Sermon for the Eleventh Sunday after Trinity
“By the grace of God, I am what I am”
“I am the least of the Apostles,” St. Paul declares and then goes on to say that “by the grace of God, I am what I am”. The phrase complements, it seems to me, the prayer of the humble publican, “God be merciful to me a sinner”.
What can it mean? Is it by the grace of God that Paul is a sinner? No. But it is by the grace of God that Paul can in all honesty know that he is a sinner. Why is he “the least of the Apostles”? In his eyes and in his words, “because I persecuted the Church of God.” It is all part of the story of how Saul the Persecutor became Paul the Apostle.
But do you and I do much better or any less when in our pride and arrogance, in our folly and deceit, we deny the very truth of God upon whom we so utterly depend? Are we not persecutors, too, when like the proud Pharisee in Jesus’ parable, we do nothing more than pray with ourselves, giving mere lip service to the presence of God? The odd nod to God, as it were, but where it is really all about us?
In a way it is the quintessential picture of pride. Jesus in the parable names it ever so clearly. “He prayed thus with himself”. Not to God, it seems. The consequences are wonderfully clear in the content of his prayer. He claims to be better than everyone else. “Thank God that I am not like them”. But that is no prayer.
There can be no prayer when we are not open to the otherness of God and so to one another. There can be no prayer when we are closed in upon ourselves, standing upon the ground of our own self-righteousness. There can be no prayer without the humility which alone is the counter to all pride.