I preached this sermon on October 23, 2022. The main text I preached on was Luke 18:9-14.
There’s a song ringing in my ear. One of our church members is apt to sing it after a particularly good play or turn in dominoes at the Over 50s club—“Oh Lord, it’s hard to be humble/ When you’re perfect in every way/ I can’t wait to look in the mirror/ Cause I get better lookin’ each day/ To know me is to love me/ I must be a hell of a man/ Oh Lord, it’s hard to be humble/ But I’m doin’ the best that I can.” I can imagine the Pharisee from Jesus’ parable whistling the tune to this song as he picks his way among the crowd on the way to the Temple.
Just imagine, he’s had a particularly good day. He just dropped off a larger than normal check at local charity whose board he serves on because he got the news his stocks are bucking the trend and dividends were up. “I should increase my church pledge too” he thinks. Before that he spent a couple of hours working at the local soup kitchen, making sure the onions were diced just so and the clients were checked in properly. This morning he even squeezed in some time catching up on his Bible-in-a-year plan. He’d been a little slack on that, but you can always do more the next day to make up for it.
With the turn of a car key, he makes his way to his Church’s Wednesday night program. It’s not a far drive, but it’s made longer by all the people just getting off of work. It’s getting closer and closer to the midterms so he notices yard sign after yard sign. “They’re campaigning for that guy? Don’t they know he’s a crook!?!” The diesel truck in front of him belches out a black cloud from its exhaust. “Don’t they know how bad that is for the environment, not to mention those who are driving behind them?” There’s a ping from his pocket and he takes out his phone, even though he knows he’s not supposed to; it’s a notification letting him know about another celebrity divorce brought on by infidelity. “It’s so great me and my wife love each other. We’d never do anything like that.”
He pulls in to the lot. It’s about half full, but there’s one particular car parked in the way back that catches his attention. It’s audacious, over the cop, candy apple red. It’s big, too big for one spot. He sees the, what he can only assume is brand new, vanity plate—TAXMAN—and he knows who this is; it’s the guy who owns more than one of those payday loan places. You know, the kind that charge exorbitant amounts of interest and are really only used by poor people. Apparently this guy’s fleecing those who can’t go anywhere else and getting rich because of it. A thought pops into our Pharisee’s mind: “How can he live with himself? Thank God I’m not like him or any of these other people.” He pulls into his parking spot at the front (everyone knows it’s his just like everyone knows which pew is his), gets out, strides into the church to help set up, and never looks back.
Now, Luke sets up his parable with a line cluing us in to what is going to happen—Jesus told this parable to certain people who had convinced themselves that they were righteous and who looked on everyone else with disgust (v. 9). We’re supposed to see the Pharisee in this light, someone who thought themselves holy while others were simple afterthoughts and best and no better than the mud scraped off boots at worst. This priming sometimes gets in the way of seeing the full picture. We clue in on the self-righteousness and bragging and miss the other part; the Pharisee really is the good guy!
He takes his faith seriously. He does more than what is expected of him. He walks the walk and he talks the talk. In many Christian circles, he would be quite right in thanking God for his ability to fully tithe and be healthy enough to give up food 2 days a week. My faith and body aren’t strong enough to miss breakfast let alone fast for 2 days. If most ministers were honest, they’d welcome this Pharisee with open arms into their church. They might even put him in charge of a committee or two! And if he brought some friends like him along…all the better for that is what he is—better.
And the tax collector? A scoundrel. A colluder. An embezzler. A predator. He makes his money grasping into the already too shallow pockets of his own people. The Roman Empire is happy enough to let him do what he wants as long as they get their cut. He’s a shmuck in every sense of the word, save one—he knows he’s a shmuck. He knows it, he admits it, he asks for mercy—maybe on a whim, hoping against hope it will come to him. Just like the Temptations, he ain’t too proud to beg.
That’s the rub of the parable—the tax collector, the schmuck, the one who admits his sin goes home justified, righteous, made into a good person. His prayer is answered. He looks at himself in the mirror and gives an honest appraisal. He knows he can’t help himself, so he asks the One who can. He trusts God.
The Pharisee? All his good works don’t mean a thing. His prayer is haughty, an almost self-congratulatory self-talk in the guise of a prayer. He’s thinks he’s done good enough, that his life is one big long list of qualification as to why God should love him. If you noticed, he doesn’t ask one thing of God in his prayer. He trusts only himself. It’s all about him—Lord, it’s hard to be humble, especially when the tax collector is nearby.
In To Kill a Mockingbird, the main character, Scout has a classmate named Walter Cunningham whose dad leads the lynch mob that hounds [the black man accused of assaulting a white woman.] But since young Walter is too poor to afford lunch, Scout’s brother Jem invites him to come home with them for lunch.
The Finches beloved cook whom the family calls “Cal” sets a place for Walter. There he promptly pours molasses all over his vegetables and meat. This visibly and audibly offends Scout’s culinary sensibilities.
So Cal basically drags her into the kitchen and says, “There’s some folks who don’t eat like us, but you ain’t called on to contradict ‘em at the table when they don’t. That boy’s your company and if he wants to eat up the table cloth, you let him, you hear?”
“He ain’t company, Cal, he’s a Cunningham,” Scout rages. “Hush your mouth,” Cal angrily replies, “Don’t matter who they are, anybody sets foot in this house is your company, and don’t let me catch you remarkin’ on their ways like you was high and mighty! Your folks may be better than the Cunninghams but it don’t count for nothin’ the way you’re disgracin’ ‘em.”[1]
The problem, as far as I see it, is that this parable is a trap. Jesus lays it out for all who would try and cling righteousness by way of their works and look at others with disgust, see themselves as high and might. But that really just means he lays out this trap for us to fall into again and again and again. The parable is told as Law, to afflict us and our preconceived notions. It’s told for those with a view of themselves as higher than others. Maybe not the highest, but not as low as “those” people. It resonates still because of this—who among us hasn’t had that thought, “Thank God I’m not like…”
We are on board—damn those self-righteous people who think they are better than anyone else. We pat ourselves on the back for not being overly religious, overly pushy, overly discriminatory, or anything else we heap on the back of this innocent Pharisee trying to show off a little bit. “Thank God, I’m not like…” fill in the blank with your perceived enemy. I’m just a humble…I’m not like them…I may not be perfect but…and the parable has done its work. It comes full circle.
“There is a story about a Sunday school teacher who, after a great lesson on the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican, led his class in prayer: ‘Lord, we thank you that we have your word and your church, and that therefore we are not like the Pharisee…’ The contradiction between what the parable says and what this teacher did is obvious. But we fail to see that in the very act of pointing to that contradiction, and perhaps even chuckling at this teacher’s incomprehension, we are secretly saying, ‘Lord, I thank you that I am not like this teacher, who did not even understand your parable…’!”[2]
Humanity, you and me included, live into this Pharisaical trope. We see ourselves as mostly good, maybe not perfect, but definitely better than others. We rely on what we do, what we believe, what we think. We want righteousness, holiness, goodness to lie in our hands, to be able to pull ourselves up to heaven by our own bootstraps. This parable always accuses me b/c it always comes back to those who try to self-justify. It shows me the end of myself—the high will be brought low. Lord it’s hard to be humble, except at the last when you will be made thus because death is the end of all our vain pursuits, our attempts at self-justification. But the dead are just Jesus’ cup of tea.
This parable brings us to the end of ourselves—the end of our striving, our proving, our working, our living; that’s what it’s supposed to do. Again and again it is brought to bear that we are the Pharisee. And realizing that, we are led to confess just like the tax collector. When we hear this parable rightly it is always circling us toward confessing sin and receiving absolution. Brought to the end of ourselves, we mumble “Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy” and he does. God is always more ready to forgive than we are to ask for forgiveness. Indeed, God is in the business of raising those dead to sin. As Jesus said for the tax collector, so Jesus does for you—I tell you, this person went down to his home justified rather than the Pharisee.
[1] https://cepreaching.org/commentary/2022-08-22/hebrews-131-8-15-16-3/
[2] https://cepreaching.org/commentary/2022-10-17/luke-189-14-3/
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