Sorting People
October 23, 2022 + Lectionary 30c + Luke 18:9-14 + Pr. Craig Mueller
Think of all the things you sort. Mail—though must of it is junk these days. Clothes—into piles to wash. And garbage—into trash, recycling and if you can, compost.
We sort people, too. We can’t help it. Seems it’s been that way since the beginning. It’s hardwired into us. We sort people like us and people not. People we like and people we detest. This sorting of people leads to tribalism. Conflicts and war. And the chasm between identities and beliefs that people hold in our country today.
Decades ago, you couldn’t sort people by the way they voted. You probably didn’t know if they were Democrat or Republican. Now we get the same news and the same spin as like-minded people. And our social media feeds confirm our biases.
And religion doesn’t help our sorting binary mentality. You’re either good or evil. Saved or damned. Bound for heaven or the other place.
These days it seems that nearly everybody could claim the Pharisee’s line in today’s gospel: “I’m so glad I’m not like other people. Certain sorts of people.”
The Pharisee singles out and sorts his list of undesirables and deplorables: dishonest people, thieves, adulterers, tax collectors.
I’m so glad I’m not like them, he says smugly. And being a religious person, he brags about his spiritual disciplines and pratices: fasting and tithing. [Both good things, let me add.] But Jesus calls out the Pharisee for his self-righteousness. And instead holds up the tax collector as a model of humility. The despised tax collector stands far off. Beats his breast and uses words that have been on the lips of Christians since biblical times: “God, be merciful to me a sinner.”
The Pharisee is all of us. And represents our insecurity. Our need to look down on others so that we can feel better about ourselves.
But if you’re a progressive religious person, this gets a little too close to home in another way. We pride ourselves on being open-minded, tolerant, and welcoming of all persons. Except, for many of us that doesn’t include religious extremists, particularly if we were once part of a conservative denomination.
So, maybe you are like me and you think: “I’m tolerant of everyone but the intolerant.” Try as I may, it is hard for me to accept those who use religion as a weapon, those who claim absolute truth and the rightness or their positions, or act like they are God, and condemn others to hell.
Holy Trinity member and seminary professor Brooke Petersen has a book out called: Religious Trauma: Queer Stories in Estrangement and Return. Many gays and lesbians were told, in the non-acccepting churches of their childhood, that they were sinners. No wonder that word is hard to hear for some. They were told that the Bible condemned them. That that they were going to hell. That God did not accept them as they were created. Though it may be a different kind of trauma than war, violence, or abuse, there were devastating effects. Such as rage, sadness, anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, drug and alcohol abuse.
Lutherans certainly affirm that we are all sinners, separated from God and neighbor by being turned in on ourselves. Yet sin needs to be redefined for many of us who had it used as a hurtful weapon. From today’s gospel, one example of sin is the way we sort people into groups and categories, without even knowing them.
In fact, now we hear this parable and say to ourselves: “I’m so glad I’m not like the Pharisee. I try to love and accept everyone.”
But I’m coming to the defense of Pharisees today! Based on biblical references, Christians have sorted Pharisees, characterizing them as legalistic, elitist, lifeless, and out of touch with an authentic relationship to God. And whether conscious or not, we have linked these traits with Judaism as a whole. They are about laws. We are about grace. And as one theologian says, with this mentality, it is not far from the New Testament to early Church fathers to Martin Luther to the Holocaust.
Amy Jill Levine, is a Jewish scholar who helps Christians reconsider their some of their theological sorting. She is co-author of an entire book about Pharisees. Levine grew up in a Catholic neighborhood in Massachusetts. She recalls one friend telling her: “You killed our Lord.”
Levine challenges us to see the essential role that Pharisees played in ensuring the theological and spiritual continuity of Judaism to this day.
Our default setting is to sort: “I’m so glad I’m not like other people.” Yet we are like other people. Even the ones we cannot stand. We are all created in God’s image. We all have fears and hopes. We are all a mixture of good intentions and self-centeredness. We all live and die. As human beings we have more in common than the differences that tear us apart.
For God is not a sorter like we are. Rather we have the sort of God that always surprises us with mercy. And forgiveness. And a new beginning. At the baptismal font. At the table. And in the world.
May we learn such humility. And find it freeing to admit that we are like other people. Yet despite our sorting, deeply loved.