On Remembrance Sunday, when we honour and mourn all those who have lost their lives in war, our readings seem to offer comfort: hope of the resurrection of the dead.  Both readings speak of a future time when those, like Job, who seek justice will be vindicated and when those who have died will live again as “children of the resurrection.”  Yet to focus on life after death may prevent us from engaging in the hard work of justice and peace in this life.  Our readings, however, offer another common theme: the perils of needing to be proved right.  Job wishes to prove that he does not deserve to suffer.  In Job 19:23-27, he wants his words to be remembered because he wants to prove that he is in the right and God is in the wrong.  As a result he is stuck.  He cannot move forward into new life.  The Sadducees in Luke 20:27-38, are also seeking to prove that they are right and Jesus is wrong.  They too are stuck, unable to grasp the possibilities of a new and different way of living.  Throughout history and across the globe we see how the desire to be proved right at any cost prolongs conflict and inflicts death and destruction on God’s people.  Both Job and Luke ask us to embrace life, to prioritise all that is life affirming and life giving, over the rights and wrongs of any position.  This is does not mean that we abandon justice but that we see that justice can only ever be achieved when the sanctity of life is honoured.  Job pleads for God to be seen on his side but God never chooses sides.  God chooses life.    

For many of us God is an emergency service that we only contact when we are in dire need.  This is true for the people in Jeremiah 14:7-10, 19-22.  The land is suffering from severe drought and famine.  Earlier in Jeremiah the well-off and the comfortable are criticised for carrying on without a thought for the impact of their actions on the poor but in this reading all the people are united in their suffering.  Finally, they understand that they are ALL dependent on God, that they cannot be saved by their own efforts. 

It is this acknowledgment of need and dependency that Jesus praises in the tax-collector in Luke 18:9-14.  He knows that he is a sinner, he knows that he cannot remove his faults and weaknesses on his own.  The pharisee, in contrast, is criticised.  The pharisee is not a bad man.  By most people’s standards he is a far better man than the tax-collector.   He is giving away a tenth of his income in charity whereas the tax-collector was fleecing people for his own profit.  Why, then, does God not justify him?  It is not because his sins are worse than the tax-collector’s nor is it because God is any less ready to forgive his sins, it is because he doesn’t think he needs it.  He thinks that his own actions have already justified him.  God is ready to justify him – he is just not ready to ask or to receive.

The pharisee’s belief that his own actions make him perfect separates him from others, he judges them for not achieving what he has achieved.  In just the same way, the well-off in Jeremiah had previously separated themselves from the less fortunate.  If we have all, in St Paul’s words, fallen short of the glory of God, there is really no point trying to prove that some have fallen shorter than others.  Religion is not a self-improvement programme.  It is a relationship with God that draws into a relationship with others.  We are all united in our radical dependency on God.  The tax-collector comes to God pleading for help because he knows that he cannot save himself.  In the words of Pope Francis, “blessing does not require moral perfection to be received”, it is given “to those who ask for he

During this season - and to coincide with the national church’s Generosity Week - we celebrate God’s generosity and reflect on how we respond to the divine gifts upon which we depend for all that we are and all that we have.