Tax Collectors and Telemarketers
Telemarketers...
Why do they always call during dinner time? Or when I'm on a ladder? Or when I'm in the middle of a conversation with somebody else?
...trying to sell me replacement windows, a timeshare, life insurance...
So when I answer the phone I will admit that I'm not always on my good church behavior. I can only imagine the amount of displaced anger and vitriol these phone bank staffers put up with, what kind of thick skin they must have, and why they chose this line of work.
In Sunday's Gospel, you and I will meet someone else whose profession makes them easy to be looked down upon, a tax collector, who goes to the temple to pray, and is mocked by a high-minded clergy person who treats him with about as much respect as some people treat telemarketers.
This epic story is an invitation for you and me to judge people not by their professions, but by their personhood - not by what they do, but by who they are.
So let’s take telemarketers, 2/3 of whom have a high school diploma, 1/3, though, who don’t even have that. On average, they make $13.46 per hour, for an annual salary of less than $28,000 per year. This is less than half of the $61,000 that is considered to be a living wage in the United States.
So when I interact with that person, who has come into my life, I am talking with someone who is among the less educated and less wealthy among us. And instead of using this opportunity to vent my displaced anger, it becomes a chance to talk with someone with whom Jesus and the entire Bible give a preferential option: the poor and powerless.
Instead of seeing telemarketers, or anyone else in the same circumstances, as an aggressor or pest, wouldn’t I do better to see them as someone who very well may need a good word? Instead of seeing my annoyance, can I see their personhood - someone who deserves respect and affirmation?
Who are the tax collectors (or telemarketers) in your life?
How do you treat them?
How might God be calling us to do better?
