Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

 Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 18:9-14

Well, thank God you and I are not like that Pharisee!  I think that’s the initial reaction for a lot of people who hear this parable.  We don’t want to be like the Pharisee.  But why not? Because he is not justified before God.  And we all want to be justified before God, or putting it another way, be accepted by God -- get to heaven.

As I was researching today’s gospel I ran across several pictures of this scene.  The Pharisee was always portrayed as proud and arrogant and dressed in fine clothing.  Some pictures made him look absolutely villainous.  And the tax collector is in the background, head bowed in humility, wearing clothing which was straightforward, working man’s kind of stuff. 

But maybe the parable is not just a caution about being proud, maybe there’s more to it.  First, it isn’t as though these two men were standing in an empty church praying.  They were with the community.  Jews then and in some branches, Jews now, pray out loud.  They pray in the presence of others to God.  Second, even though the tax collector considers himself a sinner, he has been allowed to go into the temple.  He’s ritually poor, he’s paid his temple tax, he hasn’t done anything outrageous.  He probably isn’t popular, but most people may have looked at him like we look at tax collectors or used car salesmen -- however blameless these people are, they have a bad reputation.  If he’s in the temple, that means something.

Getting to the pictures I mentioned, they probably aren’t accurate.  Pharisees, according to the historian Josephus, who lived in the early second century, lived modestly, and while they wore various things that were prescribed in the old testament, they all had day jobs.  Remember Saint Paul, who was a tent maker? And if anyone was dressed well and maybe a bit overweight, it would have been the tax collector.  He probably made alot of money at has profession, even if he as pretty honest.  He had to collect a certain amount and then turn over a prescribed fraction to the romans, the rest was his salary.  Sure, tax coloectors took advantage of the people, most of whom couldn’t read or write, but even without a bit of cheating they were wealthy compared to most everyone else, so people were jealous.  So I hope you have a different picture in mind now.

The Pharisee begins his prayer with a reasonable statement -- Thank you God, that I am not like the rest of men.  I’m not greedy, dishonest, or adulterous.  Those are good things, right? And he’s thanking God for this.  Every time we say, “There but for the grace of God go I” we are doing the same thing, aren’t we?  Then he adds, “or even this tax collector”.  So, yes, I guess there is a little arrogance there -- but the Pharisee goes on to describe how he goes over and above the law.  The law said to fast once a year.  He does it twice a week.  He says he tithes everything he gets.  But the law says that you have to tithe the produce of your land and the offspring of your animals.  It doesn’t say anything about monetary income.  So the Pharisee is going above and beyond the law here, as well.  Except for the comment about the tax collector -- and even there, the comment can be taken as thanking God for something, not looking down on him -- There but for the grace of God that could be me”

So why isn’t the Pharisee justified?  Why is the tax collector justified?  Are you justified for acknowledging you are a sinner?

I think Jesus is teaching us two lessons here.  The first is that no matter what we do, we can’t save ourselves.  That was the Pharisee’s mistake.  He’s doing everything right -- in fact I doubt that he’s anything like the pictures we have.  He is following the law and even going beyond it.  The average Jew would look up to him and think, “I wish I could be like him”.  But the point is, we can’t save ourselves.

The tax collector realizes this.  He may not be conscious of any sins.  Not all tax collectors were dishonest.  And there is nothing in the scriptures about working for the government, even if it was the Roman government.  In fact the Old Testament has many heroes who worked for a foreign government -- Joseph, who ran Egypt for the Pharaoh, comes to mind, and Daniel, who worked for the Babylonian king.  And there were others.  In fact, maybe the tax collector could have said the same prayer as the Pharisee.

But the Pharisee is in his bubble, trying to save himself.  The TAx collector realizes that he’s part of a sinful world, that there is really no way he can escape sin. Because we are part of humanity, because we are responsible for the well-being of our brothers and sisters in the human family, and we come up short, even if we do everything we can to make the world a better place, we continue to be immersed in sin.  And that’s why we call out to God for mercy and that’s why we acknowledge that we are sinners.  It’s only then that we become justified in God’s eyes.