The first time we read this parable of Jesus, we are comforted. We know who should be wearing the white hat and who should be wearing the black hat. Then we get to Jesus’ comment at the end and our certainty begins to crumble. If we read the parable three or four more times, we it becomes unsettling.
This parable, found only in Luke’s memory, doesn’t go where we think it ought to go. Jesus frequently upends the commonly accepted notions about relationships with God, like he upended the tables of the temple merchants and bankers. This parable upends virtually everything we think we know about faith, everything we organize our faith around. We are left with nothing.
Friends, that is exactly where Jesus wants us. Empty-handed.
Before we pile on the Pharisee with our disdain, we need to step back and think about Pharisees. Believe it or not, they were a reforming sect within the Judaism of Jesus’ time. They grew out of the Babylonian exile. They sought to ease up the onus of temple sacrifice which had grown up after Solomon built the first temple, which was renewed with the remodeling of the temple and renewing of worship traditions during King Josiah’s reign two decades before the Temple’s Babylonian destruction, and the post-exile rebuilding under Ezra and Nehemiah.
The Temple-less exile helped create the synagogue, a local representation of the Temple without all the sacrificial rituals. The Pharisees shifted the center of faith from the Jerusalem Temple to local congregations and to individual homes. They promoted the idea of the “priesthood of all believers.” The worship of God was not something distant on a mountain in Jerusalem or reserved to a priestly class, but something intimate which could be done in community and home.
The Pharisees developed the rabbinic tradition. By the time of Jesus, they had become the leading exponents of Judaism. The Sadducees and Essenes were smaller Jewish sects overshadowed by and often in contention with the Pharisees.
After the Romans destroyed the temple in 70 CE, the Pharisees took control of the Jewish religious tradition in the Jewish homeland and in the Diaspora – the scattering of Jews throughout the Roman Empire’s geography. The Pharisees finalized the canon of Hebrew scriptures about 60 years after Jesus’ resurrection. They began the long process of interpreting the Torah which ultimately became known as the Mishnah and the Talmud. This was going on during the time that Luke was putting his gospel into writing, some 10-15 years after the destruction of Jerusalem.
In spite of all the controversy between the Pharisees and Jesus, the Pharisees aren’t the totally evil religionists they are portrayed to be.
According to Luke, Jesus tells this parable to confront people “who had convinced themselves that they were righteous and who looked on everyone else with disgust.” Karl Barth, in his massive Church Dogmatics, identified pride as the chief sin of the religious person, because it was fundamentally idolatrous: it confuses Creator and creation, Giver and gift.
Luke supports this viewpoint. As he describes the praying Pharisee, it is obvious that those who are contemptuous of others have come to consider justice a characteristic of themselves, rather than a characteristic that rightly belongs only to God. In fact, two stories later in Luke’s gospel Jesus flatly states, “No one is good except the one God” (Luke 18:19). Even though the Pharisee in the parable thanks God for his righteousness rather than claiming credit for himself, he goes on to remind God how fortunate God is to have such a wonderful worshiper. That undercuts any humility his prayer otherwise demonstrates.
Tax collectors were not paragons of society. They were political operatives in charge of certain regions, call them census tracts, wards, legislative districts, whatever. The Romans set a required tax revenue amount for each district and the tax collecting franchisee was responsible for raising it, by whatever means it took. Anything over the required amount was the tax collector’s profit, which many worked hard to maximize. Often tax regions were subdivided with local tax collectors collecting, taking a cut, and paying a surcharge to the chief tax collector. Pyramid schemes have been around for a long time.
We always notice the body language of the two pray-ers. But we also need to notice their positions. The Pharisee stands by himself, so as to avoid being contaminated by any riffraff that also might be in the temple at the same time. The Pharisee is isolated in attitude and in location. He’s got a special spot where he can scan the crowd and see who else is praying.
The tax collector stood at a distance. As someone universally recognized as a lowlife and ritually unclean, he might have been hesitant to enter any farther than the entryway. Another possibility is that he wasn’t even Jewish. Sometimes they were foreign mercenaries, illegal aliens of the day, hired to the do the empire’s dirty work. If that was the case, he couldn’t go any further than the doorway to the Holy Place. He could only look in, like an African-American looking in the window of a “whites only” restaurant in our grandparents’ time.
As Jesus so often reminded his hearers – and he reminds us here – things are not always as they appear. It is the repentant tax collector, not the pious Pharisee, who returned home “justified.” Pharisee had fallen into the sin of arrogance and pride. He exalted himself above others, even God. He gave thanks to God that he was better than the robbers, adulterers, or the tax collector he saw out of the corner of his eye. Because of all his religious acts, he confidently justified himself.
The tax collector, on the other hand, was humiliated before God and others. He honestly recognized his misdeeds, and his brokenness was evident in his behavior.
Although Barth understood the shame of both to be the result of their comparison to the holiness of God, John Calvin understood that their fallenness was the result of the original sin committed by Adam and Eve in Eden. The doctrine of original sin is the theological view that the sin of Adam was imputed to all humanity, a mutation which was embedded in their spiritual DNA. Calvin put it this way: “[Adam] consigned his race to ruin by his rebellion when he perverted the whole order of nature.”
Paul described human depravity in this manner: “Many people were made sinners through the disobedience of one person” (Romans 5:19). Reformed theologians like Calvin and Barth understand Scripture to teach that the entire person is subject to sin, leaving no one immune to Adam’s original sin. This doctrine is most often referred to as total depravity. What this means is that a human being cannot not sin. In other words, we are doomed to sin.(1)
That’s where Jesus stepped in with the tax collector. The man was “justified.” The parable invites us to acknowledge that we are all subject to original sin and completely sinful in our innermost being. If we do that, we concede two things: (1) we are unable to save ourselves because we are steeped in sin; and (2) we are totally and utterly dependent on God for salvation.
That’s the piece which was missing for the Pharisee. He justified himself before God by trying to exalt himself. He came to the throne of God with his hands filled with “who he was,” “what he had done,” and “what he had not done.” He had a multi-page resume, a lengthy Who’s Who entry in his hands. Holding all that out to God, the Pharisee expected to put himself in good standing. After all, in his mind he deserved to be there.
On the other hand, the tax collector humbled himself, genuinely acknowledging that his life was rife with sin and that he did not deserve God’s forgiveness. But he asked in faith knowing that God is merciful.
Luke Timothy Johnson says that prayer is a theme in Luke-Acts.
“For Luke, prayer is faith in action. Prayer is not an optional exercise in piety, carried out to demonstrate one’s relationship with God. It is that relationship with God. The way one prays therefore reveals that relationship. If the disciples do not ‘cry out day and night’ to the Lord, then they in fact do not have faith, for that is what faith does. Similarly, if prayer is self-assertion before God, then it cannot be answered by God’s gift of righteousness; possession and gift cancel each other.”(2)Alan Redpath writes, “Faith is two empty hands held open to receive all of the Lord.”
Augustus Toplady’s lyrics ring out:
"Nothing in my hand I bring,
simply to the cross I cling;
naked, come to thee for dress,
helpless look to thee for grace;
foul, I to the fountain fly;
wash me, Savior, or I die.”
(That’s the third stanza of “Rock of Ages.”)
The Pharisee’s hands are full of himself. He is unable to receive God’s forgiveness and mercy. The tax collector has nothing in his hands. He is poised to receive the blessings of God.
“Nothing in my hand I bring;
simply to the cross I cling.”
(1) Robert Leach, “Luke 18:9-14 – Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010) Year C, vol 4, 214.
(2) Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke (Sacred Pagina) (Wilmington, Delaware: Michael Glazer, 2006), 473.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2016 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
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