Luke
18: 9-14
Jesus told this
parable to those who thought
they were very righteous and looked down on everyone else: “Two men went to the
temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee
stood up front by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like
other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I
fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get to the temple.’ But the tax
collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat
his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner. I tell you that this tax
collector, rather than the Pharisee, went home justified before God. For all
those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves
will be exalted.”
Jesus has a way of turning our preconceived
notions upside down. Over the past few months we’ve heard a couple of gospels
that have ended with an unexpected twist. We heard how a priest and a Levite, the
Jewish equivalent of a deacon, crossed the street to avoid helping a man who
had been beaten unconscious by robbers and left to die in the gutter. It took a Samaritan, a resident from the
wrong side of the tracks, a despised foreigner from a tribe that proper Jewish
society looked down upon as a bunch of ungodly social outcasts, to stop and
treat the wounded man with compassion and love. Jesus tells us that this Samaritan,
this despised social outcast, was much closer to God than the priest or the
deacon.
Then we heard how a local religious leader,
a Pharisee, invited Jesus to his home for dinner, but failed to welcome and
offer him with the customary courtesy of a washcloth to clean the dust of the
street off his feet. It took an uninvited prostitute to wash his feet with her
tears and dry them with her hair. Jesus tells us that this prostitute was much closer
to God than the local religious leader.
The above gospel, about the Pharisee and
the tax collector, also ends with a counter-intuitive twist. We would expect a
parable about a piously scrupulous churchman and a greedy and dishonest public
official to end with the churchman as a role model, but not so. Jesus tells us
that it was this tax collector and not the churchman who went home justified in
God’s eyes.
Who were these two people, the Pharisee
and the tax collector? It helps to take a look at their background. The
Pharisees were members of a sect within Judaism. They were looked upon as role
models of piety. They believed in following every single religious rule and
regulation to the letter. The tax collectors back then were not like IRS
workers today. They were often wealthy men who purchased the right to collect
taxes from local residents. They did this in a brutal and exploitative manner
adding hefty commissions for themselves. They were hated as cruel and dishonest
agents of the Roman occupying power.
The Pharisee in this parable is not
praying with sincerity. He’s not even really praying to God but rather boasting
and trying to reinforce his own self-esteem by judging and trashing someone
else. The tax collector, in contrast, sits with his head buried in his hands,
in the back of the temple examining his own conscience and humbly asking God
for mercy.
Jesus uses this parable to show us how God
wants a humble and contrite heart, and how self-righteousness and being
judgmental of others really drives us away from God.
The above gospel puts a question to each
of us: Am I like that Pharisee? Do I judge others whose lifestyles, marital
status, or choices are different from mine? Or who vote differently than I do? Or
who prioritize different moral issues? Are there times when I am tempted to
look down on others; to feel that I am morally superior or closer to God than
others; to think that another person is unworthy to call himself or herself a
Christian, unfit to receive Holy Communion?
We cannot know what’s in the heart of
another person. We cannot judge another’s relationship with God. We can only
sit before God with our own humble and contrite heart.
This gospel also offers great consolation
to us. There is nothing that we can ever do that
will make God stop loving us. No matter what
we’ve done in the past, no matter what sins we’ve committed or how bad we think
we are God accepts our humble and contrite heart.
God is merciful and unconditionally
loving. God calls us to love each other in the same way. In the end, this will
be the only thing that really matters.
