Text: Luke 18:9-14

If you’ve never felt the need to ask for God’s mercy, forgiveness, compassion, then you’re absolved from listening to this sermon – unless, of course, you’re curious about the rest of us. This week’s ancient word from the gospel of Luke is a study in dramatic contrast. As striking as it must have been to those who heard it first, it may have become all too familiar for us. Though we may not rush to identify with the tax collector, as an earlier generation of Christians might have, we know the villain in the piece is the Pharisee. He is an easy target for us. The writer of the gospel puts the moral right up front – Jesus tells this parable to “some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.” Could it be more obvious? The self-righteous will not find it easy in the realm of God.

In Jesus’ time, it was not uncommon for folk to go to the temple to pray. The devout would have prayed three times a day – 9 AM, noon and 3 PM. William Barclay tells us that “Prayer was held to be especially efficacious if it was offered in the temple, and so at these hours many went up to the temple to pray” (William Barclay, The Gospel of Luke, p. 232.) For a Pharisee of this mind set, it is not surprising at all to find him here. In characteristic fashion, he stands to pray. Among the commentators, there are at least two perspectives on the Pharisee’s approach to prayer. One possibility is that he stands alone, apart from the motley crowd, but in a conspicuous place from which all might see him in prayer, though he prays silently. In this scenario, it is Jesus who gives insight into what goes through the Pharisee’s mind. The other possibility is that the Pharisee stands above the crowd and utters his prayer for all to hear. Joachim Jeremias insists that “prayer was not usually silent, but was spoken under one’s breath” (Joachim Jeremias, Rediscovering the Parables, pp. 111-112.) So, a loud stage whisper is not out of the question.

In any case, we find him poring over his personal purity and exemplary behavior. “Look at me, Lord. See how special I am? I am not like other people – certainly not like this riff-raff gathered around – rogues, thieves, adulterers, even a tax collector! How did he get in here? How can he even show his face in the temple? Disgusting! But you know me, Lord. I go out of my way to demonstrate how fine I am. I fast twice a week and give ten percent of my entire income. Look at me. Aren’t you proud of me, Lord?”

Now I realize that I am satirizing satire here and run the risk of overworking the material. The Pharisee seems such an easy target, and he truly makes himself so. Of course, the obvious problem is the Pharisee’s focus on himself. He pores over the situation to establish his superiority and to secure God’s agreement that he is indeed special, better than the rest. Jeremias tells us that his claims to extra credit are significant: “Whereas the law prescribes only one annual fast, namely the Day of Atonement, he fasts voluntarily twice a week…probably interceding for the people’s sins…He gives tithes of everything that he buys, so as to be sure of using nothing that has not been tithed, though corn, new wine, and oil should already have been tithed by the producer” (Joachim Jeremias, Rediscovering the Parables, p. 112.) It is true that prayer can be a way of taking stock and centering one’s self, but this character never sees far enough beyond the “I” to the One whom he is addressing. In two short sentences, “God” is mentioned once, but “I” is used four times. Clearly, the Pharisee, himself, is the nearly exclusive focus of his prayer. The common folk among Jesus’ hearers would have known characters like this, who acted better than them and treated them with disdain. They would have taken delight in Jesus’ skewering of the self-righteous Pharisee.

However, they would have been shocked at Jesus making a hero of the tale a tax collector. While they were not overly fond of self-important Pharisees, they would have had their own disdain for tax collectors. Tax collectors were essentially traitors and oppressors of the poor. These tax (actually, customs) collectors worked for the Romans and their puppet governments in Palestine. They were Jews who collaborated with the enemy and exploited the people for their own gain. They grew wealthy at the expense of their own people. From a purity perspective, tax collectors were considered unclean because they had contact with gentiles at forbidden times. The common people would have been no more comfortable with the tax collector’s presence at prayer in the temple than the Pharisee was.

Yet here he is, right at the heart of Jesus’ story – and a sorry sight he is, hanging at the edge of the crowd, trying, without any real hope of succeeding, to be inconspicuous. We already know the Pharisee has spotted him across the crowded room and singled him out for humiliation. “What is he doing here?” His face is contorted in pain and grief; his body is bent; his clinched fist rhythmically pounds against his heart, the seat of his sin; clearly he is in some sort of agony. Whatever the source of his suffering, some of those present pause for a moment to wonder, one or two onlookers may even feel a passing pang of pity; but most will say, “Serves him right, the scuzzbag!” Only those nearest him may hear his choked voice utter, “God be merciful to me a sinner;” then, silence, nothing more to say, a tear trickling down his cheek. He has poured out his passion, emptied his hurting heart; now he waits the healing touch of the God of compassion and grace.

The shock of this parable is in how Jesus interprets the tale of two men, gone up to the temple to pray. Even pompous, self-righteous Pharisees are religious folk; they have still have a connection to the holy. Tax collectors, on the other hand, are about as far from the holy as you can get. So, are they hearing Jesus correctly? Does he really mean what he’s saying? “I tell you, folks, it’s the tax collector who goes home justified, forgiven, the willing and eager recipient of God’s grace and mercy, not the Pharisee, however religious he may seem.”

How can this be? In some sense, the answer is simple. It’s the tax collector who asks for God’s mercy, God’s compassion, God’s forgiveness. John Donohue says of the tax collector that “His bodily gestures are themselves a prayer…He does not unroll a catalogue of sins, like the Pharisee’s catalogue of virtues, nor does he compare himself with others. His hope is in God alone. Like the other powerless outsiders in Luke and the Old Testament – the poor, the widow, the stranger in the land – he casts his lot with God” (John R. Donohue, The Gospel in Parables, p. 190.) It’s the tax collector who has some grasp of God’s grace and reaches for it.

The Pharisee can’t be bothered. He believes he has no need of God’s mercy, compassion, forgiveness, grace. He’s got it all figured out; he’s earned his salvation; he’s got it made. Really, what does he even need with God? It makes one think back to Matthew’s account of Jesus’ response to the religious authorities who attack him for eating with tax collectors. Jesus stresses that he has come to care for those in need. In irony, he tells his critics that those who are well have no need of a physician; those who are sick do (Matthew 9:9-12.) The Pharisee in today’s tale obviously believes he is very well, thank you…or rather, thank himself!

Robert Tannehill tells us that this parable is more about false and true religion than it is about prayer per se. In the punch line of the parable, he says that the word translated as justified is really related to righteousness. Instead of saying that the tax collector went down to his home justified, “if English permitted it, we could say that the tax collector was ‘righteoused.’ This means that the tax collector was accepted as righteous by God on the basis of his prayer” (Robert Tannehill, Luke, p. 267.) Again we see that the Christian faith is about relationship more than it is about acceptable behavior. It is not that behavior isn’t important. The issue that Jesus raises concerns the source from which behavior flows. There is an important qualitative difference between good behavior that stems from self-righteous efforts to earn one’s salvation and behavior that is grounded in loving and humble relationship with God. Donohue puts it this way, “The Pharisee is a moral person who in fasting and tithing even goes beyond legal requirements. Yet, as with the older brother, his God exacts dutiful service, which isolates him from others. The tax collector simply asks for forgiveness. The justice of God accepts the unjust and the ungodly and judges the virtuous” (Donohue, p. 190.) In Jesus’ own commentary on this parable, according to the writer of Luke, familiar relationships are overturned, the expected social order is reversed, “for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

However, we might also argue that, in this instance, it is actually not God who judges the virtue of the Pharisee. Rather this is a situation in which, in the words of an old adage, “virtue is its own reward.” It is what the Pharisee seems to seek and, therefore, it is what he receives – a sense of security in his own self-righteousness, his own exemplary behavior. Barclay says that “No doubt all that Pharisee said is true. He did fast; he did meticulously give tithes; he was not as other men are; still less was he like the tax collector. But the question is not, ‘Am I good as my fellow men?’ The question is, ‘Am I as good as God?’” Barclay goes on to conclude that “when we set our lives beside the wonder of the life of Jesus, and beside the holiness of God, then all that is left to say is, ‘God be merciful to me – the sinner” (Barclay, p. 234.)

In the debt system that Jesus comes preaching and practicing, there is no such thing as self-righteousness. Righteousness has to do with how we live in response to God’s great gift of grace. All that we have and are is gift from God. We are not asked to respond by proving our righteousness, by demonstrating how good we are, by buying into a particular set of rules and regulations. We make things right in joyful, grateful response to the God who makes us right. Because he seeks God’s compassion, because he is open to God’s transforming grace, the tax collector is made right. Because he pours himself out to God who can make him whole, he finds the healing he seeks and needs.

A group at Downtown Presbyterian Church in Rochester created a series of “Women, Word and Song” services. The one based on this text from Luke is called “The Mask of the Pharisee.” In it, the participants were asked to wear masks though the service. At one point, under the rubric, “Confessing Who We Are,” they were asked a set of questions: “What do you secretly believe makes you a little bit superior to other people? What is your pet peeve in other people? What do you feel is your most commendable quality? What do you judge to be the biggest cowardice in others?” After a time to reflect on each question, the congregation was invited to respond, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people.”

Later in the service the participants were given an opportunity for “Confessing Who We Really Are.” Again, a set of instructions and questions: “Recall again what you secretly believe makes you superior to others. Recall your judgement about the greatest cowardice in other people. What gift in yourself have you neglected or allowed to lie fallow? Recall the most recent occasion when you cut yourself off from the support of the community.” This time the response was, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner,” followed by a removing of the masks (Rosemary Mitchell and Gail Ricciuti, Birthings and Blessings: Liberating Worship Services for the Inclusive Church, pp. 134, 136.)

If sin is seen as that which separates us from God, from our neighbor, from our true selves, then it is in our willingness to risk exposure – of our limitations, our divisions, our very humanness – that we find both our true selves and our true community. None of us needs to be in the position of working toward self-righteousness. God already knows who we are and what we have done, knows what lies behind our masks, and does not hold it against us. What we do need is to be in healthy, wholesome relationships in a community in which all are welcome, in which there is always room at the table, in which no one is seen as better or more important than any other, because God loves us fully in ways we cannot even begin to comprehend.

I’ll close with this prayer with which the women closed their service. It’s adapted from the writings of J. Barrie Shepherd and it goes like this:
This tax collector seemed to know precisely who he was, “a sinner.” Simply that. He didn’t make excuses, compare himself with other persons more outrageous than himself, didn’t even offer up the occasional generous impulse in an attempt to balance his offenses. He admitted who he was, then asked God’s mercy, and he got it.

Bring me, Lord, to such honesty.
Let me know myself as I am known within your holy presence.
Then may I find myself both humbled and restored, not in public acts of fasting, tithing, and the like, but by the steady, quiet transformation that your Holy Spirit works in those who trust in you. Amen.
(Adapted from the prayer, “Bring Me, Lord, to such Honesty” in J. Barrie Shepherd, A Diary of Prayer, quoted in Mitchell and Ricciuti, p. 138.)