A sermon delivered
at First Presbyterian Church Soddy Daisy, TN Oct. 27, 2013
NT Reading:
Luke 18: 9-14
As you know, a parable is an oral exercise
intended to be heard. Jesus did not pass out paper texts of the parable, like I
do on Wednesday evenings. The parable is a challenging mental exercise that
tests our spontaneous perception of good an evil. It expect a reaction such as,
“What did he just say?” or “He’s got a lot of nerve!” or “Is he talking about
me?” It is not meant to be overanalyzed but to cause us to “overthink” and
linger in our mind.
I wonder how many of us remember this
parable about the praying Pharisee and tax collector by the image of the
Pharisee standing on the corner with outstretched arms praying thanks that he
is not like the contemptible tax collector?
It is unusual to have Jesus explain a
parable to his audience after it is told, not to mention before it is told. But
here Luke tells us both the purpose and audience for this parable. It is for
“some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others
with contempt.” He leaves it to the listener to decide who is righteous and who
is not.
I find it very cunning that Luke does not tell
us who Jesus aims this parable. We can infer from the previous verses (18:1-8) of
the persistent widow who kept after the unjust judge until she got justice as
an example of persistent prayer, that he is amplifying the teaching on prayer.
But is prayer the point?
Jesus presents a Pharisee and a tax
collector. The Pharisee is by all rights, an exemplary Jew highly regarded as righteous
for his meticulous adherence to the Law. As Paul would say, he is a Jew’s Jew.
Pharisees were a mishmash of lay religious police, a political movement and a
social movement who searched out and punished violations of the Law. They
enjoyed good favor with common people of the public because they opposed the
priestly leaders who mostly were the elite Jews who returned from Babylonian
captivity. The tax collector is a Jew,
as typical, but his job demanded that he abandon almost all Judaic principles. He
worked for Rome, a traitorous and sacrilegious act on three accounts. First,
the Romans occupied the Promised Land. Second, the Romans were gentile heathens
whose emperor claimed the status of god, even having his own gospel, or good
news. Third, the tax collector enjoyed wide latitude in collecting taxes.
Usually he charged far more than the emperor demanded, keeping the excess for
himself, or giving some to the emperor’s cult. Tax collectors had the lowest
and most loathed status among the Jews.
And so our parable begins with the honorable
and the dishonorable, but which is which? The Pharisee is standing by himself
in a public prayer. We might think that is egotistical, but it is a
particularly advisable thing to do in the presence of a ritually unclean tax
collector. He prays to God with his thanksgiving that he is able to be a
justified Jew under the Law. He honors God. He does not steal from others, nor
is an adulterer. He is not rouge; apparently he respects the well-being of
others and does not take advantage of them. The Law says one should fast once
per week on the Sabbath, but he fasts twice. The Law says you should title one
tenth of your food and the products of your husbandry, he gives a tenth of all he has. In short, this
Pharisee has gone far beyond what the letter of the Law requires, he is truly a
righteous man. The other impoverished Jews who have come from all over the
countryside to the Temple for worship would think what a great religious man this
Pharisee is, and all would agree he is clearly better and more justified under
the Law than the loathed tax collector.
The tax collector on the other hand, is
not just standing apart from the rest, he is at a remote distance. The way the Temple
court fills with religious people, he may have been as far away as the entry
gates to the outer courtyard. (walked in last?)
The parable does not say why he has
recognized his poor state, but it paints a picture of a very pathetic, broken
man totally overwrought with grief and repentance.
He bows his head because he is afraid to raise
his eyes to the heavens. He beats his chest with his fists in grief, probably
in tears. Pounding of the chest with your fists is a very striking and humiliating display of grief for a man
of the time. It is the normal public display of grief-stricken women of the
time. This broken and lonely, fearful, grief-stricken, cowering man, far
removed from the righteous Pharisee, can only plead, “God be merciful to me!”
The other Jews in the Temple courtyard are
probably thinking, “Yes you ought to ask for forgiveness, but you deserve no mercy
for being the scum-bag that you are.”
At this point our idea this parable is
about prayer still holds. Given that the
preceding verses (1-8) about ceaseless prayer and never giving up hope for
justice and the return of the Son of Man; we could conclude, “Ah! Jesus is fine
tuning the matter of prayer.”
The
two men certainly pray differently. Recall that Jesus instructs us to model
our prayer according to the Lord’s Prayer (LP, Matt 6:7-15; Luke 11:1-4). We should focus on the large issue of God’s plan for the Kingdom of God on
earth, not our mundane day-to-day matters. We pray that our faith will preserve
us in times of trial with sustenance so we may work for the kingdom of God to
be realized on Earth when we will live with all the saints and be blessed with
grace, validating our faith by forgiving others as God has forgiven, and
enjoying that grace forever.
When we pray this way we have our eyes on this great unfolding redemptive,
Kingdom of God and the return of the Son of Man as described in the Gospel
narrative itself (a few verses earlier, 17:22-36). Such prayer focused on the fulfillment
of God’s Kingdom on Earth sharpens our desire for its completion and our conscious,
every-day discipleship. Such prayer is really all about God, not us.
In light of this model of prayer, what
should we conclude by the behavior of the Pharisee and tax collector? We could
say they both are praying properly. The tax collector is seeking atonement for
his sin because he understands the depravity of his life and how antithetical
it is to the Kingdom of God.
At first glance we concluded the Pharisee really
is the Jew’s Jew by the content of his prayer. He maintains his purity at all
costs. He thanks God for his blessings and strength to live by the Law feeling
he is justified under it. He has fulfilled every work of the Law… except the one that Jesus constantly
repeats - love your neighbor as yourself. We can sense the prideful contempt in
his words when he says, “I am not like other people, especially not like that tax collector.” As
we rethink his prayer, we see his focus is on himself, he is praying to
himself, not God: Thank you God I’m not like them…” He is almost more Roman
than Jew. Prideful contempt is honored by Rome as the virtue of honorable
citizens.
We do not find pride in the tax collector only the same contempt
for him self the Pharisee has. He prays, “Have mercy on me” as he humiliates
himself beating his chest. The tax collector comes in absolute humility, the
virtue of the slave. He validates the assessment of the Jews and Romans, he is
a scorned person and is the opposite of Roman honor.
As he has done throughout Luke, Jesus is
about to turn the tables on every listener with a reversal that insults both
Roman and Jewish minds. Up to now, everyone
listening to this parable nods their heads at how justified is the Pharisee and
sorry is the tax collector; until Jesus gets to the last sentence about grace.
Jesus says the tax collector is the one to
praise because he has humbled himself in an embarrassed way with womanly,
subservient and penitent behavior before God confessing his sins. He knows he
has no control over his life beyond loyalty to God. He begs for mercy and his
loyalty revealed in prayer justifies him.
By praising the tax collector, Jesus
simultaneously indicts the Pharisee for his prideful, contemptuous Roman behavior
that exalts his own righteousness.
Jesus has pulled the rug out from under us
all. He calls out the pride of righteous
and praises the self-humiliated who plead for God’s forgiveness. This is the kind of subversive talk gets
people crucified, as we know already, because we remember we are almost at the
gates of Jerusalem and the foot of the cross on this journey from Galilee.
And so, yes, this parable deal with the
nature of true, wholehearted prayer and atonement. There is an old Jewish story
about the nature of true prayer that really fits this idea. I borrow it from
Brian Stoffregen1
Once
there was a rabbi who was ill and 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 commute 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! Know that his prayer was heard by God when yours were
not. He put his whole heart and soul into his prayer!"
If we put this little story into a Christian
perspective, Jesus says the person who puts one’s whole heart and soul into humble
prayer for their sinful state, who admits who he is and asks for God’s mercy is
justified before God.
But these words, “being justified by God” should give us pause. Have you ever thought,
even if only a little, “Wow ! I’m glad I’m not like that Pharisee?” How many times in our life do we react exactly
as the Pharisee when we see something, or some one that we think is evil or
sinful, or at least quite the opposite of or less than what we think is good? “Oh,
I am so glad I am not like them.” (for example, Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Tea partiers)
That is where Jesus has completely upset
our apple cart. He intends for us to identify with the Pharisee, not the tax
collector. We can’t get to the justice of the tax collector until we know we
are the Pharisee. We may think, “I have a job and worked hard to find and earn it,
why does the person who can’t find or keep a job do the same?” The Pharisee
forsook humility for pride, “Thank God I am not like that tax collector.” He
failed the one critical test of the Law, to love his neighbor as he loves
himself, or to put it in another way, to love your neighbor as God loves you.
The true heart of this parable is the
self-made man. It is easy to fall into the trap of the Pharisee’s “salvation of
works.” As a self-made man I work hard, follow the Law and it pays off. If you do
the same it will pay off for you too. God is good.
But we know we cannot work hard enough to
earn our way right into heaven. Jesus told us for his entire time on Earth that
is dead-end thinking. The question is not am I better than another, or “why
isn’t that person as good as me?” It is why has God graced a sinner like me who
does not deserve it?
This parable involves humble prayer, but at
its deepest level it is about the absolute power of God in our life and the
heresy of the self-made person. The parable is timeless.
When it was told, the crowd saw only the
hypocrisy of the tax collector asking for forgiveness after his abominable
behavior of stealing from other Jews to pad his pocketbook and support the
Roman God-Man emperor. Today, we are more likely to see the hypocrisy of the
Rabbi/Pharisee praying about himself and his self-righteousness. In both cases,
the parable points at the listener.
It leads us down a rosy path today like it
did then. Everyone of us are prone, even
unconsciously; to thank God we are not like the Pharisee when we see someone
pretentious about his or her faith, or are hypocritical with it, when we do
something better than another person. We fall victim to that “works” and
“judgment” thinking, the Pharisee is a hypocrite but I am religious, I earn my
salvation.
Jesus expects us to wonder do we rely on God or
ourselves? Are we the person “who trusts in themselves that they are righteous and regards the
other with contempt?”
It is also an important question for today because today is
Reformation Day, the day we acknowledge our Protestant roots. If Martin Luther
did one thing he showed through the Word that there is nothing of value on
God’s green earth that we can do to earn our way into God’s good favor. Jesus
Christ alone is responsible for that grace. Pride in self-sufficiency mortally
wounds our relationship with God by keeping us from His grace. We can only find
that freely given grace when we have adopted the humility of the tax collector and
become open to those two great commandments, Love the Lord with all your body,
soul and mind; and love your neighbor as you love yourself. That is where you
will find that freely given grace. When you leave these doors, don’t think,
“I’m glad I’m not like that Pharisee,” rather pray “Thy Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven
and may I only tend your footstool.”
1. (http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/luke18x9.htm)
A Treasury of Jewish Folklore:
Stories, Traditions, Legends, Humor, Wisdom and Folk Songs of the Jewish People,
Edited by Nathan Ausubel, Copyright, 1948, Crown Publishers, Inc., New York.
note: All links to scripture are from oremun bible Browser (http://bible.oremus.org)
