A Sermon on Luke 18:9 – 14
The Pharisee and a Publican or a Republican and a Democrat or Who Receives Mercy?
As a reader of parables, you know how to pick the right side. You like winning, so you know not to pick the Pharisee. But are you sure you want to be the Publican – the Tax Collector? What if we are some of both?
What’s the deal with Pharisees and tax collectors? Pharisees were lovers of Israel, lovers of the law. Patriots. True believers. They tried to build a wall around the Law.
Tax collectors were Jews working for the Roman government – they were traitors to their nation and their faith. Like Jedi joining Darth Vader. And yet when we deal with Jesus, we have Pharisees and tax collectors.
“A Pharisee and a tax collector went to the temple to pray.” What’s Jesus doing here?
According to Jewish New Testament scholar Amy J. Levine, Jesus’ first-century Jewish listeners would have been surprised, shocked, and suspicious of the story (Amy-Jill Levine, Short Stories by Jesus).
Pharisees, religious leaders of that time, did not hang out with tax collectors. And tax collectors, people not known for their moral living, did not hang out in the temple, the place the faithful came to rest in God’s presence. But hold your horses! Behind the scenes, there’s evidence that tax collectors and Pharisees engaged in a profitable business. In the KJV of the Bible, Matthew tells us that Pharisees devoured widows’ houses – foreclosed on widows unable to pay property taxes. The tax collectors and Pharisees were splitting ill-gotten profits at the expense of one of God’s protected classes: Widows. They were putting the cloak of religious respectability over the cancer of corruption. When religious people and political people make an alliance somebody gets the short end of the stick.
Usually that means poor people. That means people with no place at the table, no seat in the House or the Senate. The “short end of the stick” belongs to the 99%.
Perhaps we should know enough to give the Pharisee a better hearing. After all, where would the church be without our Pharisees? Look how much money Pharisees are said to give. “I give a tenth of all my income.” And that’s gross not net. I read this story and think, “I need some more Pharisees.”
And what would young people use for an excuse for not going to church without Pharisees in our midst? They say, “I’m not going to church with a bunch of hypocrites.” That’s the word most often associated with Pharisees.
This Pharisee should also be seen as at least a cousin of the elder brother in the parable of the waiting father. Remember the elder brother was not in favor of parties for prodigals. Are you?
Here’s what the elder brother said: ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command, yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your assets with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’
The Pharisee and the elder brother are a matched pair. They have mixed up priorities about how best to please God, but “all these years” they have been there pitching in, doing all they can for the cause of God even if they are taking all the credit.
I give the Pharisee a break because his ancient interpreters cut him off at the knees. One of our greatest Christian thinkers labeled the Pharisee “the Jew” and the publican “the Gentile.” The anti-Semitic interpretation is never far from Christian lips.
The message of the parable becomes that it is better to be a repentant tax collector than a sanctimonious Pharisee, and better to be a Christian saved by grace than a Jew who despises other and teaches salvation by works. This is a really bad reading of our Scripture. Give the Pharisee a break.
Look, how easy for us to overlook the setting of the parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.” Both men are in the Temple praying. This is not a critique of the Temple. Nor the Church. I like the scene of people praying in church no matter their reasons for being present. There’s something to be said for showing up.
For our part, we love binary stories. We like to only have two choices: Right or wrong. Left or right. Democrat or Republican. We are not good with complexity and ambiguity. We want everyone to fit in one place or the other. If a Republican gets caught in an act of sin or wrong, the cry from the stands, “Dems do it too!” If a Democrat gets caught in such an act, he denies it or resigns from office or makes the liberal claim, “We are all sinners and everybody does it.”
Stereotypes don’t always work. All Pharisees don’t pray like this one. There are Pharisees who would be outraged at such a bragging, self-promoting prayer. Not all publicans pray like this repentant publican. Some don’t pray at all. Many don’t go to church at all. And some would pray, “Thank God I’m not like that lying, bragging Pharisee. I don’t tithe. I don’t attend church, but at least I’m not a hypocrite.”
Most Americans are not happy choosing between the Pharisee and the publican. Both have questionable C.V.’s. The tax collector works for the Romans. A traitor. Not a patriot. Who wants to identify with the publican? Especially in America where patriotism has become a Christian virtue.
Will Campbell, a firm believer in afflicting the comfortable said: “I believe God made the St. Lawrence River, and the Rio Grande River, and the China Sea and the English Channel, but I don’t believe God made America, or Canada, or Mexico, or England, or China. Man did that … It is doubtful that there has ever been a nation established for bad reasons. Nations are always established to escape tyranny, to combat evil, to find freedom, to reach heaven. Man has always been able to desire to build a heaven. But it seems he has never been able to admit that he didn’t pull it off. So he keeps insisting that he did pull it off. And that is really what patriotism is all about. It is the insistence that what we have done is sacred. It is that transference of allegiance from what God did in creating the whole wide world to what we have done with a little sliver of it. Patriotism is immoral. Flying a national flag – any national flag – in a church house is a symbol of idolatry. Singing “God Bless America” in a Christian service is blasphemy. Patriotism is immoral because it is a violation of the First Amendment.”
The only way for us to be the hero in this story is to put everything we have, all that we are, and hope to be in “God have mercy on me a sinner.” It’s not a popular saying. There are people resistant to repentance. They don’t like it. They won’t do it. They think they’ve done nothing that requires repentance.
But here we are, an unlikely pair, both with sketchy records, in church together. It’s not a simple matter of one being justified and the other condemned.
Jesus aims his parable at “those believing in themselves.” Well, that certainly encompasses our culture. We are the positive thinking, wealth-producing, God almighty greatest in the world. We believe in almost everything as long as it involves our good and our gain. Those believing in themselves doesn’t have to mean the Pharisees because it mean you and me, brothers and sisters.
We should not automatically assume that there’s a good guy and a bad guy in the story. This is not American politics where the opponent is a devil or a sick and crazy person, or scum, or really evil people. This is two people praying.
The first-century hearers of Jesus’ parable would have been forced to accept the possibility that a publican could become righteous. They wouldn’t have swallowed this story whole and asker for more.
I need to show you something that might shock you. So we have to face the possibility that the Pharisee and the publican are both capable of righteousness as they are both in the house of righteousness. Amy Levine, ends her short story version of the Pharisee and the Publican like this:
“To you, I say, the tax collector is justified, alongside the Pharisee” (Levine, Short Stories of Jesus). Not rather than the Pharisee, but with the Pharisee. The Greek preposition para also means “alongside.” After they prayed in the temple, both the Pharisee and the tax collector were justified. God justifies both even as we routinely condemn others. When we say “No mercy,” God says, “Mercy.
May God have mercy on Pharisees and publicans, mercy on Pharisee-publicans and publican-pharisees, mercy on Democrats and Republicans. Mercy, mercy, mercy.
A Sermon on Luke 18:9 – 14
The Pharisee and a Publican or a Republican and a Democrat or Who Receives Mercy?
As a reader of parables, you know how to pick the right side. You like winning, so you know not to pick the Pharisee. But are you sure you want to be the Publican – the Tax Collector? What if we are some of both?
What’s the deal with Pharisees and tax collectors? Pharisees were lovers of Israel, lovers of the law. Patriots. True believers. They tried to build a wall around the Law.
Tax collectors were Jews working for the Roman government – they were traitors to their nation and their faith. Like Jedi joining Darth Vader. And yet when we deal with Jesus, we have Pharisees and tax collectors.
“A Pharisee and a tax collector went to the temple to pray.” What’s Jesus doing here?
According to Jewish New Testament scholar Amy J. Levine, Jesus’ first-century Jewish listeners would have been surprised, shocked, and suspicious of the story (Amy-Jill Levine, Short Stories by Jesus).
Pharisees, religious leaders of that time, did not hang out with tax collectors. And tax collectors, people not known for their moral living, did not hang out in the temple, the place the faithful came to rest in God’s presence. But hold your horses! Behind the scenes, there’s evidence that tax collectors and Pharisees engaged in a profitable business. In the KJV of the Bible, Matthew tells us that Pharisees devoured widows’ houses – foreclosed on widows unable to pay property taxes. The tax collectors and Pharisees were splitting ill-gotten profits at the expense of one of God’s protected classes: Widows. They were putting the cloak of religious respectability over the cancer of corruption. When religious people and political people make an alliance somebody gets the short end of the stick.
Usually that means poor people. That means people with no place at the table, no seat in the House or the Senate. The “short end of the stick” belongs to the 99%.
Perhaps we should know enough to give the Pharisee a better hearing. After all, where would the church be without our Pharisees? Look how much money Pharisees are said to give. “I give a tenth of all my income.” And that’s gross not net. I read this story and think, “I need some more Pharisees.”
And what would young people use for an excuse for not going to church without Pharisees in our midst? They say, “I’m not going to church with a bunch of hypocrites.” That’s the word most often associated with Pharisees.
This Pharisee should also be seen as at least a cousin of the elder brother in the parable of the waiting father. Remember the elder brother was not in favor of parties for prodigals. Are you?
Here’s what the elder brother said: ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command, yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your assets with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’
The Pharisee and the elder brother are a matched pair. They have mixed up priorities about how best to please God, but “all these years” they have been there pitching in, doing all they can for the cause of God even if they are taking all the credit.
I give the Pharisee a break because his ancient interpreters cut him off at the knees. One of our greatest Christian thinkers labeled the Pharisee “the Jew” and the publican “the Gentile.” The anti-Semitic interpretation is never far from Christian lips.
The message of the parable becomes that it is better to be a repentant tax collector than a sanctimonious Pharisee, and better to be a Christian saved by grace than a Jew who despises other and teaches salvation by works. This is a really bad reading of our Scripture. Give the Pharisee a break.
Look, how easy for us to overlook the setting of the parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.” Both men are in the Temple praying. This is not a critique of the Temple. Nor the Church. I like the scene of people praying in church no matter their reasons for being present. There’s something to be said for showing up.
For our part, we love binary stories. We like to only have two choices: Right or wrong. Left or right. Democrat or Republican. We are not good with complexity and ambiguity. We want everyone to fit in one place or the other. If a Republican gets caught in an act of sin or wrong, the cry from the stands, “Dems do it too!” If a Democrat gets caught in such an act, he denies it or resigns from office or makes the liberal claim, “We are all sinners and everybody does it.”
Stereotypes don’t always work. All Pharisees don’t pray like this one. There are Pharisees who would be outraged at such a bragging, self-promoting prayer. Not all publicans pray like this repentant publican. Some don’t pray at all. Many don’t go to church at all. And some would pray, “Thank God I’m not like that lying, bragging Pharisee. I don’t tithe. I don’t attend church, but at least I’m not a hypocrite.”
Most Americans are not happy choosing between the Pharisee and the publican. Both have questionable C.V.’s. The tax collector works for the Romans. A traitor. Not a patriot. Who wants to identify with the publican? Especially in America where patriotism has become a Christian virtue.
Will Campbell, a firm believer in afflicting the comfortable said: “I believe God made the St. Lawrence River, and the Rio Grande River, and the China Sea and the English Channel, but I don’t believe God made America, or Canada, or Mexico, or England, or China. Man did that … It is doubtful that there has ever been a nation established for bad reasons. Nations are always established to escape tyranny, to combat evil, to find freedom, to reach heaven. Man has always been able to desire to build a heaven. But it seems he has never been able to admit that he didn’t pull it off. So he keeps insisting that he did pull it off. And that is really what patriotism is all about. It is the insistence that what we have done is sacred. It is that transference of allegiance from what God did in creating the whole wide world to what we have done with a little sliver of it. Patriotism is immoral. Flying a national flag – any national flag – in a church house is a symbol of idolatry. Singing “God Bless America” in a Christian service is blasphemy. Patriotism is immoral because it is a violation of the First Amendment.”
The only way for us to be the hero in this story is to put everything we have, all that we are, and hope to be in “God have mercy on me a sinner.” It’s not a popular saying. There are people resistant to repentance. They don’t like it. They won’t do it. They think they’ve done nothing that requires repentance.
But here we are, an unlikely pair, both with sketchy records, in church together. It’s not a simple matter of one being justified and the other condemned.
Jesus aims his parable at “those believing in themselves.” Well, that certainly encompasses our culture. We are the positive thinking, wealth-producing, God almighty greatest in the world. We believe in almost everything as long as it involves our good and our gain. Those believing in themselves doesn’t have to mean the Pharisees because it mean you and me, brothers and sisters.
We should not automatically assume that there’s a good guy and a bad guy in the story. This is not American politics where the opponent is a devil or a sick and crazy person, or scum, or really evil people. This is two people praying.
The first-century hearers of Jesus’ parable would have been forced to accept the possibility that a publican could become righteous. They wouldn’t have swallowed this story whole and asker for more.
I need to show you something that might shock you. So we have to face the possibility that the Pharisee and the publican are both capable of righteousness as they are both in the house of righteousness. Amy Levine, ends her short story version of the Pharisee and the Publican like this:
“To you, I say, the tax collector is justified, alongside the Pharisee” (Levine, Short Stories of Jesus). Not rather than the Pharisee, but with the Pharisee. The Greek preposition para also means “alongside.” After they prayed in the temple, both the Pharisee and the tax collector were justified. God justifies both even as we routinely condemn others. When we say “No mercy,” God says, “Mercy.
May God have mercy on Pharisees and publicans, mercy on Pharisee-publicans and publican-pharisees, mercy on Democrats and Republicans. Mercy, mercy, mercy.