Proper 25, Year C | Luke 18:9-14
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
October 23, 2022
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
To watch the full service, please visit this page.
Last week we talked about the concept of “justice” in the Bible—how an action or behavior can be legal, technically making it “just,” while still being out of line with God’s desires or pathways. We learned about the Unjust Judge and how it wasn’t really his behavior or even his rulings that made him “unjust.” His real flaw was his lack of alignment with any source outside of himself—he was like text on a page that refuses to be “justified” to any margin. In the Bible, real justice is far less about keeping rules than it is about aligning ourselves with God and attempting to walk in the patterns and character God has revealed to us about themself. That’s actually what the concept of repentance is about—just recognizing you’re heading the wrong way and realigning yourself with God from wherever you may be. As Christians, we follow the example of God incarnate as displayed in Jesus Christ.
We also talked about prayer, wondering together if its purpose is less about having God force change on society around us—an expectation that looks a lot more like the work of Empire than the Reign of the Heavens—and more about setting ourselves in line with the reality of how God works in the world. It’s easy to misinterpret that type of prayer with a static or passive pose toward life—just letting things happen or continue as they are. But the real goal is to grow more aware of what God’s justice looks like and then, as God’s children and representatives, to root out any forms of harm and abuse—of injustice—and replace them with active, living, self-giving love.
I bring those both up because this week’s parable about the Pharisee and the tax-collector immediately follows that of the unjust judge, and since not only prayer but also ideas of justice appear in each story, I suspect Luke was trying to expand on both those concepts.
Please know that Pharisees were not “bad people.” Most weren’t religious hypocrites who say one thing but do another or judge other people over things they can’t control or cover their cruelty with a kind face. That’s a false stereotype established over centuries of misreading the Bible. A Pharisee was simply someone practicing a particular theological tradition within Second Temple Judaism, like an evangelical or a Roman Catholic or an Episcopalian in today’s Christianity. Like most of us, they were trying to follow God best as they could in the way they understood to be right. Some may have been a little rigid in particular areas of their lives, but overall they were decent people. Jesus didn’t use them as the foil to his parables because they were all corrupt but because his audiences generally understood Pharisees to be respectable and well-regarded.
Tax-collectors, on the other hand, had a terrible reputation. Since they gathered money from the local population and transferred it to Rome, people viewed them sort of like traitors—maybe not responsible for their country’s occupation, but definitely complicit with the continuing foreign oppression. Rumors said all tax-collectors were liars and cheats—that they embezzled people by charging fake fees or used extortion or simply skimmed whatever money they could off their fellow countrymen, making an already challenging life even more difficult.
So for Jesus’ audience, when a Pharisee heads into the Temple beside a tax-collector, it’s obvious who the good guy is even before the story starts. And in the story, everything plays out as it should. The Pharisee stands assuredly and prays eloquently while the tax collector grovels in the corner, barely able to scrape together a few words. The Pharisee gives thanks to God while the tax collector doesn’t even really manage to make much of a confession. Sure, the Pharisee comes across as a bit of a jerk, but what he says is probably true. He doesn’t steal. He doesn’t run around on his spouse. He’s even one of those people who voluntarily gives money to God! Compare that to the guy sniveling in the shadows, and even though he starts leaning into self-righteousness, the Pharisee still comes out ahead of some traitor. So imagine people’s surprise when the thieving, scheming tax collector heads home in God’s good graces while the Pharisee just heads home.
Clearly there’s a lesson here in humility and following the God’s paths—Jesus points it out himself: “all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.” However, that isn’t the only point Jesus is making; there’s still something here to learn about prayer here as well.
The text uses a subtle difference in phrasing to talk about each individual’s prayer. The root word is the same, but the forms differ ever so slightly. While the tax collector is simply praying, the way Jesus describes the Pharisee’s action suggests that he might just be praying to himself! It might appear that he’s praying to God. He probably thinks he’s praying to God. But like the unjust judge, there’s a question here about who exactly that god is!
It turns out the Pharisee, good and righteous as he might genuinely be, hasn’t actually lined his life up according to God’s standards. The fact is, he can’t, because no matter what he looks like and despite following all the socially accepted rules and customs, he remains the center of his world. He can see the problems in society around him, but he doesn’t recognize any need for movement in himself. There’s nothing he needs to do to make the world just little bit more like God’s Kingdom. He’s already as good as he can possibly be; it’s everyone else who needs to change. The tax-collector, on the other hand, observes how his life lines up with God’s designs and realizes that it isn’t someone else’s fault that society’s going down the tubes. He’s the one who needs to change, and only God can help him.
It’s a story that goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden. There’s plenty of academic theological debate over “original sin,” but I’m pretty certain it had nothing to do with eating some fruit—no one banishes their child for grabbing a cookie before dinner. Eve was talked into sneaking a taste. Adam played along. But none of the relationships break down until they each begin to speak. When God asks, “What did you do?”, Adam immediately blurts out, “Who, me? It’s her fault!” God again asks, “What did you do?”, and Eve responds, “It’s the snake’s fault!” And humanity has continued its spiral of blame, rejection, and retribution ever since.
Not every problem in the world can be solved through self-reflection, but many could be avoided or at least lessened if each of us were willing to take responsibility for our actions. The human default is to point at everyone but ourselves—whoever the scapegoat of the moment may be, whether that’s China or Biden or immigrants or some other religious or social group. It’s always someone else’s fault, and it’s always up to us to either stop them or impose our ideas of change onto them.
But neither of those actions ever resolve anything. You might be able to force someone to comply, but you can’t really change your neighbor’s heart. Even if we were to kill them in the course of our holy war, we quickly substitute a new foe in their place. The cycle is futile. If you want to see a lasting difference in the world, the only person you can change is yourself.
We’re hearing a lot of messaging right now about who’s right and who’s wrong, who’s good and who’s bad, who’s going to destroy society and who has a way to restore it. We even have certain people proclaiming that they alone stand for God. But be careful, because only God represents God, and standing on the side of justice never involves forcing our neighbors to meet our expectations, no matter how moral or noble or righteous we think those are. Walking the Way of Love—living in humility and acting in true justice—means aligning ourselves—not those around us—with the way God reveals Godself to be.