One of my all-time favorite church jokes goes like this:
A man of the type we used to call a “captain of industry” goes into an Episcopal church in Manhattan. Struck by the gothic majesty of the building, our powerful industrialist goes to the altar rail and sinks to his knees.
“Use me, Lord!” he cries. “Hopefully in an executive capacity.”
This joke always comes to mind when I hear Jesus’s parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector, our gospel reading for today [Luke 18: 9-14]. For many years I worked for George Regas, the late, long-time former rector of All Saints, Pasadena, and the industrialist, like the Pharisee, is the kind of person about whom George would often say, “I know that man!” Both of these characters exhibit a presumption of self-importance which I often see in myself. The captain of industry is sure that God wants to use him in upper management. The Pharisee is pleased to let God know that he is not like other people. Neither of these men seems to suffer from a bad self-image.
In today’s gospel Jesus makes a clear comparison between two characters. We’ve already met the Pharisee. He is joined at prayer by a tax collector, a somewhat disreputable character who simply says, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.” Before I unravel the threads of this story, it’s important to understand what it meant to be a Pharisee or a tax collector in the world of Jesus and his companions.
First, to the Pharisee. The Pharisees were the dominant strain of first century Judaism in Palestine. When presented the opportunity to follow Jesus, they declined. As a result, the New Testament is not exactly objective in the way it presents them: the gospels almost always depict the Pharisees in cartoonishly evil terms. They are legalistic, self-important villains who skulk around trying to trip up and entrap Jesus.
That depiction is not even remotely fair. The Pharisees were simply a group of believers trying as best they could to apply their faith to the dilemmas of everyday life. They had the Jewish law, the torah, as their guide, and they were using it as best they could to answer their spiritual and ethical questions. They were the establishment, and they were doing their best to live their lives in the world with the religion they had. In other words, they were the first century’s Episcopalians. In the words of George Regas, “I know that man!”
Second, to the tax collector: we shouldn’t think of this character as a contemporary IRS agent. First century Jewish Palestine was occupied by a Roman standing army, and the people there were taxed beyond belief to feed and support those forces. So-called “tax collectors” were distrusted because they were Jews who collaborated with the Roman enemy, acting more like mafia bagmen than government bureaucrats. They were seen as at best gangsters and as at worst traitors.
We need to see these two men in their first century context, not as 21st century stereotypes. The Pharisee prays in a conventional way. It was common in the scriptures for praying Jews to remind God of their faithfulness. If you’re not going to make your own case for God, who else will? The Psalms are shot through with the kind of self-congratulatory things the Pharisee says. Similarly, the tax collector in this story resembles the kind of outsider who may live a less than exemplary life but who is nevertheless drawn toward Israel’s God because of the depth of grace and forgiveness evident in the Hebrew scriptures.
So that’s who these two people are. At the end of the story, Jesus says this about them:
“I tell you, this man [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."
To me, Jesus’s parable turns on the word we translate, “justified”. Today, we use the word “justified” to suggest something like “proved right”—like when you’re in an argument with your spouse and you say, “see, I was justified” in doing whatever fool thing you’re being called out on. That’s our common use of the word, but it differs a bit from the word Luke uses here.
That word is δεδικαιωμένος, a form of the verb δικαιω, and the sense of that verb is something like “to make right”. It’s a legal term, and one way to understand it would be our English word, “acquitted”. As is often the case in the Bible, Jesus is portraying a legal procedure here. Two men stand before the divine court pleading their cases. The Pharisee argues for his virtue by reciting a list of his moral achievements. The other simply acknowledges himself to be a sinner. They are making their cases. Only one of them, the tax collector, prevails. He has been “made right” with God.
What’s going on here is less about a verdict than it is about a relationship. Both the Pharisee and the tax collector stand before the altar in the temple because they know they are out of right relationship with God, and they are asking to be restored. The Pharisee thinks he can get that by reading God his résumé. The tax collector has no such illusions. He seeks to be restored to right relationship with God by acknowledging his need for mercy and forgiveness.
This story of two different men at prayer is not a story about who is right and who is wrong. It is a story about how we relate to God and each other. The Pharisee thinks that the system and its rules will save him. The tax collector knows that being right with God depends on first acknowledging one’s need. The Pharisee is arrogant because the system has told him that virtue somehow equals accomplishment. The tax collector is humble because he knows, from the outset, that he needs help. That’s why Jesus ends the parable with the saying, “all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted."
The humility Jesus describes here is neither false modesty nor low self-esteem. The humility of Jesus is a humility that begins in an honest assessment of our condition. It’s an acknowledgement that we are God’s creatures and can get into trouble when we forget that. Human systems—philosophies, cultures, even religions—can trick us into thinking that we are totally independent of God and each other. It’s easy to think that when everything is going your way. But sooner or later life teaches us that we are not in control, and in those moments we are thrown back on our need for God and each other. The tax collector knows that now. The Pharisee will know it one way or another pretty soon.
October is the month when Episcopal congregations talk about stewardship, about what you and I give to advance the mission and ministry of the church. Over the course of my working life I’ve heard and given a lot of stewardship sermons, and many of them are what we might this morning call “Pharasaic”: they are a list of programs and accomplishments. They all add up to “Give to the church because it’s so fabulous!”
Jesus’s praise of the tax collector’s humility suggests that there is another reason that you and I give to support the church and what it does. We do so because we want to be “justified”, made right with God and each other. We do so because life teaches us, over the years, that we are not autonomous but dependent. We need God, and we need each other. We need a place like this where we can come together to acknowledge that need and, as best we can, support each other when life hits us upside the head with one of its many two by fours of suffering and loss. We need a place like this so we can witness to the world that, as we acknowledge our own pain and loss, we can respond in generosity and love when we see such suffering in others.
As we hear this story in stewardship season, let us respond as those who would humble and not exalt ourselves. I am not saying that a generous pledge to St. James will put you in a right relation with God—only God and your own self-examination will do that. But I am saying that giving to support this place is one sign that you see life’s meaning in relation to something larger than yourself—you see it in relation to God and the community which tries in its own way to acknowledge and give thanks to God in its common life and in service to the world around it.
“Use me, Lord! Hopefully in an executive capacity.” “I know that man!” I do know that man, and I’m grateful that over time my life in the church has helped me bit by bit to become less like him. And that is one of the many, many reasons I give to support the church and what it does for me, for my family, for my community, and for the world. I invite you to join me in this generous and joyful work to support what God is up to. Amen.
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