Lk 18:9-14

28 October 2007

Reformation Sunday

“Thank God I’m Not Like You!”

            In our gospel text, Luke relays Jesus’ parable about the Pharisee and the tax collector.  It’s a parable about prayer.  If this were a movie review, Luke would be well advised to issue a spoiler alert.  He basically lets the cat out of the bag when he says that Jesus “told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt” (v. 9).  Okay, so now that I’ve told you what it’s about, here’s the story!

            But before we do get to the story, I want us to hear a different parable, just to set the stage.  We’re told of a Jewish story about prayer.[1]

            “Once there was a rabbi who was at the point of death, so the Jewish community proclaimed a day of fasting in the town in order to induce the Heavenly Judge to [delay] the sentence of death.

“On that very day, when the entire congregation was gathered in the synagogue for penance and prayer, the town drunkard went to the village tavern for some schnapps.  When another Jew saw him do this he rebuked him, saying, ‘Don’t you know this is a fast-day and you’re not allowed to drink?  Why, everybody’s at the synagogue praying for the rabbi!’

“So the drunkard went to the synagogue and prayed, ‘Dear God!  Please restore our rabbi to good health so that I can have my schnapps!’

“The rabbi recovered, and it was considered a miracle.  He explained it in the following way:  ‘May God preserve our village drunkard until he is a hundred and twenty years [old]!  Know that his prayer was heard by God when yours were not.  He put his whole heart and soul into his prayer!’”

            Now, having told you that story, I don’t necessarily want to suggest that the Pharisee isn’t sincere.  We might wish that it were so.  But are we so sure that he doesn’t mean what he says—that he doesn’t put his whole heart and soul into his prayer?  In fact, when he thanks God that he’s not like other people, especially the dregs of society, and he performs good and righteous deeds, he’s doing what might be expected of him.

            To really understand this parable, we have to unlearn what twenty centuries of tradition have imposed on it.  When Jesus begins by saying, “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector,” our reaction is almost certainly not the one of his audience.  While we, for the most part, have a very dim view of the Pharisees, in their own time, they were linked with one of the most honored periods in Jewish history.

            This was after the Persians had kicked out the Babylonians, and after Alexander the Great had kicked out the Persians.  After Alexander died, the Greek empire split into pieces.  Things weren’t so bad under the Greeks until along comes Antiochus Epiphanes.  In 167 B. C., he has an altar to Zeus put in the temple, where pigs are sacrificed.  He orders everyone to observe Greek customs.

This leads to the revolt of the Maccabees, and for a few decades, the Jews enjoy some measure of independence.  The Pharisees trace their origins to that independence-minded party.

So when Jesus begins with “a Pharisee,” people are likely nodding with approval.  Then he says “a tax collector.”  He probably couldn’t say anything that would stir up feelings of disgust and contempt more than that.  If we listen hard enough, we can no doubt hear obscenities being mumbled.

Here’s why.  The Roman officials calculate the amount of taxes a certain area owes.  Then they employ someone, known as a publican, to pay the money.  How he recovers the money he’s already paid to Rome is his business!  You can see how such an arrangement easily leads to corruption.  Tax collectors are hated because they finance the Romans, and they tend to be more than a little crooked.

So if Jesus wants to come up with two characters who are more at polar opposites in terms of likeability, it’s hard to beat mentioning a Pharisee and a tax collector!  Maybe all this helps to illustrate how the Pharisee would be an honored and revered figure.  And likewise, we can see why the tax collector would be despised as a traitor, a collaborator with the Romans.

Still, as he so often does in his parables, Jesus presents a reversal of expectations.  He ends his stories with a twist.

But we’re not there yet, and we would do well to hear the warning issued by Walter Bowie.  “Before we condemn the Pharisee or dismiss him, let us be sure that at least we have risen to his level.  If he had his grievous limitations, nevertheless he did have solid virtues which not [everyone] attains…There are plenty of flabby persons who call themselves [spiritual] but have never reached the level on which the Pharisee was moving.”[2]

Just think:  this is a guy who fasts on a regular basis.  (Our idea of fasting tends to be fast food!)  And he tithes!  If everyone gave ten percent of their income, imagine what we as a church could do!

Still, Bowie continues, “when all is said and done, the Pharisee was and is a tragic figure, tragic in the contrast between what he was and what he might have been, but which—because of his self-satisfaction—he would never be.  Even God himself could hardly change the Pharisee and lift him up to his full possibilities, for he had no awareness that he needed to be changed.”[3]  That’s the problem when your starting point is, “Thank God I’m not like you!”

I’ve heard people, including ministers preaching sermons, give (what seems to me) undue attention to a certain part of the story.  Verse 11 begins, “The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying.”  I’ve heard that phrase interpreted, in no uncertain terms, as, “He is praying to himself!”  The Pharisee is praying to himself.  He’s presented as someone so full of himself that he really doesn’t care about God.

That is, at best, based on a questionable reading of the text.  But more than that, it makes demonizing him easier.  Plus, it makes it more fun!  And what happens is this:  we out-pharisee the Pharisee!

Compare the prayer of the Pharisee with that of the tax collector.  If the Pharisee is sure about himself, then the tax collector is sure he needs help.  If the Pharisee is looking at how far he’s come, then the tax collector is looking at how far he has to go.  If the Pharisee in the temple is the home team, then the tax collector in the temple is the visiting team.

            The genius of the parables of Jesus—well, part of the genius—is their ability to use characters to demonstrate qualities within all of us.  The Pharisee and the tax collector aren’t just two guys that Jesus is telling a story about.  He uses them to show us ourselves.  Each of us is the Pharisee.  Each of us is the tax collector.  Probably not at the same time, but both of them are within us.

            On the one hand, we’re the person who says, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people.”  Fill in the blank.  God, I thank you that I’m not like those with crazy political ideas…or those who are fake Christians…or those who only understand violence…or those who aren’t as reasonable as I am!

            On the other hand, we’re also the person who says, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”  We’re the one who is through with name-calling.  We’re the one who realizes, “Maybe I can learn something from that strange person.”  We’re the one who is more interested in listening than in airing our opinions.

            The genius of this parable is shown in the way it demonstrates both death-dealing and life-giving aspects of faith.  It shows how faith can become twisted into something that hates other human beings.  An alleged love of God is separated from that of people.  Remember 1 John 4:  “Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers and sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen” (v. 20).

Notice how in the parable the tax collector is “standing far off,” adopting a posture that many people do with regard to church.

So, when all is said and done, what’s the result?  The tax collector “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” (v. 14).

A fellow in the seventh century, St. Maximos the Confessor, once said, “The person who has come to know the weakness of human nature has gained experience of divine power.  Such a person never belittles anyone… [Such a person] knows that God is like a good and loving physician who heals with individual treatment each of those who are trying to make progress.”[4]

Imagine a world in which no one feels the need to justify him- or herself.  Imagine being free of that fear.  Imagine never feeling the need to say, “Thank God I’m not like you!”  But that’s precisely the message of the gospel of Christ.  We’re accepted, no matter how many times we’ve screwed up.  That’s how the apostle Paul can say that “power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Co 12:9).

I’ve mentioned the website “Sacred Space” before.  This was their introduction to prayer this past week:  “The experience of weakness deepens both our sensitivity to human need and our experience of prayer.  There is an important consequence for all of us:  we must make such a life possible for one another.  We must support one another in weakness, forgiving one another our daily faults and carrying one another’s burdens.

It would be absurd to see weakness as an essential part of our calling, and then to belittle those who are deficient, to resent those who are insensitive, unsophisticated, or clumsy, to allow disagreements to become hostilities, or to continue battles and angers because of personal histories.”[5]

It would be absurd to do that, but we still do it anyway.  Or am I wrong?  Has no one here ever allowed disagreement to become hostility?  Or has no one allowed personal history to energize anger?  But that’s part of our weakness.  As I’ve already said, both the Pharisee and the tax collector have their say within us.

Still, when we put our whole heart and soul into confessing our weakness, we strangely find power and liberation that weren’t there before.  The Spirit frees us from self-justification, from tearing down others, whether we’re the most shameful of sinners or the most self-righteous of saints.

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