14.07 | The Presence
Luke 18:1-30
“But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’”
Luke 18:13
When was your most raw moment of prayer?
What did it look like? What was going on? How were you feeling at the time?
When I think back on such times in my life, prayer wasn’t pretty. It was teary and simplistic and snotty and aching. It was a kind of prayer that didn’t look tidy or together, and probably didn’t sound very religious. It was the prayer of the hurting, the desperate, the one who hangs in a place of suffering and asks why they have been forsaken.1
And yet, when we hold this against the kind of prayer we think God wants from us, we often imagine something far more serene. We think of glorious smiles, articulate words, emotional tranquility or joyous expressions of praise. We imagine something far more tidy and a lot more pretty.
Jesus’ parable today about the Pharisee and the tax collector—which only appears in Luke’s Gospel—tells us much about prayer. And it tells us very much about the kind of prayers that woo the heart of the Father.
The juxtaposition is stark.
At the front of the room, the Pharisee. The description of him could be more literally translated as ‘standing towards himself’. He is in his religious element, enjoying his own eloquence and life of comfort and success. The prayer is a pompous celebration of the self, and a dismissive critique of the nearby tax collector—rolled into his disgustingly religious language of self-absorption. We hear him, and we hate the sound of this. And yet, many of us can still spend a lot of time worried that our prayer life doesn’t look a little closer to this. We may not be so explicit in our egotistical comparisons, but haven’t most of us worried at some point that we couldn’t pray from a place of more confidence, righteousness, and eloquence? Haven’t many of us come feeling like our messy lives disqualifies us from approaching the Father with confidence?
And then, we look to the back of the room, and we find the tax collector. Hated by the religious. Unwelcome in places of worship. Whispered about as he walks the streets. Everything that the religious structures would have thrown at him would have told him about the magnitude of his failures and the disapproval of his God. The external critique has been internalised into a strong voice of shame. We find him broken and grieving, beating his chest and with his eyes downcast to the floor.
There is a painting in the north choir aisle in Edinburgh’s Episcopal Cathedral, painted by Capt. A.E. Borthwick. It is a picture of a worship service in the church—the front of the church beautifully lit, with a service of worship going on. And yet, in the gloomy back of the church, a woman is kneeling, wearing black. She is clearly in anguish, pouring out her desperate prayer before God, and yet not comfortable to bring the mess of her pain any further than the corner of the back row.
And yet, unseen to her, right beside her, stands Jesus. His hand is raised lovingly towards her, in a tender expression of compassion and blessing, and He shines with a gentle light.
The painting is simply called ‘The Presence.’
The painting and the parable remind us of the same stunning truth. That it is not our performance or our perfection that makes us welcome before God, but our humility. That it is not our brilliance that leads to our justification, but our honest recognition of our brokenness.
Because, so very often, it is here—at the back of the room and on the fringes of tidy religion—that we find the truest words of prayer, the deepest connection with the Father. And so often it is here that the honesty of the broken becomes the very place of the presence and touch of the living God.
Reflect:
What do I imagine God wants from me in prayer?
What does this parable teach me about how I can approach God today?
Pray:
Father,
For every time that I have come pretending,
Pious,
Fake,
And manicured,
Forgive me.
How wildly foolish it is
To try and pretend before you.
Today, I come simply—
Honest, real, truthful.
I haven’t got it all together;
I haven’t got it all worked out;
My efforts at rule-keeping have been stilted;
My love for you has been tame.
And yet, my Father,
As I drop my eyes to the floor,
Remind this soul
That you lift my gaze again,
Restoring my dignity,
And healing this soul,
For such is your grace,
And such is my confidence.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen
Old Testament:
For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:
Isaiah 60-61 | Psalm 86
Psalm 22:1: Jesus’ psalm of prayer from the cross.