The Gospel for FRIDAY, June 3, 2005 (The Martyrs of Uganda)
Luke 18:9-14
He spoke the following parable to some people who prided themselves on being upright and despised everyone else, ‘Two men went up to the Temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood there and said this prayer to himself, “I thank you, God, that I am not grasping, unjust, adulterous like everyone else, and particularly that I am not like this tax collector here. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes on all I get.” The tax collector stood some distance away, not daring even to raise his eyes to heaven; but he beat his breast and said, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” This man, I tell you, went home again justified; the other did not. For everyone who raises himself up will be humbled, but anyone who humbles himself will be raised up.’ -- The New Jerusalem Bible. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1995, c1985
Comparison
William Barclay relates
Once I made a journey by train to England. As we passed through the Yorkshire moors I saw a little whitewashed cottage and it seemed to me to shine with an almost radiant whiteness. Some days later I made the journey back to Scotland. The snow had fallen and was lying deep all around. We came again to the little white cottage, but this time its whiteness seemed drab and soiled and almost grey in comparison with the virgin whiteness of the driven snow.It all depends what we compare ourselves with. And when we set our lives beside the life of Jesus and beside the holiness of God, all that is left to say is, “God be merciful to me—the sinner.”-- The Gospel of Luke. 2000, c1975 (W. Barclay, lecturer in the University of Glasgow, Ed.). The Daily study Bible series, Rev. ed. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press.
A Reflection
One of the facets of this story that leaps out at me is that the Pharisee held the other man in utter, absolute, no-holds-barred contempt. The Greek word exoutheneo carries in it a regard for the object observed as a not-thing, instead of as a thing or person. We are sometimes told that love and hate are emotions that recognize another person's humanity; exoutheneo completely avoids that recognition, annihilates it.
It disturbs me to pass another person in the workplace and be ignored. The feeling is more pronounced when I have gone out of my way to greet a stranger, only to be looked-right-through, as if my existence is not apparent to the other.
I believe that the self-righteous man in this story treated the other in precisely this way. So, not only was the self-righteous man hoisting himself up next to YHWH, and describing all of his wonderful traits, but he made himself a splendid counter-example of Jesus' new commandment, to love one another as Jesus loves us.
Where the humble man recognizes his faults and failures, the proud man finds excuses for his own, and usually in the failings of others!
The very great danger, of course, is that we might take pride in our humility by judging those who are not so humble as we are. When we find the Jesus in others, however, our humility gives us the opportunity to serve Him through the others, and dashes the propensity for that pride to surface.
The Collect
O God, by whose providence the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church: Grant that we who remember before you the blessed martyrs of Uganda, may, like them, be steadfast in our faith in Jesus Christ, to whom they gave obedience, even unto death, and by their sacrifice brought forth a plentiful harvest; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
8:35:42 PM 
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