October 25, 1998
Today's Gospel parable is unique to Luke, but very typical of Jesus once again he sets up a situation where the story turns his listeners' expectations upside down.
At the beginning of Chapter 18, Luke tells us that Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart the parable of the woman who just wouldn't take no for an answer from the corrupt judge, and who finally wore him down with her continual pleas. And Jesus concludes, will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. The first lesson is to pray always, and to trust in God's response.
The next, in today's story, is how (and how not) to pray.
In the Gospel for today, Jesus is telling the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt. As he begins to tell the story of the Pharisee, especially to these particular listeners, his audience probably assumes an easy moral to the story the Pharisee, a man who fasts on Mondays and Thursdays, who tithes to the temple, who is a man respected by the community for his careful piety, is the model for righteous prayer and living.
The tax collector, on the other hand, is pond scum. He works for an oppressive foreign government, probably adding insult to injury by padding the amounts to be collected from the people an extortion repellent both politically and religiously. He is shunned by all the right people, can't run for public office, can't testify in Jewish courts, can be cheated lawfully, can't enter the synagogue, can count on being reviled by just about everybody in the society. [See Synthesis Commentary for reference information.]
Both of them show up in the temple. For one, that is only to be expected he comes regularly. It would not be a surprise at all to see him there. But for the other, daring even to venture into the temple may have been a major act. He knows he's not welcome even perhaps that his presence would seem to taint the place for the observant.
The Pharisee is front and center standing by himself, ... 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.' William Barclay, in his commentary on the Gospel of Luke, tells the story of A certain American [who] cynically described a preacher's prayer as `the most eloquent prayer ever offered to a Boston audience', and cautions that The Pharisee was really giving himself a testimonial before God... The Pharisee did not really go to pray; he went to inform God how good he was.
Luke's account gives a clear contrast: ... the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" He did not stake any claim at all on God's delight or approval or even acceptance, but asked for mercy.
Well, of course, Jesus' listeners probably thought. That's all as it should be.
But then Jesus, as often, upends the story, saying, 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.
Actually, Luke has given away the story a bit at the very beginning by identifying Jesus' target audience, some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt. Jesus is about to correct their understandings on both those points.
First, they trusted in themselves that they were righteous. They trusted in themselves. They knew the rules, and they followed them as carefully as they could. So their ticket to heaven was punched, right? But they were confusing righteousness and rule-keeping. Their basic trust did not rest in God who created them, whose grace allowed whatever righteousness they might exhibit. They thought they could accomplish it alone. There's a fellow from early church history, Pelagius, whose name got attached to that particular delusion -- that we can pull ourselves, and our spiritual lives, up by our own bootstraps -- with no help asked or needed.
Do we know better than that now? No. You'll see that if you pick up any of a number of New Age books that promise that you can "manifest" anything you want in the universe by yourself (and for yourself) once you know the right formula theirs.
I do not mean to suggest here that effort towards one's spiritual development is wrong. We do need to take action in works of devotion, mercy, justice, and so on. But those actions, properly understood, grow out of God's action and invitation within us. And we need to understand clearly who gives us the grace for whatever righteousness may be expressed in our lives. Then our thanksgiving is in terms of the joy of serving God and our neighbors, not in the self-righteous claim of being "better than" others.
When we claim righteousness as our own product, independently arrived at, then it is easy for us to fall into the second sin of Jesus' listeners, who regarded others with contempt. Then we are tempted to be thankful, as the Pharisee claims, that I am not like other people... even like this [one]. What seemed to be thankfulness to God was really thinly veiled self-congratulation a temptation to the pious. A temptation that we see played out a lot in our newspapers and on television the claim that we're not like (and much better than) Them, whoever that Them might be in our own version of the social, political, or religious universe as we see it. A claim that too often plays itself out in verbal or even physical violence, at individual or even international levels.
The corrective is a proper sense of one's place in creation, an attitude of true and appropriate humility. The publican knows that his hope is in God's love and mercy, not in his own accomplishments. In that way he is wiser than the Pharisee, who may at some point have to learn that lesson the hard way.
Is this what we used to call "worm theology" in seminary? That kind of groveling invitation to self-flagellation that some theologies embrace? No. It is a call to recognize and honor the simple fact that God is God and we're not!
The Good News of the Gospel is that God does come to us in love and justice and mercy, in the person of Jesus Christ and in the work of the Spirit in our lives, to teach us, to help us grow, to lead us to celebrate and pray always in the joy of that Good News.
Then we too pray with the Psalmist, my soul has a desire and longing for the courts of the LORD; my heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God... Happy are the people whose strength is in you! Whose hearts are set on the pilgrims' way...
It is the way that leads us to our true home.
The Rev. Lois Hart
lhart@stmargarets.org
25 October 98