Reflecting on Today's Gospel Reading (Luke 18:9-14)

Two people walk into the temple to pray. The man who intrigues me is not the Pharisee but the tax collector. He stood far off, beat his breast, and said, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" Unlike the Pharisee, this man had no list of accomplishments with which to impress. He had no spiritual disciplines that would "prove" his piety. All he had was the humility (at least in that moment) to surrender. He acknowledged his sinful state without trying to fix or prove anything.

It is the surrender that strikes me as being so important and life changing. We spend a lot of our time striving - to be good, successful, healthy, etc. A lot of that work is good and necessary. However, there are times in our lives when, like the tax collector in the parable, all we can do is surrender. These are times when we recognize that we do not have the tools in our toolbox to meet the challenge. We do not have the spiritual, mental, or emotional resources to make it through the darkness to a new place of enlightenment. In these moments, we simply must stop and surrender.

This is very difficult to do. We think that we can fix anything. We believe that we have the power to make everything okay. We deceive ourselves into believing that we are in control of our lives. However, circumstances come along that challenge our model of behaving and we end up feeling hopeless, afraid, and uncertain of what will come next. These are sacred moments. They are "God moments" when something new and unexpected can happen. As difficult as it might be, we would do well to embrace these moments rather than to run from them. Regardless of their cost, these are the opportunities that will lead from darkness to light, from hopelessness to hope, from fear to joy.

Like the tax collector who walked into the temple, I walked one day this past summer into the Washington National Cathedral. I found myself standing in the very spot where I was ordained deacon fifteen years earlier. Like the tax collector, I had nothing about which to boast. I felt unworthy. I felt that all I could do was place myself in the hands of a loving God who has always been there. I think that I know what the tax collector felt. He gave up something that day. He surrendered his fantasy that he could control his destiny. He came to believe that letting go and walking through the darkness was the only way to get to the light.

Thanks be to God that God accepts and embraces us for who we are as human beings, not for what we have done to earn anything. Thanks be to God that all God asks is that we surrender our lives to God. As the Apostle Paul says, "Glory to God whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine" (Ephesians 3:20).