**Readings:
**Isaiah 58:9-14; Psalm 86; Luke 5:27-32

If you do away with the yoke, the clenched fist, the wicked word, if you give your bread to the hungry, and relief to the oppressed,
your light will rise in the darkness… Yahweh will always guide you, giving you relief in desert places…
and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters never run dry.
Isaiah 58:9-11

…[Jesus] noticed a tax collector, Levi by name, sitting by the customs house, and said to him, ‘Follow me’. And leaving everything he got up and followed him. In his honour Levi held a great reception in his house… The Pharisees and their scribes complained to his disciples and said, ‘Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus said to them in reply, ‘It is not those who are well who need the doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the virtuous, but sinners to repentance.‘
Luke 5:27-32

The prophets did not spare their people, they flayed them with their denunciations. They did so not because they delighted in being cruel, but to bring the people back to life. You shall be ‘like a spring of water’.

Levi was a despicable character, collecting taxes to be paid to the occupying Romans and lining his own pocket, too. Today, the equivalent might be a drug-pusher who makes money out of the misery of others.

The passages show up the difference between God and ourselves. We take great delight in scandal, provided we are clear of it ourselves. The tabloids delight millions and make millions by exposing the sins of public figures, and add to the delight by denouncing and humiliating the wrongdoers from a great height of moral righteousness, suggesting suitably severe punishments. Any who show sympathy to these victims are described as ‘wet’, ‘soft’, ‘spineless’, lacking moral fibre’, ‘jelly-like liberals’. As God is described in the Bible, he deserves all these epithets.

It is a useful and sobering exercise to make a list of all those things we most hate and despise in other people. When the list is complete, treasure it, because it is almost certainly describing those characteristics in ourselves which we are least willing to admit. The psychologists call this ‘projection’, because we project onto others those aspects of ourselves which we dislike, disown or are ashamed of. Projection is usually done unconsciously, so that inwardly we feel full of self-righteousness as we denounce the evils of other people. In this respect, the tabloid journalists are worthy successors of those Pharisees in the Gospels.

Seraphim of Sarov, a nineteenth-century Russian mystic, once wrote, ‘All condemnation is of the devil. Never condemn each other. Not even those whom you catch at the evil deed. We condemn others only because we shun knowing ourselves. When we gaze at our own failings, we see such a morass of filth that nothing in another can equal it. That is why we turn away and make much of the faults of others.’

If we recognize and acknowledge our sins and weaknesses, God always welcomes us back. In fact, he said, ‘I have not come to call the virtuous, but sinners to repentance’ (Luke 5:32).

Prayer
Deliver us, Lord, from every form of self-righteousness, from every trace of satisfaction in our condemnation of another. Show us our own sinfulness so that we, knowing the depths of your forgiveness and the tenderness of your love, may bear witness to your loving mercy in all our dealings. We ask you this through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Amen.