Two Men Praying

One day Jesus told a story. He told it for the people who were very, very sure they were good. The people who looked at everyone else and thought, "Well. At least I'm not like them."

Two men went up to the temple to pray.

The first man stood up tall, where everyone could see. He was a religious man, a careful man, a man who followed every rule. And when he prayed, he didn't really ask God for anything. He just told God how wonderful he was.

"Thank you, God, that I'm not like other people," he said. "Not greedy, not a cheater, not like that tax man over there. I give my money. I go without food to pray. I'm good. I'm so good."

He was standing in front of God with his hands full. Full of all the good things he thought he'd done. There was no room in his hands for anything else. No room for God.

Now the second man. He stood far away, near the back. He was a tax man, the kind everybody hated. And he knew why. He had cheated. He had taken what wasn't his. He knew it, and it sat heavy on him.

He couldn't even lift his eyes up to heaven. He looked at the ground. And he hit his own chest with his fist, the way you do when your heart is too heavy to hold.

"God," he whispered. "Be kind to me. I'm a sinner."

That was all. Seven small words from an empty, aching heart.

Then Jesus said the surprising, upside-down thing.

"I tell you," Jesus said, "it was this man, the sad one at the back, who went home right with God. Not the other one."

That sounds backwards. In our world the tall, careful man wins the prize. But God's kingdom turns everything the right way up again, and the one who came with empty hands went home full.

Do you remember the boy who ran away, and came home with nothing but a sorry heart, and his father ran down the road to meet him? The tax man's whisper found a father like that. God leans down close to anyone who knows how much they need him, however far back they stand.

Maybe sometimes you feel like the first man, sure you're better than your brother, your sister, that kid at school. And maybe sometimes you feel like the second, too bad to even look up.

The man who told this story would one day go all the way to the back himself. All the way down, lower than anyone, to a cross. Jesus would empty his own hands for you, and put into them the one thing you could never earn. Himself.

So you don't have to climb. You don't have to be the tall man. You only have to whisper, "God, be kind to me." He hears that whisper every time.

Down the road, in a town called Jericho, another tax man was waiting. A small one, up a tree. And Jesus was walking straight toward him.