October 23, 2022 – The Twentieth Sunday After Pentecost

Mother Elizabeth Farr

“The parable traps.”

Like peanut butter or cheese set before us, we salivate and are tempted until all of a sudden – SNAP! And there we are, caught in the devices of our own humanity – our hearts soaring, our minds comforted as the tax collector goes home justified. And the Pharisee does not.

It’s such a tidy, simple, predictable story. Classic really. Like JIF Peanut Butter. Or good ol’ cheddar cheese. Staples. Basic. Appetizing before we even take a bite because we know what to expect. Nourishing to our own vanities and to our own prejudices. The tax collector goes home justified. And the Pharisee does not.

We’ve talked about this before with the stories of Jesus – with the parables. As soon as we receive or describe them as tidy, simple, or predictable, then we probably need to play a bit more in the world of these words. We need to get curious and wonder about our own delight in the story of a sinner who is sainted and a saint who is slighted.

So let’s back up a minute. Let’s be a bit more discerning. To start with, bless his heart, Luke doesn’t really help us much. Or actually, Luke helps us too much. The stories of tax collectors and Pharisees in the rest of the Gospel inform how we hear this story from Jesus. And it makes sense. Luke is writing a Gospel – a gift of the “Good News.” He’s doing it in his own time and context.

Yes, Luke writes with prayer, intention, and inspiration, and the tax collectors and Pharisees of the Gospel are different characters than they were for the people hearing Jesus’ stories for the first time. For Luke, tax collectors are characters begging for sympathy and understanding.

They are “sinners on their way to becoming righteous” (3). We might even describe them as “darling” (4). Think of that wee little Zaccheaus climbing up in the sycamore tree, for the Lord he wanted to see. Darling, wee little, tax collector Zacccheaus. We love him.

Pharisees, on the other hand, in Luke’s Gospel, have no time for the darling tax collectors – at least no time for Jesus’ association with them. Mostly, the Pharisees are the gnats of Luke’s Gospel. They buzz around challenging and complaining – more a nuisance than anything else – but certainly not sympathetic characters.

So as we arrive at Jesus’ story, Luke has set us up. We hear “Pharisee and tax collector,” and our human tendency is already to listen for which is the exemplar in the story and which is the foil. Luke’s characterization speaks to our duality-seeking hearts: the tax collector is darling, and the Pharisee is a gnat. We expect the tax collector to go home justified, and the Pharisee not. How tidy! How very nice!

Except that this was not the case for Jesus’ first-century, Jewish audience. Being human, that audience was also listening for who is the exemplar and who is the foil, but Pharisees were mostly respected. They were people of integrity who taught from their example. Pharisees were exemplars, so that would be their expected role in the story, and tax collectors were anything but darling.

They garnered no sympathy as self-interested, dishonest, “agents of Rome.” (5) The mere presence of the tax collector in the story would have been offensive – a disruption to the heart and the mind.

It is important to notice and name that tension for Jesus’ first hearers. We share with that audience the human desire to have a clear hero and a clear villain. But given Luke’s characterization of “darling” versus “gnat,” we have to reclaim the shock that the tax collector goes home justified. It is a shock that scandalizes.

Especially when we consider again how little the tax collector has done. That is the other part of this story to play with – the way Jesus describes the characters. Because it is a story, and stories have compelling, surprising, and even entertaining characters.

We’ll come back to the tax collector in a minute. But first, the Pharisee. He is absurd in his piety. The Pharisee’s piety in this story has on clown shoes, a red nose, and a rainbow wig. It is outrageous – “piety on steroids.” (2)

The fasting, the tithing of “all” that he has – it is beyond what the law requires and beyond the strict observance of the law advocated by the Pharisees. This man is unreal. He is a caricature of a Pharisee. Even the most Pharisee of Pharisees in the crowd potentially hearing this story, could not identify with this Pharisee.

His prayer is also not completely outside of tradition – a prayer of thanksgiving for the life that he has, for the opportunities he’s been given, and the privileges he enjoys. He thanks God for his many blessings. He stands in a posture of gratitude.

Now the Pharisee does take the arrogant and contemptuous step of including the tax collector as among those whom he is thankful not to be like. It’s an important detail, but other than this one thing, this one moment of arrogance and contempt, the Pharisee is a character of extreme and ridiculous piety and gratitude. What are we to do with this one moment of arrogance and contempt? What is God to do?

Before we turn to these questions though, we still have the tax collector who has done so little. He humbly prays for mercy, yes, and image of the “darling, wee little tax collector” or no, we can consider this prayer to be sincere. It’s not a mockery, and Jesus’ first audience would not have heard it that way. That’s part of the shock – that this tax collector for Rome who cheats his neighbors and lines his own pockets is praying genuinely and humbly for mercy before God.

And yet – that’s all he does before he goes home justified. That’s it. Mercy in clown shoes. It’s ridiculous. Outrageous. The tax collector makes no promise to amend his ways. There is no more of the story that shares how he lives his life after he comes home from the temple. Just, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” and he goes home – justified. How do we respond to mercy like this?

We’re now far from the tidy, simple, predictable story. “Two men went up to the temple to pray. . .” Which is the sinner? Which is the saint? We long with that first-century audience for a clear answer because if we know, then we know how to be more saintly. If we know, then we know how to more quickly assess the sins of others. We love this calculus. Who’s in? Who’s out? Who is my neighbor? Who is my enemy?

But maybe, just maybe, Jesus isn’t telling a story bound by our human need for hero and villain, saint and sinner. Maybe, just maybe, Jesus is telling a story to disrupt that need in us – to challenge our insistence that God’s wild mercy be tamed by our expectations.

The tax collector goes home justified – our NRSV translation says, “rather than the other.” It plays nicely into that expectation – “rather than,” so the tax collector goes home saint, and the Pharisee goes home sinner. But there are many who challenge this translation, and say that a better, closer reading, would be that the tax collector went home justified “alongside the other.” (6)

No saint. No sinner. Two beloved children of God walking home, side-by-side in the wild mercy of God.

Still others offer that it may even be that the tax collector went home justified “because of the other” (7) – because the community matters. The Body of Christ matters: “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” (8) The piety and gratitude of the Pharisee, even through his arrogance and contempt, allows room in the Body for the tax collector.

“Alongside the other.” “Because of the other.” None of it tidy. None of it simple. None of it predictable. All of it God. Ridiculous, outrageous, and thwarting all of our expectations. Wondrous, abundant, wild mercy. Thanks be to God.

1       A.J. Levine, Short Stories by Jesus, 208.

2       https://www.workingpreacher.org/podcasts/867-20th-sunday-after-pentecost-ord-30c-october-23-2022

3       Levine, 188.

4       Levine, 187.

5       Levine, 188, 194.

6       Levine, 209.

7       Levine, 209.

8       Levine, 209.

Year C, Proper 25  –   October 23, 2022, The 20th Sunday After Pentecost   –  The Rev. Elizabeth Langford Farr