In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
I came across a wonderful quote the other day that I want to share with you this morning. The quote says this: “Prayer does not change God. It changes the one who prays.” Today is the fifth Sunday of Advent and our Church Fathers encourage us to focus our attention on prayer.
Today’s Gospel reading talks about prayer. It is a reading that is shared every year on this Sunday as we draw closer to the celebration of the birth of Christ on Christmas Day. It is often pointed out in the Gospels that the disciples of Jesus were new to the idea of prayer.
So, in today’s reading, Jesus teaches His disciples how to pray. He tells the story of two men who went up into the temple to pray. One man was a Pharisee, highly respected by the community and very devout in his religious practice. The other was a tax collector, a man who was a friend to no one, a traitor and thief in the eyes of the people.
Jesus compares these two men and as He does, you begin to sense that He was comparing a moral, upright man with an immoral, flawed man. In that comparison He gives His main message. The Pharisee was part of the religious elite. He knew the teachings of the temple far better than the average person. This knowledge made him feel superior to other people. The prayers of these Pharisees often reflected arrogance. The story says that this Pharisee stood up in the middle of the temple for everyone to see him and he loudly prayed these words: “God,” he said, “I thank you that I am not like other man. I am not like the robbers, not like the evildoers, not the adulterers nor even that tax collector over there. I fast twice a week. I give a tenth of all I earn to the temple.” He prayed these words with the absolute attitude that he was better than everybody else. He prayed not with humility but with arrogance.
The story continues and starts talking about the tax collector. It says that the tax collector stood in a lonely corner of the temple away from everyone else and that he was in prayer and that he would not even look up as he prayed this simple prayer “Lord, have mercy upon me, for I have done wrong.” It is the same prayer we say during our Wednesday evening Lenten Services as well as during the confession reading before receiving Holy Communion. This was a humble prayer from a simple man. This tax collector didn’t know scripture at all. He knew only what he heard the Pharisees read aloud during the temple services, but there was one thing he knew better than the Pharisees. He knew what it meant to have a humble heart in front of God. So Jesus teaches that it was the simple tax collector and not the learned Pharisee who found favor with God. He ends by saying: “He who humbles himself in this world will be exalted” in the Kingdom of Heaven.
So, on this fifth Sunday of Advent, we are encouraged to spend time in prayer to find a little extra time in our lives to offer a prayer to God remembering that it isn’t so much the words we use, but the heart with which the words are offered and that means all the difference to God.
“Lord, have mercy upon me for I have done wrong.” It’s a prayer like this coming from the heart that will open the way for God’s forgiveness in everyone’s life and build the strongest of relationships with Him for the rest of our lives.
Something for us to think about during the weekend of Christmas. “Lord, have mercy upon me for I have done wrong; for I have ignored You; for I have neglected You and I need You.” “Prayer does not change God. It changes the one who prays.” We are all encouraged to pray this prayer every day.
Amen.
