The Publican & the Pharisee at the Hospital

I heard it come from a nearby hospital room as I sat at the nurse’s station writing a note.  It was a man’s voice that was a little gruff saying “Well, are you saved?  ‘Cause I am.”

It piqued my curiosity enough that I got up and casually walked by the room to see what was going on.  The man who asked the question and made the assertion about his salvation looked to be in his sixties.  He wore a baseball cap, hands on hips, and was standing over the other man who looked frail and weak sitting in a chair in a flimsy hospital gown, probably in his seventies or older.

The imbalance of power in what I was observing upset me.  My impression was that the confident man was visiting someone that he did not know well.  Maybe for him it was a perceived good deed or a felt obligation or simply an opportunity to air his ego.

What I did not hear was love.  What I did not see was humility.  It reminded me too much of the self-righteous hypocrisy I’d seen growing up in a small town.  We were the “saved” confronting the “sinners” because they needed something we had.  A something not informed on any deep spiritual level, but an idea in our heads and a false confidence sustained by the liberal use of denial.

It suddenly felt like I was witnessing a reenactment of the parable of The Publican and the Pharisee where the haughty one stands in front of the temple thanking God he is “not like this Publican” and the humble one stays hidden in the shadows imploring God “have mercy on me, a sinner.”

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