[Jesus] also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”      [Luke’s Gospel 18.9-14]

Last week in Arizona, a man walks, in a stadium, full of people. He is wearing a suit. He is bearing a life-sized cross. He is waving to people in the crowd, as some of them applaud.

At the rally following the shooting death of a political activist in the United States, there were several indications of the syncretism of cultural, religious, political and media influences. Rage and worship, polemic and nationalism and grief took the stage during the event.

A few years ago, a primary school Easter drama in the Catholic Church of a regional town in western NSW. The usual mix of costumes compiled from cast-offs and sheets. A twelve-year-old boy bears the cross and the jeers of those around him, echoing that first Easter. He is Aboriginal. The poignancy of the casting causes me – and others around me – to catch our breath.

We know how this story appears to end.

For those of us who follow the risen, crucified One, the temptation is always present to align ourselves with the social and political resources available to us. We arrive there out of fear, or discomfort, or because our society measures success in ways in which we stumble, and in which Jesus has no interest.  

We will tailor the demands of Jesus to fit our culture more comfortably, and reinterpret his radical words of transformation, so that we remain undisturbed or, worse, confirmed in the way we live already.

A rational extension of this corruption is that we pronounce the social primacy of our faith and thus, the consequences for those who sit outside the schema we have shaped for ourselves and those like us. A moment later, we are talking of a Christian government, a Christian nation; in the following breath, we are talking of those who don’t belong.   

We’ll make Jesus look like us, talk like us, eat the same foods and dislike the same people we dislike. We have created the risen Jesus in our own image, and the crucifixion is a speed bump on the way to success.

And we have fallen amongst thieves.  

I spent this morning with a colleague considering funeral ministry; one of the places we consistently engage in public theology. We talked about mercy and our calling to offer this gift to all who will receive. People come in grief and need to hear hope and forgiveness, not the ephemeral equivalent of a self-help app.

Our world is desperate for hope. In our thirst we are lured by illusions of comfort for us and blame for them. There is only darkness found on that path.

We are able to offer mercy because we have first been offered it ourselves. We are recipients of that extraordinary gift, from a God who knows and loves us. This mercy, arising from Christ, crucified and risen, is the fount of life. It restores and cleanses, from all our brokenness.

A primary school child, carrying a cross. The story of God’s mercy does not end there. In the broken Christ, God’s presence is fully revealed. In Saturday’s silence, no speeches can be heard, no posts uploaded.

In Sunday’s wonder, the risen Christ embodies the only words worth hearing; forgiveness and life, the mercy of God. Never entitlement, always gift.

God of my integrity,
in whom knowledge of truth
and passion for justice are one;
my heart was sentimental and you cleansed it
with your rigorous mercy;
my thoughts were rigid and you engaged them
with your compassionate mind.
Heal my fragmented soul;
teach my naïveté;
confront my laziness;
and inflame my longing
to know your loving discernment
and live out your active love,
through Jesus Christ, Amen.

– a prayer from Janet Morley
All Desires Known, SPCK 1992

[Then Jesus told them this story] “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day.And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores,who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried.”                  [Luke’s Gospel 16.19-22]

When I imagine this story, I see a man of wealth and power stepping, delicately, in order to avoid contact, over a broken man, lying at his front step. The wealthy man is fastidious in failing to acknowledge the destitute one at his gate.

It is one of Jesus’ blunt parables. It explains itself, so we twist ourselves into Gordian calisthenics to find our way out. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is confronting about wealth and responsibility. The middle-class church has always been uncomfortable, as was Jesus’ original audience. Which is, presumably, why he felt the need to engage them – and us – in this way.

Jesus is not content to leave us here. We will meet a rich ruler and a tree climbing tax collector in the days ahead. Our journey will be potholed with discomfort.

The Australian anthropologist Ghassan Hage recently spoke about “the Politics of Humiliation”, addressing how we deal with other people, and especially how those in power deal with those they deem as lesser beings.

As Hage spoke, I was immediately reminded of this passage, with Lazarus the beggar and the unnamed wealthy man. The humiliation of failing, of waiting, of begging, of poverty in plain sight. The equal shame of being blamed for his own plight – his (or his parents’) sin, his failure to invest properly, his laziness, are all features of the monologue which presumes to narrate his straitened circumstances.

The degradation of being stepped over. Every day.

Humiliation pockmarks our politics, and our communities. We purport to know why people are poor, especially people from our First Nations; if they had only tried harder to fit in, to work, or perhaps to disappear altogether. We have destructive myths and lies which populate our discourse, to justify our judgment of those who do not (or choose to not) live as we do.

We find ways both to tolerate and blame those who seek safety in our country. We allow refugees and then blame them for the job cycle, or house prices, or a general sense of things “not being the way they should”.

Internationally, wealthy nations step past those who wait at their door for justice and hope. This is no recent calumny, but one which has been excused and rationalised for generations. Ask of those left behind in Afghanistan, ask of those waiting in crisis in Gaza, even as we read this.

As we scrabble for scraps of justification for our behaviours, we read to the end of Jesus’ parable. The last sits beside Abraham in paradise; the first waits in torment, and seems barely altered.

He recognises Lazarus for the first time, and asks him to run errands on his behalf, as self-involved now as he had been in life.

Righteousness and Justice are not only in Jesus’ vocabulary; they are inherent to the story of God in the world.

Ghassan Gage speaks of dignity, the opposite of humiliation. We feed the hungry and clothe the naked not because we have food scraps and castoffs, but because they bear the image of God.

We offer safety and welcome to those who seek it, because in doing so we welcome Christ. We sit beside those who lie at our gate, and offer them our hand, because that is how Jesus Christ has first met us, in welcome, in healing and, in hope.