Not by Might, Nor by Power

A Sermon Preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark on the Twentieth Sunday After Pentecost, October 23, 2022 by the Very Rev. Tyler Doherty, Dean and Rector.

I remember meeting with my spiritual director and after a time of prayer together and some conversation I tried to sum up what we’d been exploring. “So, if I’m hearing you right, you’re saying something like, ‘Trust myself. Trust my gut.’ Right?” A look of abject horror spread across his normally placid features. His brow furrowed, he raised himself up, balled his soft hands into knobby fists and his normally sing-songy voice dropped an octave and turned into a growl. “No!” “Oh dear!” I thought, “I’ve really stepped in it this time!”  “What do you mean, no?” I asked. “Don’t trust your gut. Your guts are full of [word you can’t say from the pulpit on Sunday].” “Well if I can’t trust myself and I can’t trust my gut, who can I trust?” “Yes! Yes! Who can you trust? See you next month.”

One of the first things we need to look at as we embark on the path of discipleship is our whole idea of spirituality as a self-improvement project with ourselves and our efforts at the center of everything. Take a moment and make a quick list of all the things you want to improve about yourself. Your hair, your waistline, your bank account, your car, your house, your kids, your parents, your anger, your grief, your loneliness…. On and on and on. Each of these things in our life presents us with an apparent problem that needs fixing. And how do we fix it? With effort. With willpower. Shoulder to the wheel and nose to the grindstone. How many times have we made New Year’s Resolutions on December 31st only to discover that a few days later–weeks if we’re really driven, diligent, and willful–we’re out of gas, broken down at the side of the road, with steam hissing from the radiator? How many times have we left a Sunday service with something like, “I have to do better at…. I have to work harder at…” floating around in our minds?

The trouble with having our efforts, our willpower, our work, at the center of the spiritual life, is that it can go one of two ways. Either we succeed and are proud of our efforts and look down our nose at people who aren’t working hard enough at the spiritual life, or we fail and decide that this whole spiritual life just isn’t for us. We leave intimacy with God–the birthright of each and every one of us without exception–to the so-called experts: the saints, the mystics, the spiritual athletes who we can admire from afar, put on pious pedestals to piously marvel at. The parable of the Pharisee and Publican gets right to it when we hear, “Jesus told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.” If we think of the spiritual life as the pursuit of perfection that comes as the result of our own efforts and we make some progress by application of will, we tend immediately to take credit for it, thanking God that we aren’t like those poor schleps who can’t “straighten up and fly right,” as the old Andrews Sisters song goes.

It’s important to recognize that in this parable, Jesus is speaking about two different approaches to prayer. And if how we pray is how we live, the point he’s trying to get us to see is of potentially life-changing, life re-orienting importance. The Pharisee, it seems to me, is an unrepentant perfectionist who thinks he can be made right–justified–by his own efforts and through the successful performance of prescribed actions. He fasts. He tithes. He’s ticked every box. He’s even added extra boxes. And guess what? He’s ticked those too! He’s bought into the spiritual life as a self-improvement project, and he’s getting the results he wants to see. Results he wants to see and results he wants others to see. He’s trusting himself. He’s trusting his gut. He is winning and everyone else is losing. Thank God we’re not like that Pharisee!

By contrast, the Publican–“standing far off” in an echo of the Prodigal Son–simply cannot get his ducks in a row. He is the guy who claps at the wrong time at the Symphony and has a mustard stain on his tie during the job interview. The second he opens his mouth his foot is firmly inserted in it. He’s a swindler. A cheat. A liar. By all accounts and by the always upward-trending metrics of Pharisaical Holiness: a total failure. He has nothing to show for himself–not even a widow’s mite. All he has to offer up is his sinful self, and call upon the mercy of God. 

Ruth Burrows, in her classic text The Essence of Prayer distinguishes prayer from achievement when she writes, “To maintain this simple trusting exposure to divine Love inevitably means resisting the temptation to ‘make a success’ of prayer.’” Burrows is quite critical of techniques and methods of prayer for the simple reason that prayer begins and ends with relationship–a simple trusting exposure to divine love. A simple trusting exposure to divine Love, just as we are–not how we think God thinks we should be. Right here. Just like this. A simple, trusting, exposed, vulnerable  “Here I am.” A simple, surrendered, offering–warts and all–to God in trust. We rely, like the Publican, not on ourselves, but on God. We trust, not our methods of prayer, not our techniques of making our mind a certain way (“Look Ma, no thoughts!”) but in the love and mercy of the God whose love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. 

So if prayer is not our work, not some ladder we arduously climb to attain some exalted state, or some Jedi mind-control trick, what is it? Burrow’s answer is simple but earth-shattering– “Prayer is God’s work in us.” The Pharisee sees prayer as successful performance. Something he can do well or badly (in his case supremely well, poor fellow). The Publican, on the other hand, knows that prayer is God’s work in us. He knows that his job is to simply, faithfully, and as regularly as possible–dispose himself to the presence and action of God. His cry for mercy–like blind Bartimaeus, like Zacchaeus up a tree and out on a limb, like the ten lepers calling out from far off, like the fellow left for dead in the ditch, like the nameless, faceless woman with an issue of blood who reaches out to touch the tattered hem of Jesus’ cloak in the throng of people pressing in upon him–is the tiny little mustard seed of a yes, his consent, that opens the door of his heart for God to do God’s work in and through him.

The healing stories that pepper Jesus’ ministry are teachings about the human condition. Without God—relying solely on our own efforts— we’re blind, lame, and leperous. Without God, relying on my own feeble efforts it’s abundantly clear that I don’t have the energy to wind myself up to an acceptable standard and even if I did I would no doubt stuff it up somehow. Fortunately for me, for you, for us, our efforts are the very last thing Jesus wants us to rely on. “Come to me all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.”

If this whole Christian thing feels tiring and tiresome, if prayer feels like work and like something you can succeed or fail at, it’s a sign that we’re trusting in our own efforts, that we haven’t yet stepped into that early rain place where the threshing floors are full of grain, where the vats are overflowing with wine and oil. There are no perfect people, only forgiven sinners. Why not ditch that whole misguided attempt and let God do what God is literally dying to do in, with, for and through you?

The Gospel tells us that it’s at the feet of Jesus (or letting Jesus wash your feet with his mercy and love, whichever you prefer) that we are loved into loving in spite of ourselves. We’ll never self-improve our way to holiness and we were never supposed to in the first place. Self-improvement is a swarming locust, a hopper, a destroyer, a cutter. Our role is to recognize our poverty, our littleness, our lostness, and, yes, our need for God. At effort’s end, in the desert of the exhausted self trying to earn holiness, storm heaven, and make a success of the Christian life, we let ourselves come undone in love. We die to winning, and in our lostness, calling out for mercy in that far off place, let God do God’s work in us. Elsewhere, Burrows put its this way, 

The way to holiness is not through dramatic renunciation, and holiness itself is not just for 'specialists,’ clergy and religious. Holiness cannot be struggled for and won--it can only be given, and all that is necessary is that we should ask. As soon as we cease to strive for virtue, concentrating attention uselessly on ourselves, and instead recognize our weakness and need, the way is open to encounter God and the holiness of Jesus which is His gift. 

It is in accepting ourselves just as we are, in embracing our littleness and our need for God’s transfiguring grace, that whatever holiness God needs to work in our hearts and through our hands and feet will be done in God’s own time. In littleness, in embracing our imperfection, in losing at the game of winning, we open a door that grace might slip in like a thief in the night and rob us blind. 

Soft, pliant, reliant, needy, and calling out for God’s help we are finally disposed to the Spirit’s work on us. In that middle-of-the-night place of simple trusting exposure to divine Love–where children prophesy, old folks dream dreams, where there is no slave or free–God’s dream for the world is dreamed through us. All that’s needed is the recognition of our need, the humble, honest, acknowledgement of our littleness. The rest, thanks be to God, is God’s work in us. “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts.” (Zechariah 4:6)