22. Sunday after Pentecost, 10/24/2010

Sermon on Luke 18:9-14, by Hubert Beck

He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: "Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.' But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!' I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted." (English Standard Version)

TWO MEN STAND BEFORE GOD. WHICH ONE IS YOU?

Criminal investigators know that obvious clues are at times very deceptive clues. They may be clues deliberately planted to throw the investigation off-course. They may be surface appearances that are not to be trusted. They may be inadvertent clues that mislead investigations. For any number of reasons one must take clues seriously - but one must be aware that they must be used cautiously, for they can be seriously deceptive.

The Obvious Clue in the Parable

From the beginning we are told that this parable was intended for "some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt." We must take those words seriously, for it is clear that Jesus had a distinct audience in mind when he told the parable. The clue to understanding the parable is obvious.

We are told of two men offering prayer at the heart of the parable. Our attention is fixed on them.

It is quite apparent that the first one is designated as the "proud one" in the story - the one you should not be! Yet one has a hard time finding fault with him.

He holds up a very godly life before God - one with which no human can quarrel. He "fasts twice a week" and "gives tithes" of all that he has. One must recognize in this mini-catalog of "good deeds" (to which, undoubtedly, he could have added many another deed worthy of equal or greater recognition) a "far-above that which is required" series of actions. Pharisees had their lives governed in general by a godly accounting system that led to highly exemplary lives. This Pharisee exceeded even the highest Pharisaical standards!

Moreover, he speaks in an appropriately humble fashion, not unusual in his time. "I thank you that I am ..." It is to be granted that his initial gratitude is that he is not like others, but it is all too easy to overlook the fact that he recognizes that, without the aid and blessing of God, he would be quite other than that which he was. He was who he was because God had led and guided him to this place. Have you never thanked God for godly parents, for Christian upbringing, for opportunities to serve him in a variety of ways? Were you ungodly in doing so? The Pharisee is fundamentally in bounds when he expresses gratitude to God for being who he was by virtue of God's leading and guiding.

The Pharisees have had a bad rap, or that matter, as a bunch of hypocritical, arrogant would-be-godly people who deserve our condemnation for their pride rather than our praise for their deeds. Pharisees were very well-meant, dedicated and devoted people, to the surprise of many students of the Bible. The fact is they were, without question, models of what would have been considered godliness in their day - and they were honored as such by most people.

We might also note that they were not "professional religious people." They were "lay people" who were devoted to high standards of life strictly governed by God's Law. As such they knew that, inasmuch as the great gift God had bestowed upon them was the Law, they were privileged recipients of God's grace and blessing both in having received the Law and in the power of God to keep that Law very scrupulously. His prayer of thanks was no trivial statement. He meant it with his whole heart. He was who he was because God had made him who he was.

Lest we be accused of over-protecting the Pharisee, we might note that Paul was by no means above "boasting" about his godly life. He narrates a long list of things he has done and endured in 2 Corinthians 11, thanking God for having made it all possible. He even interrupts himself in the midst of his accounting by saying, "Let no one think me foolish. But even if you do, accept me as a fool, so that I too may boast a little." (2 Corinthians 11:16) He is almost out of breath with his "boasting," but he begins chapter 12 by saying, "I must go on boasting. Though there is nothing to be gained by it, I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord." (2 Corinthians 12:1) Paul's Pharisaical background (Acts 22:3; 26:4, 5) not only made it possible for him to speak like this, but it even encouraged it. The Pharisee in our story represents a good Pharisee, generally speaking - not an arrogant rascal.

Jesus' conflict with the Pharisees was on quite other levels than those which are generally portrayed as arrogance, hypocrisy, self-importance, etc. But that is a subject for another time and place. It is enough here to recognize that Pharisees were not necessarily bad people.

The other man offering prayer in the parable was from the opposite end of common respect. He is often called a "publican," a "tax collector" in most contemporary translations. It is hard to accurately re-create the relationship between the Jews and Romans, so this "tax collector" - also translated a "toll collector" - could have been an employee of the Romans on any number of levels. No matter how one places him in this scenario, though, he is a despised man. He was a willing cooperator with the Romans, which alone caused him to be detested. He was considered corrupt, for tax collectors made their living by collecting the taxes required of a township or some such area, charging the inhabitants a "tax" that included his wage as well as the revenue Rome was demanding. Since nobody knew just what Rome wanted and how much the tax collector was keeping for himself, it was assumed that he was looking out for himself as well as the Romans - at the expense of his fellow Jews. No matter how one looked at such people in Jewish society, they were the scum of the earth even though one had to keep on the good side of them in order to preserve some measure of honesty among them.

His prayer is simple. Unlike the Pharisee, he has no strict "guidelines" for how to live, no sense of what might be acceptable to God or not. He was out there on his own, so to speak, -- a Jew among Jews, but not an acceptable one - despised by those around him and, in all likelihood, if he can be judged by his prayer, not even liking himself either. He certainly could find no reason for God to like him, much less love him as he hid in the shadows of the temple. His prayer was simple and to the point, "God be merciful to me, a sinner." Whatever happened between him and God was up to God, for he, himself, had nothing to offer in any such "transaction."

The parable concludes in such a way as to confirm the clue that was given in Luke's introduction to the parable: "I tell you, this man [the tax collector] went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted." The Pharisee represented pride and the tax collector represented God-pleasing humility. Right?

The Clue Gets More Complex

If one can accept both men in the parable as having good reason for how they pray, one must look past the "obvious clue" to something else in the parable that provides the key to the story. It is actually not difficult to find this "hidden clue" once one looks carefully at the story (and I have deliberately omitted words that may have given all this away earlier!), but let me show it to you by reversing the characters so that it becomes very plain.

Let's re-tell the story in this way: The tax-collector, standing far off in the shadows of the temple, pleads, "God, be merciful to me a sinner." Then, glancing up, he sees that model of godliness, the Pharisee, also praying a distance away, and overhears him saying, "I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I get." So the tax-collector adds a "footnote" to his prayer: "I thank you, God, that you have at least preserved me from the arrogant hypocrisy of that fellow over there who thinks he is so good. I, at least, know that I am not worthy of the least of your blessings, quite contrary to him who thinks he deserves so many of them."

Does this not bring that "hidden clue" into a bright light? To put a version of the prayer of the Pharisee in the text for today into the mouth of the tax collector is to recognize that the problem of self-righteousness and pride, so striking in the way the parable is told by Jesus, lies in the way the person justifying himself does so by means of comparing his life with other people's lives. I deliberately did not recall the entire prayer of the Pharisee when pointing out his proper beginning in the prayer, "God, I thank you ..." Had he simply said, "I thank you that you have given me your Law to guide me, that you have opened my heart to receive that Law with thanksgiving, and that you have led me to honor it with my life through fashions such as fasting and tithing," the prayer would have been of an altogether different nature. It would have been entirely in keeping with prayers that many a godly person has uttered.

His prayer, however, was of a boastful nature by virtue of the way he compared his life with the lives of others: "God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector." He grounded his life, perhaps inadvertently or even unknowingly, in the things that set him apart from others - which, of course, meant that he had, himself, made of his life something that other people had neither attempted nor successfully attained. He was a "self-made" man. His "good works," in themselves, may not have given him away, for they were commendable. It was in his overt comparison of his own successful achievement of the "godly life" with others who had not attained such "success" in their efforts that gave him away. He had godly actions to offer God - excessive godly actions, in fact! Surely this would have placed him in much favor with God, would it not?

The tax collector, meanwhile, stood before God as one devoid of gifts. He had only his life - and a miserable life, at best, whether judged by God or those around him ... or even by self-judgment. He had no bargaining chips with which to plead for God's blessings. It is his emptiness that is most notable in the parable. He could only stand before God in a posture of hands open, begging God's mercy.

The Clue Now Obviously Points To Us!

Suddenly we realize that we are a fusion of the two, do we not?

Are you immune to this comparison business? Are we not all susceptible to justifying ourselves by virtue of comparing our lives to others? Oh, we are most reluctant to admit to this ... even to ourselves! We do not want to think of ourselves this way, but in our heart of hearts we know that the Pharisee lives in all of us. As does the tax collector.

How we move back and forth between the two. One moment we recognize our total unworthiness before God. We are amazed that God should take note of us at all, for we are virtually swallowed up in thoughts of which we are ashamed, in words we should never have uttered, in deeds that we were sure we would never perform. In the very moment we think we are "above all that" we find ourselves being what we do not want to be, saying things that we did not intend to say, in doing things we did not intend to do. In thoughtful moments of introspection we know that, far below those thoughts, words and deeds, lies a heart out of which they so unexpectedly came which is the foundation for still other unthinkable thoughts, words and deeds. We recognize the truth Jesus expressed in saying, "Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander." (Matthew 15:19) We know that we have nothing to offer save a prayer, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" We stand before God with open hands, waiting for a handout. And our tears of penitence flow.

Hardly have they been dried, though, before we find how much worse our neighbor who never goes to church is than we, who are found there every week; how terrible it is that holy men of God abuse children - which, of course, we would never do; how wealthy people can hire lawyers to evade taxes when we are so circumspect in all our business dealings; how supposedly law-abiding citizens hire illegal immigrants to care for their lawns and homes; how athletes have their way with so many women, carrying on in ways we would never think of doing! "God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get." And just like that, the tax collector in us becomes the Pharisee within us! How swiftly and easily we move between humility and pride, between the need for mercy and a subtle presentation to God of how much better we are than others.

The Story-Teller Holds the Clue in His Hand

Did Jesus not recognize all this in telling the story? Surely he did, for he knew the hearts of those to whom we spoke. He knew all too well how we "trust in ourselves, that we are righteous, and treat others with contempt," so he told the story to and for all of us. He knew the Pharisee in all of us - and he knew the tax-collector in all of us. One need not be godly to be aware of one's inadequacies - yes, even of one's failures and sins. The most worldly of people discover that in themselves from time to time. Nor is it true that the most godly among us is free of Pharisaical tendencies residing within us. They do not always show up in overtly ungodly actions, but we know ourselves well enough to know others equally well. We are all - godly and ungodly - cut of the same human fabric within which sin resides, exercising its power mightily in many different directions.

It is of special importance to us, gathered here today, however, to listen carefully to the one who told the parable. It is in him and through him that we recognize the deepest truth of that which he said, "Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted." The one who humbled himself in the parable said, ever so simply, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" He who had nothing to offer God opened himself to that which could only be given to him as gift.

It is such a person who recognizes the gift to be the story-teller himself. He who came in the peculiarly humble form of a man like us is, at the same time, the divine reconciler between God and all humanity. He it is who receives the prayer of mercy and bears it in our behalf to the cross where God's mercy was poured out through the wounds inflicted on him there. The Pharisee would not have bothered to look upon such a scene as this, for he had his head and hands full of himself. Only the tax collector could find hope in that strangely divine act of Jesus Christ bearing the sins of the world to the death they rightfully deserved. Only he who has open and empty hands will have them filled with the divine gifts of forgiveness, grace and mercy. The Pharisee's hands are so full of his own gifts that there is no room for such divine gifts.

So here we stand. The question is, "With whom do we stand? The Pharisee or the tax collector?" Do we bring our tithes and outstanding lives to this altar, or do we bring empty and open hands prepared to receive the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ here? Do we come seeking divine commendation for all that we bring - or do we bring lives open to the renewed inpouring of that grace first poured into us through the waters of our baptism?

The Pharisee and the tax collector both seek a place in our hearts. Both are present within us in varying ways and in varying degrees at all times. By comparison with tax collectors we may consider ourselves to be a superb example of that which God wants of us because of what we bring here - or we may put away all comparisons and come before God with nothing other than the pleading words, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!"

"Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector." With whom do you stand?

Retired Lutheran Pastor Hubert Beck
Austin, Texas
E-Mail: hbeck@austin.rr.com

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