Prejudice – a life of freedom.

Jesus is the master of parables. He is good at them. He can say so much with ordinary stories from life that one is amazed. His parables are an inexhaustible source of life’s wisdom, even if one has heard them. In his parables, one could accuse Jesus of being very black and white, dividing people only into good and evil, the just and the unjust. But he does this right because there is no such thing as mediocrity lukewarmness in the kingdom of God. Either you belong to God, or you don’t belong to God. Either you give yourself wholly to him or outside him with all you have. God is ninety-nine percent: zero percent unless it is a full hundred percent. This parable is just a confirmation of what I am saying.

One was justified; the other was not. He who humbles himself will be exalted and vice versa. (Cf. Lk. 18:14).
Nothing in between. So, what is Jesus talking about today? A Pharisee and a tax collector. The Pharisees were those who kept all the commandments and were thus considered righteous and considered themselves to be such. The tax collectors were deemed to be public sinners because they collected money from the Jews for the Romans, and the truth is that they also fraudulently enriched themselves from time to time with that money. But I want to avoid talking today about how proud the Pharisee was and how humiliated the tax collector was. No.
Instead, I would like to point out another fact that dramatically influences our thinking – just as it influenced the review of the Pharisee. That fact is prejudice.

What is prejudice? It is the negative thing that first comes to mind when you hear a specific term. For example, I will immediately say `gypsy.’ We immediately think of everything wrong associated with people who hide under that label. And the worst thing is that we approach those people with coldness, aloofness, perhaps even aggression. And yet you don’t know what that person is like at all. You don’t remember his individuality, his uniqueness – and these are just our mistaken thought processes.

The Pharisee also had a problem with this, who lumped all the tax collectors together but couldn’t see into their hearts. He pigeonholed them all. He may have known two tax collectors who had made a fortune from other people’s money, so he concluded that all tax collectors were like that. And he treated them according to that prejudice. “Thank you that I am not like that toll collector.”

Therefore, it is impossible to live a whole Christian life with prejudice. They rob us of our freedom. A businessman is a man, not a robber of the state. A German is a man, not a fascist. Let’s take people out of these `boxes and drawers’ of ours and start looking at them as equals – as people who God loves, called to holiness, as people who have the same rights. They, too, have extraordinary gifts and can enrich us. Let us not immediately wave our hands over them and write them off. Let us find our way to them and dialogue with them. And we will find that the person may have a big heart, maybe good-hearted, and pleasing to God…

Adela, the prostitute, comes to heaven. She is very confused because she knows how she has lived all her life. But the Lord God looks at her with love and says, “Adela, I know your heart very well.” “My heart? What do you see there? The way I have lived miserably? Lord, you had better let me go.”
Then a little angel bursts into God’s office and says: “Lord, outside the gate, stands the director of the Pious Association of So-and-So, and with her, the head of the Christian Organization of So-and-So, and they are asking you if they might be received speedily.” “Let them wait,” replied the Lord God. But the angel urged: “They said you know them very well.” “That I know them? I must have seen them somewhere, but let them wait.”
And again, the Lord God gazed lovingly into Adela’s heart. “It is so generous, so real, so sincerely humble! There is not a trace of hypocrisy in it. No pretense. I wish my longtime believers had hearts like that.”
One of the ladies waiting outside, however, had an angel summoned and scolded him: “Listen, would you kindly remind the Lord God that we are here waiting for Him? We are tired. He has known us for a long time, we are close friends. And by the way,” continued the lady, “unless my eyes deceive me, we have been overtaken by one Adela, well known to all.” But the angel repeats to them, “The Lord God tells you to wait.” “I don’t understand,” – says the other lady, “he knows us; we come here tired because we have protected his interests on earth all our lives, and he lets us go through such a long purgatory.”

Our God always looks at a man’s heart-not at his outward appearance, nor his nationality, nor the color of his skin. We are made in His image, so we are called to be like Him in this. Therefore, let us learn to look at people with a heart without prejudice. Amen.

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