The 22nd Sunday after
Pentecost
Pharisees and
Publicans
Luke 18:9-14
Fr. Keith Oglesby,
St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church, Alpharetta, Georgia
Pharisees and Publicans are recurring characters in the Gospels. In
the Gospel according to Luke in particular, they take on roles beyond
those of any individual Pharisee or Publican. They represent two very
different types of people in the society of first century Palestine.
Let’s take a brief history lesson:
The Roman Empire had conquered this part of the world roughly one
hundred years before. They had set up Roman governors and made
alliances with local kings in order to rule this area in peace. The
Jewish people, like most conquered people, responded in different ways
to their conquerors. Some groups cooperated, some resisted. Two of
those groups are represented in the parable we just heard.
One group sold out completely and became agents of the occupying
power. These are known in our Scripture as the Publicans or Tax
Collectors. They collected the various taxes and tolls assessed by
Rome. But unlike IRS agents in our nation today, they were not
professional bureaucrats with a code of ethics and a strict rule of
law. Instead, they worked on a commission basis—they could collect as
much tax as possible as long as they paid the amount demanded by the
governing authorities. This system of course led to abuse and
extortion. Publicans were hated for a reason.
Another group resisted Roman rule, but not with violence. They
resisted in another way—by becoming more devout, more committed to
living according to their tradition with the hope that their
righteousness would lead to their nation’s deliverance from its
enemies. They studied the law, they prayed and they did even more than
the Law commanded. This group was known as the Pharisees.
So why did Jesus choose people from these two groups as characters in
this parable? First, people from these groups had power in this
society. They also had very different approaches to life. And in
general, people in these groups had very different responses to Jesus
and his teaching.
Jesus often talked about the Pharisees. He teased them that their
“righteousness” was so thorough that they even paid a tithe on all of
their household spices! Can you imagine the scene—the Pharisees
weighing spices out on a scale and then carefully setting aside a
tenth? But these religiously conscientious people were so concerned
with doing what was right that they often forgot what “doing right” is
for— in order to honor God and then to practically care for their
fellow human beings.
You see, doing right for the Pharisees became a game with winners and
losers. Like the character in this parable, the Pharisees remembered
all that they did right, all that made them winners in this game of
righteousness. This made them think that they could rely only on
themselves; and it made them despise others who did not measure up,
who were not winners in their game.
One of the most famous Pharisees in the New Testament is the Apostle
Paul. Our epistle for today includes some of the last words attributed
to Paul. His words are almost wistful as he anticipates the end of his
life—“I am being poured out like a drink offering…I have fought the
good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” These
words portray a different man, a changed man, from the character first
introduced to us in the Book of Acts.
In the first scene in which Paul—then called Saul—is portrayed, he is
a witness who agrees with the stoning of Stephen, the first Christian
martyr. His “righteousness” was very like the Pharisee in the parable
today. He is so sure that his is the right cause, the right
interpretation of God’s Law that he is willing to even agree to the
killing of those who believe differently from him. Later in the vivid
description from Acts, Saul was “breathing threats and murder against
the disciples of the Lord.” In his own words written in the letter to
the Galatians, Paul writes that he “persecuted the church of God
violently and tried to destroy it.” Yes, Paul was an extreme example
of the Pharisee that Jesus had in mind when he told this parable.
But Paul changed. In the famous conversion scene on the road to
Damascus, Jesus asked him, “Why do you persecute me?” The resurrected
Jesus identified himself with the object of this Pharisee’s contempt,
people like the tax collector in the parable-- those who had come to
understand who they were in the presence of God and cried out to God
for mercy. This message stuns Saul the Pharisee. His world of
religious certainty and dutiful practices-- that even included
persecuting those who disagreed with his interpretation of the Law--
was turned upside down by the presence of Jesus and his challenge of
how this Pharisee lived his life. Saul saw his life the way that Jesus
saw it and Saul cried out for mercy like the tax collector in today’s
parable.
The rest of Acts and the letters of Paul reveal this transformation.
Paul writes that God’s strength and power are revealed and made
effective in weakness. In his past life as a Pharisee, Paul had been
confident—“…as to the law a Pharisee, as to zeal a persecutor of the
church, as to righteousness under the law blameless.” But then Paul
continues, “But whatever former things I had that might have been
gains to me, I have come to consider as loss for Christ’s sake.”
Instead of this outward righteousness, Paul writes of his relationship
to Christ and how that relationship was revealed to Paul especially in
his weakness. In his letters, we read about Paul’s poor health and
about his rejection by those who disagreed with him. Yet Paul found a
joy that was not based upon winning and losing in a game of
righteousness; but instead based upon Christ’s presence and love among
the community of his followers.
So that is Paul. What does this mean to us in the church, to us today
in 21st century North America? To many of us this may seem like a
distant debate of another culture, a debate between religious
practices and spiritual understandings that are different from our
own. What can we learn from the parable of the Pharisee and the
Publican, and from the life of Saul the Pharisee and religious zealot
who became Paul the Apostle and follower of Christ?
First, it will probably help us to consider whether we identify with
either of the characters in the story or if there is no one in the
parable that represents us.
For those of us who are like the Pharisee, we need to look at how we
are living our life. Our religious practices are not an end in
themselves that make us better than someone else. If our faith causes
us to look down on others, even to despise them for how they fall
short of what we think is right, then we need to consider this parable
and remember that it was not the Pharisee who was justified in the
end.
For those of us who are like the tax collector, we need to be sure we
understand the point of the story. It was not because the tax
collector acted humbly at church and said a couple of “mea culpas”
that Jesus said he was justified. Rather it was because the tax
collector came to understand accurately who he was—a sinner— and
called out to God for mercy; this caused Jesus to call him justified.
We are not told if this tax collector changed his ways after he
returned home, but I like to think that the story of this tax
collector may be continued in the next chapter when we hear about
Zacchaeus and how his encounter with Jesus changed how he lived his
life.
And for the rest of us—perhaps most of us—we may not identify with the
Pharisee or the tax collector. Perhaps we have been victims of people
like those represented by the characters in this story. We have been
despised by the overly religious-- people like the Pharisee-- because
we don’t measure up to their expectations; or we have been bullied by
the unscrupulous-- people like the tax collector-- who use their power
to get what they want in life. We may be tempted to dismiss this story
or simply not see its relevance to us or our lives.
But even if we’re not a Pharisee or a tax collector, I still think we
can learn from this parable. In her short story, “Revelation,”
Flannery O’Connor writes about a woman who is having an inner
conversation, kind of like the Pharisee in the parable. She is sitting
in the waiting room of a doctor’s office in a small, Southern town.
While she is making polite conversation with the people around her,
she is also judging them—who she considers white trash, who she
considers ugly-- and which condition would be worse. One of the other
people in the waiting room—a young woman in college-- starts to stare
at the other woman as if she is able to read her mind. This young
woman eventually physically attacks the other woman and calls her an
awful name that pierces the shell of her outward politeness and
reveals to the other woman who she really is. I won’t tell you any
more—but I do recommend the story to you!
The point is that many of us—like the woman in this short story or the
Pharisee in the parable-- carry on a similar conversation in our
heads. That’s human. What might really help us though is to stop and
listen to our inner conversation from time to time. What are we saying
to ourselves? Who do we judge… for whom do we show contempt… and why?
It may be someone as close as a spouse, a parent, a sibling or even a
child. It may be someone from a different race or culture. Whoever it
is, let us pray for grace that we may challenge that inner
conversation and consider what our words say about us rather than the
people we are judging. Then let us see if we can cry out for mercy
like the tax collector—and offer mercy to those we have previously
judged. Amen.
© Fr. Keith Oglesby. All Rights
reserved.
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