Image: The Pharisee and the Publican – Jesus Mafa series, Cameroun – Vanderbilt University Divinity Library
GOSPEL READING: Luke 18:9-14 – A Pharisee and tax collector pray
He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt:
“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.
The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.
I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’
But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’
I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other, for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”
REFLECTION
“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.”
So begins this beautiful little story that Jesus tells, hot on the heels, in Luke Chapter 18, of last week’s story of the widow and the unjust judge. Like in that story, Jesus is trying to tell us something important about God, the real one who exists, the one he always, very intentionally, refers to as “Father”, “My Father”, “My Father in heaven” – and, as always, it is in contrast to the God the Pharisees and teachers of the Law present to the people, the one they claim to represent. Once again Jesus is saying, in effect, “That’s not God – this is God!” – our theme for today. Let’s now go through the parable with a fine-toothed comb and see how this actually pans out.
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“He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt…”
So Luke prefaces his account of the parable. “Some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous …”? – self-righteous people, in other words. That sounds pretty much like the Pharisees, doesn’t it? Well, the Pharisees were certainly paragons of self-righteousness, masters of it, but it is actually a universal and very natural human fault or weakness:
“I am good, I am right, I’ve got it worked out, I know what I want and I’m going to go out and get it – I, I, I – me, me, me.”
This parable, therefore, is addressed to … me … to all of us! We all struggle with self-righteousness, with pride. In fact, you could go so far as to say that it’s our original sin – that’s actually how the biblical story depicts it, Adam and Eve knowingly, intentionally doing what they think is right, in direct defiance of God. Selfish, self-righteous thinking and action are surely the root cause of many, if not all human problems – people doing what they want to do, what they think is right, don’t even think about anyone else!
So, self-righteousness is a grave danger, a real threat to human life, to us – we can’t overstate it. That’s why Jesus chooses these two particular, extreme stereotypical characters for his story – the tax collector and the Pharisee – to really try to shock his listeners – us – into realizing the danger.
“The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’”
How predictably, typically odious: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people’! – but this is us, remember. Who in the world is the God the Pharisee thinks he is speaking to? What sort of God would be favourably moved by such an awful, narcissistic piece of bunk? A God who was just like the Pharisee himself, of course!
This is the God of the Pharisees – remarkably, suspiciously, similar to the Pharisees themselves: bossy, legalistic, judgemental, angry, vengeful, punishing, even murderous – remember they, the Pharisees and teachers of the Law, eventually conspired to have Jesus killed. The God of the Old Testament – whom the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law presented and claimed to represent – who, we believed, loved us, provided for us and protected us – also had a very nasty side hustle in judgement and punishment. They chucked us out of the Garden, cursed the ground because of us, intentionally drowned nearly all life on earth in a great flood, and continued even after that to punish us mercilessly every time we dared put a foot out of line.
That God, the God of the Pharisees: a God who is, yes, suspiciously just like the Pharisees themselves. A God, you might say, they, the Pharisees and teachers of the Law, invented in their own image, rather than vice-versa – the God they dearly wanted to exist, to judge everyone – except for themselves, of course! The God we want to exist, in our natural state of self-righteousness, so we can say to them, like the Pharisee in the parable:
“God, I thank you that I am a good person, I follow all the rules to the letter, please now bless my life, give me the reward I deserve – me, me, me.”
No, no, no; “that’s not God” … Jesus is urgently saying to us through this parable, … “this is God!”:
“But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’”
Tax collectors: yes, they were the lowest of the low according to the people at the time. Maybe they still are, according to us now – but no, we pay taxes to a democratically elected government which provides services to all people of our nation in an equitable and just way – mostly – so we don’t really resent people who work for the tax department, I don’t think, even if we sometimes grumble about having to pay our taxes. The people in Jesus’ day, however, were well and truly under the thumb of the evil empire, the hated Romans, no democracy in sight anywhere, and the local tax collectors were therefore considered traitors by their own people, who deeply resented having to pay taxes to the brutal occupying power – taxes which would have been extorted from them at the point of a sword, with the tax collector creaming a bit off the top for himself – taxes which they probably never received any benefit from for themselves.
The tax collector in the parable, however, was doing just what Jesus is always telling us to do, the precise reverse of what the Pharisee was doing: repenting of his sin and crying out to God for mercy. Repenting: realizing, experiencing the true horror of our self-righteousness, our attempt to run our own life, to do things our way without a thought to anyone else. The Metanoia I keep speaking about – the radical turn around in our whole way of thinking, our whole approach to living our lives.
It’s a complete breakdown, it’s painful, the tax collector is dying for the shame of it, hiding at the back in a corner, face downcast hoping no-one will see him but God; hoping, trusting, believing – or maybe just hoping – that God, the real one who exists, if there is one, is not the judgemental, punishing God of the Pharisees and teachers of the Law, but a different one, a God of mercy, lovingkindness, grace, who will hopefully, just maybe, give him a second chance, allow him a new start in life – no longer as a swindling, corrupt tax collector presumably.
“I tell you, this man [the tax collector] went down to his home justified rather than the other [the Pharisee], for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”
This is God, Jesus is saying, a God of, yes, mercy, lovingkindness, grace, without the nasty side hustle in judgement and punishment – which was basically an invention of the Pharisees and teachers of the Law, and us ourselves too, in our moments of self-exalting self-righteousness.
Oh, but hang on: I, following Jesus, have just thrown the God of the Pharisees and teachers of the Law under a bus – I claimed they don’t even exist! Well, you might think that’s OK, but, as I’m sure you noticed, I already went even further earlier in this message – I threw the God of the whole Old Testament under a bus! Shock, horror!
But no! It’s vital, critical that we always read the Old Testament through the lens of, in the light of, the Gospel. The Old Testament, as remarkable as it truly is, is a record of limited, partial revelation of God – which is therefore sometimes, or even often, misinterpreted, misunderstood by the biblical writers – simply because we don’t get the true, full revelation of God until Jesus. Jesus is the full revealing of God to us, the literal incarnation of God into human life and culture.
So, take the old bible stories literally at your peril! “No”, Jesus is always trying to most urgently impress on us, “that’s not God” – the God of the Pharisees and of the Old Testament, who is really a confused mixture of human ideas and partial revelations of God – “this is God” – “my Father in heaven”, our divine parent, the God of unconditional love and grace with no judgement, who calls us to let go of our futile self-righteousness – which can be very painful, we might find ourselves hiding in a corner shamefaced like the tax collector in today’s parable – and, through faith, undergo the amazing Metanoia, gradually becoming better, more selfless people; in doing so throwing our lot in with God’s amazing enterprise of building a wonderful new Kingdom of justice, peace and true righteousness here on earth, a Kingdom which is growing all around us right now as we speak. Amen!
Prayer: May the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, now keep our hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Amen.
