Do you feel cocky today?

Maybe the Pharisee was having a good day. Life was going well. He had a ton of energy because he had been faithful to his exercise routine and diet. The prayer meeting the night before was wonderful. His wife and he had a great morning together. The kids were doing well in Hebrew school. He was on his way to work that morning, and as he passed by the temple, he knew he had to stop in and thank God for his life. Like all the Pharisees, he tried to live fully in the awareness of God's presence in everything. And today... it was just exploding out of him.

As he enters the temple, he passes by Matthew, the tax collector, who only last week, had come by his house for the 'semi-annual 'reckoning'. A brief scowl crosses his face and a minor surge of anger, but the days have been so good that by the time he gets to the front of the temple, it is gone. And he begins to pray out loud, not because he is full of himself, but because he is full of the presence of God. In his culture and time, God is to be praised in all things, and what is the point of praising God if no one can hear it? So his prayer spills out from a heart that was overflowing with so many blessings, with such a sense of God...

The prayer is less boastful than you may think. Thank you God, that your grace has kept me from stumbling today. Thank you God for the bounty you have given me that puts me in a position where I am able to help others. Thanks for a diet that allows me to fast rather than to wonder where my next meal might come from. He was so aware of his blessings. Except for the nagging matter of Matthew, who shuffled a bit in his pew behind him, it was a perfect day. And so that, too, comes out in his prayer. Thanks God, that I didn't turn out like that... That's all. Thanks God. He was so aware of God

I wonder if the problem was not that he was full of the awareness of God -but that he was not FULL ENOUGH? He could see God in everything around him, all the events of his days and life -except, except in the despised other - the tax collector. He was unable to see what God could see in Matthew - that deep and almost brutal honesty; his awareness of his shortcomings; his deep desire to do things right, even though he had screwed up so often. It comes out in seven words. "Have mercy on me, O God, a sinner..."

There, I think, is the tough part of today's Gospel message. I can see God in so many things, can sense his presence in so much of what surrounds me. But I can't do it in everything yet. How do I find the presence of God in whomever plotted the Sept. 11 attacks? How do I find the presence of God in the beggar who came to the door of the Newman House, when the last time he was there, he promised that he would never come back again? How do I rejoice in God being intimately connected up with the things that I don't love about my own self - my failings, my shortcomings, the irrational things where I don't act very freely. Like being worried if the amount of time that Amanda and I spend on aol.com in a given month goes over the 3 hour limit and we will now be paying an extra buck or two for the service. Or I just the wrong zip code on a new piece of our letterhead and should I white it out and send it like that so I don't waste a piece of paper? It's so stupid, I know, but it's one of those things about me where I am so 'not free' and so don't experience God in my lack of trust. How do I learn to celebrate what is different in other people, trusting that they are working on their own 'stuff' just like I am working on my own issues?

To cultivate the awareness of the presence of God in everything - is a great goal. Most of us, like the Pharisee, do a decent job with the obvious - appreciating the weather, our health, the blessings upon our family and our lives. May we learn to complete the job - by seeing God, even in what we don't like about ourselves. Even in what we don't like in the other. Then you and I can leave this temple, justified in the sight of God..