The way one prays therefore reveals that relationship.
If the disciples do not Ocry out day and night' to the Lord,
then they in fact do not have faith, for that is what faith does."

Johnson continues; "Similarly, if prayer is self-assertion before God,
then it cannot be answered by God's gift of righteousness;
possession and gift cancel each other."

Listen to that last phrase again. "Possession and gift cancel each other."
We have all heard the birthday and Christmas gift giver's lament:
"What can you give to the person who already has everything?"

If a person truly has everything, the logical answer to this conundrum is
"nothing."
There is no room for the gift- either in the person's house or in their understanding.

This is the dilemma of the Pharisee in the parable. His attitude was one of trusting in himself as already complete. He was self-righteous - he had his standards and he had exceeded them. He had compared himself to others and found them wanting. Part of the Pharisee's claim to righteousness rested on his contempt for the tax collector. The Pharisee stood in the Temple to pray. But was it a prayer or simply a presentation?

The Pharisee recited a list of good deeds performed, pointed to his relative position in society, and highlighted the scrupulosity of his religious practice. Clearly he was righteous before God. Who could overlook such substantial evidence?

The Pharisee was reporting on perfection, not petitioning for grace.
The Pharisee didn't ask God for anything. Why would he?
It looks as though he thought he already had it all.

The words might sound like a prayer. But the Pharisee is talking to himself.
His contempt disconnects him from the Tax Collector.
And the Pharisee's self-righteousness hangs up on God.
We know nothing about God from the Pharisee's words. But we know more than we might like about the man.

There is something of the Pharisee lurking in all of us. We participate in a culture that encourages triumphant self-righteousness, downplays the reality of personal short-comings, and encourages us to make clear distinctions of worth among persons. We know how to present ourselves in a good light. We understand the importance of positioning ourselves.

Who among us would create a resume that began by highlighting one's weaknesses? What self-respecting person would list five embarrassing failures when asked in a job interview to speak of pivotal times in their life? There are no bumper stickers that read "my child is flunking out of Phoenix High," or "Ask me abut my marriage which is coming apart at the seams."

We are taught to deny difficulties, to sweep shortcomings into the shadows.
Once we hide them it is easy to pretend that they do not exist. But we are trained to trumpet our achievements. Our ""everything's perfect" PR can become so slick that we believe it ourselves.

We can come to imagine that we are self-contained and self-sufficient. Even as we hide our own frailties, we can compare ourselves to someone down on their luck , on the edge of our society, or in a foreign country and tell ourselves how much better we are than they.

But this is not true. This hurtful illusion will cripple even the strongest man.
This blind fallacy respects neither age nor gender, it brings down women and children and lays low the elderly.

Righteousness is not up to us. We cannot earn our own salvation. We do not rise in God's favor by pushing others out of the way. There are no perfect words of prayer that will function like magic spells and cause God to do our bidding.

Rather we are dependent upon God for his words ­
words of forgiveness, mercy and grace.

We are interdependent and connected whether we want to believe it or not. No amount of money, power and things will fill us. No amount of pious practice or holy posing will make us righteous. Righteousness is God's gift to those who know that they do not have everything.

We cannot by our own efforts be judged as perfect, or claim to be complete.
If we look to our accomplishments to seek our salvation, we will struggle in vain.
It is a spiritual truth that we cannot fill ourselves with righteousness as if it were our possession..

But we can empty ourselves to make room for the gift.
The tax collector says," Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner". He wants no public acclaim. He stands to the side. Not only is there no claim to superiority, he claims no singularity. He's "a sinner." Aren't we all?

The tax collector presents no list of deeds, heinous or otherwise. He could do the negative version of the Pharisee's puffery. The tax collector could state that he's the worst sinner in the world, not like other sinners whose misdeeds are small, hardly worth noting. But he doesn't fill himself up with such stuff. He doesn't even mention other people's lives; he only asks for mercy on his.

The Tax Collector's prayer is short and to the point. It is a plea for God to act like God.
The Tax Collector has poured out his heart to God. And then he stands contrite in the silence, and waits. The Pharisee mentions God but proclaims himself.

At the end of their prayers, the Tax Collector is empty. The Pharisee is merely hollow.
We are told that it is the Tax collector who goes home "justified." His relationship with God has been made right. It is God who has done this work.

One can keep the commandments and do many other things and still miss the point. Pride can cause our love of God to become separated from the love of neighbor. Bolstering our sense of identity by disparaging others (even when they are terrible sinners) easily leads to illusions of grandeur and a failure to see ourselves as we really are. If we despise or disparage our neighbors we separate ourselves from them. The inevitable consequence is to be alienated from God as well.

We are being challenged not to pretend the tax collector has done no wrong, but to accept our common humanity with the tax collector and the Pharisee. We are being challenge to admit our true weaknesses rather than rely on our imagined strengths. When we have poured out all our illusions then we shall be ready to be filled with God's righteousness and reality.

In 1958 Thomas Merton wrote a prayer which holds the Pharisee, the Tax Collector and all of us within the bounds of this possibility. It does not claim more than we can know but asks for all that God can give:

"God we have no idea where we are going. We do not see the road ahead of us.
We cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do we really know ourselves, and the fact that we think we are following your will does not mean that we are actually doing so. But we believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And we hope we have that desire I all that we are doing. We hope that we will never do anything apart from that desire.
And we know that if we do this you will lead us by the right road, though we may know nothing about it. Therefore, we will trust you always though we may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. We will not fear, for you are ever with us, and you will never leave us to face our perils alone." AMEN