“The Pharisee and the Publican”, fresco from Ottobeuren Basilica.
The comedian, Steve Martin, was a frequent guest of Saturday Night Live in the mid-1970’s. This was during Steve Martin’s, “wild and crazy guy,” period as a comedian. He would come out with his 5 string banjo, a fake arrow through his head and do or say something outrageous. One night during his opening monologue, he told the audience that some people, when they have free time, like to go out and get high. He said, “when I have some free time, I don’t want to get high. I like to get small.” Then he described how it was not wise to get small and drive while under the influence of the drug because you can’t see over the steering wheel. One day a cop pulled him over and said, ‘Are you small?’ Martin said, “No-o-o! I’m not!” The cop said, “Well, I’m gonna have to measure you.” They have this little test they give you – they give you a balloon.. and if you can get inside of it, they know you’re small.” Steve Martin ended the routine by saying, once he got so small he crawled inside a vacuum cleaner, at which point the drug wore off and he retained the shape of a vacuum cleaner for the next couple of weeks.
The readings for this weekend tell us that if we want to follow Jesus, we need to, “get small.” Of course, this is not meant to be in the same manner as described by Steve Martin. The readings detail for us a message that runs throughout the entirety of the Bible. Greatness, in the eyes of God, is not defined by power, position, wealth, and possessions. That is the world’s definition of greatness. The Seven Deadly Sins of lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride, are derived by that which the world calls great.
Throughout the Holy Scriptures, God equates greatness with those who are the lowly, the powerless, the vulnerable, and the weak. In the Song of Hannah from 1 Samuel, we hear Hannah sing that God will raise the needy from the ash heaps and place them in the places of the nobility. The hungry will feast, while the well fed will go hungry. The swords of the mighty will be broken, while the weak and stumbling God will endow with great strength. Hundreds of years later, Mary, the mother of Jesus, in her great canticle, “The Magnificat,” will echo Hannah’s words. Mary says to her cousin, Elizabeth, that God will scatter the proud in their conceit. God will cast down the mighty from their thrones and lift up the lowly. God will fill the hungry with good things, and the rich God will send away empty.
In the first reading from Sirach, we hear that God is not deaf to the cries of the orphan or the widow, the most vulnerable and poor of people of that time in history. Sirach continues, saying, the prayer of the lowly pierces the clouds and will not rest until heard by God. The Second Vatican Council referred to God’s love and care for the lowly of the world as God’s Preferential Option for the Poor.
The meaning of greatness is exemplified best in the life of Jesus. The early Christian hymn found in St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians says it all. “Jesus, being in the form of God, did not count equality with God something to be grasped. But he emptied himself taking the form of a slave, becoming as human beings are: and being in every way like a human being, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross.” The greatness of Jesus became even greater by Jesus becoming small.
To become great in the eyes of God, we must become small. This is why Jesus tells everyone in the gospel that it is the lowly tax collector, a sinner and a traitor to the Jewish people, who is greater than the self-righteous Pharisee, who sneers with disdain at the tax collector. What does the tax collector pray? “O God, be merciful to me a sinner.” What does the Pharisee pray? “O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity — greedy, dishonest, adulterous — or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, and I pay tithes on my whole income.” Jesus concludes that God will hear the prayer of the tax collector, but God’s ears will be shut to the prayer of the Pharisee, “for whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”
What does this mean for us today? How do we become small so as to be great in the eyes of God? St Paul tells us in the opening line of our second reading. “Beloved, I am being poured out as a libation.” Following the example of Jesus, Paul becomes less, becomes small, as he pours his life out in loving service to God and those to whom God entrusted to him. In the words of Jesus, to become great requires us to lose ourselves. Unlike the Pharisee in the Gospel who seeks to inflate his own false ego by separating himself from the lowly Tax Collector, we must empty ourselves of our false egos, allowing God to fill our lives instead, so that we may become one with the rest of humanity. To be one with the lowly of our world, as Jesus did, we must become small.
Our starting point begins today in this church. As we look around us, we will see the image and likeness of Jesus imprinted on the faces of everyone here. Baptized into Christ Jesus, our individual identities are actually just a small part of the one greater living organism that is known as THE Body of Christ. Individually and collectively, we ARE the living and breathing Body of Christ in the world. Our hands, our feet, our faces, our bodies, do not belong to us, they belong to the Body of Christ, in whom we are one. Though God has bestowed upon each individual here with different gifts, the gifts we have are shared mutually with the entire Body of Christ. And as the Body of Christ, we go from this place as a living Sacrament to share our gifts with the lowly of our world. In our smallness we become great.
In the communion hymn, “You Satisfy the Hungry Heart”, we sing, “The myst’ry of your presence, Lord, no mortal tongue can tell: whom all the world cannot contain comes in our hearts to dwell.” (Repeat spoken) “Whom all the world cannot contain comes in our hearts to dwell.” Jesus, the Word of God, the Ruler of the Universe, becomes small so that he can become one with us in our lowliness, in Holy Communion, so that he may continue to become one and minister to the lowly of this world, through us. So, in the words of Steve Martin, “Let’s get small,” that we, as the Body of Christ, may continue to be one as Christ and serve the small of our world.
