the seat of honor, who will be appreciated, who is best, who is prettiest or most talented. This continues to the end of the journey. If you can understand this, you will be free, you will understand what spirituality is.
The Pharisee in the temple is like a tourist on the train who compares himself to other passengers. The Pharisee, standing by himself in the temple, says, 'God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector." Such comparisons are not life giving. They are life stealing. They are anti-spirituality. They are anti-Christ.
If you ever can get beyond the continual personal comparisons, you may discover what reality is, who God is, for you will see yourself detached from one of the greatest illusions: the illusion that we have to be appreciated, beloved, successful, that we must have prestige, honor, power, and popularity. There is only one necessity! That necessity is loving. When you discover that, you are transformed. When life becomes prayer, spirituality overflows into what we do. (Ibid, 124)
That is how transformation comes. Then after the transformation we can engage in a spiritual discipline such as pledging with a completely different attitude. Giving back a percentage of our income becomes a flowering of our own inner life. Pledging becomes a spiritual discipline without any of the negative connotations of the word "discipline." We don't like the word "discipline" because is sounds too much like personal limitations, prison, or punishment. Discipline is when the principal spanks the rowdy child and that is no longer politically correct because we frown upon that kind of discipline.
Appropriate discipline is merely boundary setting which is healthy. No child or adult can prosper if he or she does not know what the boundaries are. A football game cannot be enjoyed if nothing is out of bounds. If you eliminate the goal line and the out of bounds lines on the sides that would denigrate the game of football. So it is with pledging. Pledging provides a boundary for our spiritual lives. It keeps us grounded in reality in the world of money and matter. It keeps us human. Without such grounding our spirituality would have no context, no field, no rules. Rules and disciplines keep us honest. Pledging helps keep us honest in our spiritual life.
Our giving, our tithing, comes from what Thomas Keating calls our "true self." Cynthia Bourjeault says of the true self, "Whatever 'true self' may look like when described theologically, operationally it involves the shift to a different kind of consciousness (called non-dual or 'unitive' in classic Christian terminology), which flows out from that deeper place within us. (Bourjeault, Centering Prayer, 104)
In contrast to the true self, the Pharisee in today's reading speaks from his false self. "The false self is always wounded; it comes into being specifically as a defense mechanism against perceived threats and deprivations during infancy and early childhood (and even in the womb). According to Thomas Keating, the false self arises out of what he calls 'the energy centers': woundings in the three core areas of security/survival, esteem/affection, and power/control. These woundings in turn set in motion a vortext of attractions (things a person requires in his/he life in order to feel safe and affirmed) and aversions (things that 'push his/her buttons). Keating's false self is not just egoic functioning per se, but a particularly maladapted egoic function in need of proper diagnosis and treatment." (Ibid, 103)
The Pharisee in our story sees himself as separate, as different from others. As he puts it, I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.
Yet, as Thich Nhat Hahn points out, such separateness is an illusion. I can't say it better than him, so here is how he says it in his book called Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames.
"Who do you think you are? You are the other person. If you get angry with your son, you are getting angry with yourself. You are wrong to think that your son is not you. Your son is you. Genetically, physiologically, scientifically, your son is your continuation. That is the real truth. Who is your mother? Your mother is you. You are her continuation as a descendant, and she is your continuation as an ancestor. She links you to all those who came before, and you link her to all the future generations. You belong to the same stream of life. To think that she is a different entity, to think that you can have nothing to do with her is sheer ignorance. When a young man says, "I no longer want to have anything to do with my father, that is sheer ignorance, because the young man is nothing but his father.
As a mother, pregnant with your child, you had this insight, that your child is you. You ate for your baby, you drank for your baby, you took care of your baby. When you took care of yourself, you took care of your baby. You were very careful, because you knew that the baby was you. But by the time your child reaches the age of thirteen or fourteen, you begin to lose this insight. You and your child feel separated, less connected. You don't know how to improve your relationship, to make peace after a fight. Soon, the gap between the two of you grows bigger and more solid. Your relationship becomes very difficult and full of conflict.
It may seem like you are two separate entities, but if you look deeper, you will see that you are still one. So settling the dispute, restoring peace between you both, is like restoring peace within yourself, within your own body. You are your child are of the same nature, you belong to the same reality. (121-122)
The Pharisee couldn't make that connection between himself and others. He did not know that when he looked into the eyes of other people, even thieves, rogues, adulterers, or tax collectors, he was looking into the eyes of Christ. This is what Christ is - the great equalizer of people. This is what Christ does - makes us recognize our own connection to others. The giving of the pledge, when done by the true self, is a placing of ourselves into the ocean of life. It is returning energy back into the source from which it came to us.
So this tithing, or pledging as we call it, is nothing more than this: A sign of our connection to Christ, Christ's church, and one another as the people of Christ. It is a spiritual discipline that defines the boundaries between those who are playing on the field at this present time and those who are not. There are other ways to play on the field as well but today we are talking about the spiritual discipline of tithing, or pledging, because this is Stewardship Dedication Sunday. May the Spirit continue to guide each of us into all truth. May we continue to respond to the Spirit with our pledges, time, gifts and graces.
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The Rev. Dr. Jon Burnham preached this sermon on November 7 - 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Stewardship Dedication Sunday) at St. John's Presbyterian Church in Houston, Texas.
