Did you do it? Did you fall into the trap this parable set up for you? Did you just mutter a prayer to yourself thanking God that you weren’t like that Pharisee? Did you become the audience to which Jesus is speaking? The dangerous thing about this parable is that as soon as we think we understand it, we are the reason for its being told. I mean, clearly this is a parable about pride and humility. The characters are emblematic of two of the many ways of approaching God. The Pharisee comes with a grateful heart but really only tells God how great he is. The tax collector comes with a humble heart begging for God’s mercy. Jesus gives us the obvious meaning when he sums up the parable with “everyone who exalts himself will be humbled and he who humbles himself will be exalted”, but what lies beneath the obvious meaning?
The first thing we notice is that this parable is almost without context. All we know is that Jesus told it to some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else. It is tempting to think that by this Luke means Jesus told this parable to the Pharisees specifically and all the Jews who missed Jesus’ message generally, but that’s not exactly fair. As we have already come to realize, even those of us who get it, those who are striving to follow Jesus, fall into the camp of those who are confident in themselves and look down on others. Perhaps this parable is without context because of how universal it really is. Sure Jesus could have been talking directly to the Pharisees; we see no change of scene from the last set of context clues. Just as easily however, he could have been talking to his disciples as they wrangled for position in the kingdom. Remember how James and John thought themselves better than the rest of the twelve? Or, without much of a stretch, we can envision Jesus talking to us right here in this place as we have just looked down our noses as that smarmy Pharisee.
So then, Jesus begins the parable by introducing the scene, “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.” The Pharisee and the tax collector are two of Luke’s favorite characters; the Pharisee is always the bad guy and the tax collector is always good. For Luke they are typologies; in his telling of the good news of Jesus these characters represent the exact opposite of what they do in real life; the Pharisee is now the villain and the tax collector becomes the hero. The characters and the setting of this parable tell us that Jesus is going to teach something about how we should live. Real life is about to be turned right-side-up.
“The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: “God, I thank you that I am not like other men – robbers, evildoers, adulterers – or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.” Between Luke use of typologies and “centuries of biblical interpretation we have been led to think of Pharisees as the bad guys, but this too is not exactly fair. They are often presented as Jesus’ opponents in the gospels, but we need to remember that they were society’s good people. They were dependable, honest, upright, good neighbors, contributors to the community. They were the type of people we would all like to have as members of St. Paul’s. The Pharisee is a man at home in the temple. He says his prayers. He gives more than he has to. Many people would have benefited from his generosity. He stands in the correct posture for prayer in the temple, arms raised and head lifted.”[1] Even the prayer the Pharisee offered, while offensive to our ears, was really nothing out of the ordinary. “Scholars suggest that the prayer that Jesus places onto the Pharisee’s lips was not a caricature of a prayer but appears to have been a standard Jewish prayer of thanksgiving at that time. To those who listened to Jesus' parable, this prayer was as familiar to them as "Now I lay me down to sleep" or "Our Father, who art in heaven" is familiar to most of us.”[2] So while we get all hacked off at the prayer the Pharisee offers, to the original audience, this is normal; Jesus is just telling a story about real life.
“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.” In Luke’s hero/villain motif, our tax collector fills the role of unlikely hero remarkably well. He is the despised of his culture. “He earned his living by working for a foreign government collecting taxes from his own people. For years he collected high taxes from his Jewish neighbors to give to the Roman government. He gave the Romans their flat rate on every head, and made his money by charging an excess and keeping it for himself. Basically, he is a crook, a traitor, and a lowlife. He is guilty and he knows it.”[3] Solely by virtue of his role as an outcast, this tax collector is our hero. He makes no promises to do better tomorrow; he only seeks God’s mercy. He no doubt saw the Pharisee offering his prayer standing arms outstretched and felt the pain of guilt stab a little more sharply. He was laid low in comparison to the icon of righteousness in his midst; the Pharisee; the man he placed on a pedestal.
“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God.” What? Wait! Why? How did this parable become a story about justification? How did this become a prayer competition? Jesus lulls his listeners into a false sense of security at tells them a trick parable. His original audience would have known the story; they saw it in the temple every morning, noon, and evening. The Pharisee didn’t come seeking justification, he just wanted to give God a heads up on how things were going. He was part of God’s chosen anyway, what did he need justification for? The tax collector, on the other hand, surely needed help; he beat his breast and begged for it. It wasn’t really a competition between two forms of prayer but Jesus utilized this real life story to turn the crystal around; to remind the puffed up that God rewards those who turn to him for help. He reminds us that all the good works we do are the result of God’s help and support anyway. C.S. Lewis describes it this way, “suppose a six-year-old little girl says, "Daddy, may I have $5 to buy you a Christmas present?" Well, any decent father will give the child the money and, come Christmas morning, will exclaim loudly and gleefully over whatever $5 gift the child bought. But only a fool would say that by virtue of the gift, the father came out $5 ahead on the deal! We do the things we do for God because he has slipped us the money in the first place.[4] The call, it seems to me, is to be at any given time both Pharisee and tax collector; confident of our own righteousness for it is promised by God AND fully aware of our need for God’s help. We are to approach life as the Pharisee, confident that God will front us the money, which in turn motivates us to approach life as the tax collector aware of our own failings, ready to ask God for help in the hopes that tomorrow we might be, well, a slightly better tax collector; justified as we are to become more and more like Jesus every day.
“For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” It is really in this sentence that our standard reading of this parable takes shape. This synopsis of the parable gives us its obvious meaning. But as I’ve said before parables are meant to challenge. They are meant to make us think. They are paradoxes and we are supposed to live in their uncomfortable middles. Yes, it is clear that Jesus wants us to change the way we look down on some and place others on a pedestal, but he wants so much more than that. He wants us to realize that gift that God gives those who recognize their need. He wants us to see that humility opens us up to growth. He wants disciples; men and women who refuse to live the way the world tells them, men and women who realize their own faults when they look up to the one who created us, men and women who in the midst of their own struggles can see that God loves them and wants to help them no matter what.
Let’s not look down at the Pharisee today. But, let’s not beat our breasts and cry out woe is me either. Instead, let’s look up toward God, arms outstretched ready to receive his mercy, and try to become slightly better tax collectors for tomorrow. Amen.
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