One of our columnists has reported that “two characters were charged with panhandling in two prominent churches here while Sunday services were being conducted”.

There seems to be something out-of-joint in that report.

The judge suspended sentence after one defendant pleaded, “We thought the service was over when we dropped in.” The condition was that they leave town and not come back.

There is surely something out-of-joint here whether these were Catholic or Protestant services.

Somebody Is Sick

Let’s grant that panhandling is a nuisance to the people accosted. Let’s also grant that the ushers don’t ordinarily like that sort of thing; that the policeman was doing a rather unpleasant duty; that the judge was simply applying the law—and rather tenderly at that.

Let’s even grant that the clergyman was quite disturbed because he had prepared an awfully fine sermon and the panhandlers for the moment were getting top-billing in the act.

Let’s even grant that the sermon was to be on the parable of the Pharisee and The Publican. Remember?

Publicans, Not Republicans

In gospel times, the procedure of paying taxes was even more complicated than it is in the United States in 1967, (not the fact or amount of taxation, but the manner of payment). The publicans were minor-grade collectors who lived off their fellowmen by collecting taxes, taking a share, and giving the rest to Rome. It was a greasy enough system to lump together “the publicans and sinners”. When Jesus selected one of them, Matthew as an apostle, the citizens were shocked; when the Lord turned up at a party given for him by Matthew and his dubious colleagues, he was contemptuously cited by the affluent Pharisees as a “friend of publicans and sinners.” But the worst charge against the Publican was that his role in society was against the welfare of the comfortable.

Let’s resume the Atlanta story, now set in Jerusalem. Two Georgians, one a conscientious, courteous citizen, the other a panhandler, go up to the church.

The first prayed piously: “O God, I do thank you that I am not like the rest of mankind, greedy, impure, or even like the panhandler over there. I fast twice every week; I give away a tenth part of all my income.”

We know what he said. We can only guess what the panhandler said while he was in church. We only know what he said in court.

Strange people have said strange things in church. Could our friend have possibly said as he stood in a corner, scarcely daring to look up to Heaven over the well-groomed folks in front of him:

“God, have mercy on a sinner like me!”

Why Didn’t He Work?

Sure, I doubt whether he said it. Maybe he was too hungry to pray, or his clothes were not ‘Sunday clothes”, or maybe he was thinking of getting back to East Tennessee—the object of his financial operations.

Why didn’t he go to work? I don’t know. There are many reasons why men don’t work—health, lack of strength, no skill, no stability, aimlessness, laziness.

Did the judge or policeman know why?

Did the ushers? Those who were being disturbed in their serene prayer?

Did the clergyman who might have been preaching on that wonderful parable which ends: “The Publican was the man who went home justified in God’s sight rather than the other one?”

Somebody, something is awfully sick in a society where pious church-goers are interrupted in their prayer by the audacity of a panhandler.