Luke 18:9-14
Catching up on the Story
As we said last week, this parable belongs with the Parable of the Widow and the Unjust Judge, as well as the discussion of the end times at the end of chapter 17. Last week’s parable was set in a court of law. The widow had suffered at the hands of someone and needed justice from the only person who could give it to her. That person was the judge. The widow was persistent in her petition and was granted justice because of it. God, who is so much better than the unjust judge, will also give justice to those who ask it of him.
The Text
As with the Parable of the Widow and the Unjust Judge, this parable is about being vindicated. Both stories represent the desire of an individual to appear as “right” in the eyes of a higher power. Only, in this parable, the attitude of the person seeking to be seen as right make all the difference.
The scene in Luke’s gospel has not shifted. Always accompanied by a crowd, Jesus and his followers make their way toward Jerusalem. Jesus has just finished telling the parable of the widow and the unjust judge, and Luke tells us he goes on to tell another story.
Again, there are two main characters. The first character we meet is a Pharisee. We’ve met characters like this before. Luke has not cast them in a good light, but we aren’t meant to understand that all Pharisees are wicked. The reality is that these men were well-intentioned.
The Pharisees
Who were the Pharisees? The Pharisees were an unofficial but powerful Jewish pressure group through most of the first centuries BC and AD. Largely lay-led, though, including some priests, they aimed to purify Israel through an intensified observance of the Jewish law (Torah). They developed unique traditions about the precise meaning and application of scripture, their specific patterns of prayer and other devotion, and their own calculations of the national hope. Though not all legal experts were Pharisees, most Pharisees were thus legal experts.
They affected the democratization of Israel’s life since, for them, the study and practice of the Torah were equivalent to worshipping in the Temple. Though, they were adamant in pressing their own rules for the Temple liturgy on an unwilling (and often Sadducean) priesthood.
By Jesus’ day, there were two distinct schools, the stricter one of Shammai, more inclined towards armed revolt, and the more lenient one of Hillel, ready to live and let live.
Jesus’ debates with the Pharisees are at least as much a matter of agenda and policy (Jesus strongly opposed their separatist nationalism) as about details of theology and piety. Especially in this context, we must remember that Jesus isn’t out to condemn the Pharisees as a group with this story. Instead, he’s out to warn and encourage them to change course.
We meet the Pharisee after he has arrived at the Temple to pray. This Pharisee was standing alone as he began to pray, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.”
What a prayer! The beginning of the Pharisee’s prayer is like that of some of the psalms of thanksgiving. Psalms of thanksgiving begin with thankfulness for the blessings of righteousness, but there is always an explicit understanding that the blessing comes from God.
It would not be odd to start a prayer like this. It would, however, be strange not to attribute one’s righteous status to God. This is precisely what the Pharisees have not done. Notice all the “I” language in his prayer.
The Pharisee defines himself more by what he is not than by what God has done or provided for him. His list of those he is glad that he is not is almost an inclusive list of all Jewish societies’ degenerates. This Pharisee has done what we all like to do, especially these days with our toxic political discourse, separating people into an “us” group and a “them” group.
In the Pharisee’s mind, if you don’t do the things that I and others like me do, you’re very much on the outside.
To be sure, the positive practices that the Pharisee lists are good things. There were specified days of fasting, and tithing on what you produced was a proscribed practice. The Pharisee is doing what all of God’s children were supposed to do.
If we look a bit closer, we’ll find that the Pharisee went above and beyond what was proscribed. He didn’t just fast on the appointed days; he fasted twice a week. He didn’t just tithe on what he produced; according to commentators, he tithed on everything he had. He even tithed on things he would have purchased at the market, goods on which tithe had already been paid.
But as we said at the beginning, it’s the attitude that seems to count here.
I think it’s essential to have a modern-day equivalent for the Pharisee. To whom can we compare this Pharisee? There’s a character on the show, The Good Place, that might be a suitable fit, Tahani. If you haven’t watched the show, I’m going to ruin a bit of it for you, but you’ve had your chance; it debuted in 2016.
The show follows four humans who have died and passed into the afterlife. Initially, they believe they are in the Good Place, where those who were good in their earthly life go. Only Eleanor, one of the main characters, knows she is not a good person, far from it. And so she sets about trying to become good so she won’t be discovered and end up heading to the bad place.
At the end of season one, we learn that the whole thing is a rouse. Michael, the architect of the community where Tahani, Eleanore, Chidi, and Jason now reside, has constructed the place to torture these four. The Good Place is actually the bad place. The whole thing was an experiment at finding new ways of eternal torment.
While Eleanore knows she doesn’t belong, the others don’t, and even when it is revealed that they are in the bad place, they find it hard to believe.
Somewhere in the second season, Tahani learns why she is in the bad place despite her successful work to raise billions of dollars for charity. A bit of backstory before we show this clip. Tahani has a younger sister who can do no wrong.
Tahani is in the bad place because all her good works were selfishly motivated. She did none of those things because she cared for people but to prove that she was worthy and acceptable compared to her younger sister.
The Pharisees are like Tahani, doing above and beyond what is required, not because the love of God motivated them but out of self-interest. Like Tahani, the Pharisee in the story is probably blind to his own moral failure.
The Tax Collector
The scene closes on the Pharisee and opens on the tax collector. Tax collectors were responsible for collecting tolls and taxes on behalf of the Roman government. In areas ruled by the Roman Empire, contracts for collecting taxes in a region were farmed out, usually to wealthy foreigners. These persons, in turn, hired local inhabitants to collect the taxes. Such individuals would rely on low-level tax gatherers (often slaves) to do the actual work of collecting the monies. The collection of funds might involve, for example, examining goods being transported along local roads and assessing tolls accordingly.
Goods sold in specific markets were also subject to taxes. Tax collectors were responsible for paying the government the revenue they had promised in obtaining their contract. But they were generally free to collect extra taxes from the people to make a profit. Opportunities for theft, fraud, and corruption abounded, so tax collectors are portrayed negatively in almost all Greco-Roman literature. Thus in the NT, “tax collectors and sinners” are cited together as examples of undesirable types.
Very clearly, this tax collector is a sinner. The difference, though, is that he knows it. His prayer could not be more different than the Pharisees. “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”
Even his posture communicates his contrite status. Ashamed even to lift his head to the heavens to address God, he hangs his head and beats his chest while he prays. And for this, Jesus says the tax collector is justified.
To whom can we compare this tax collector? The tax collector today is anyone seen as the scum of the earth by self-righteous people. Perhaps they are those who perform or receive abortions? Maybe they are those who are sexual predators? Perhaps they are persons struggling with sexual identity?
I want you to hear me correctly. I’m not justifying those behaviors. I am saying that anyone who comes before God and humbles themselves, seeking to rely on God’s mercy, is the one who receives God’s salvation.
So What…?
We said at the beginning that, like last week, this week’s story also seems to be about who will be vindicated. The original hearers of this story would have expected the Pharisee to be declared righteous and awarded justification.
But Jesus, as he often does, turns that on its head. It is not the Pharisee who is justified or made right with God; it is the tax collector. It is not the one who has trusted in himself to accomplish all God's desires who receives salvation. On the outside, it is not the one who looks and talks and walks the right path but the one who humbly presents himself before God.
Jesus would never want us not to try and live faithful and obedient lives. He would want us always to be aware that the salvation we obtain, any righteousness we might have, is always a gift from God.
If we are faithful and obedient, it is because we are grateful recipients of God’s grace. Earlier this year, we confessed that we believe in God’s gracious salvation for us. And we said that we practice our belief in this grace and salvation by continually confessing our sinfulness to God and to one another.
This seems to be what Jesus is getting at here. The act of confession is humbling. One cannot admit one’s sin, especially the sins of pride, arrogance, and self-righteousness, without being humbled. But this is the way of the Kingdom of God. Only through humbling ourselves through confession and repentance can we continue in our journey of faithfulness.
Discussion Questions
Read the text aloud. Then, instruct the group to read the text to themselves quietly. Encourage them to read it slowly, as if they were very unfamiliar with the story.
Who are the main characters in the story? What are they doing?
What doesn’t make sense to you in this story?
How might the story sound if you replaced the Pharisee and tax collector with modern-day equivalents? Who would replace the Pharisee (someone good and upright)? Who would replace the tax collector (someone we would look down on as the scum of society)?
Read Psalm 26. In what ways do you identify with this Psalm?
In this parable, the Pharisee outlines several types of people who he thanks God that he is not like, thieves, rogues, adulterers, and tax collectors. What types of people might we be thanking God that we are not like?
Read Psalm 51. In what ways should we identify with this Psalm?
Works Cited
Anthony J. Saldarini and Mark Allan Powell, “Tax Collectors,” ed. Mark Allan Powell, The HarperCollins Bible Dictionary (Revised and Updated) (New York: HarperCollins, 2011).
Walter A. Elwell and Barry J. Beitzel, Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1988).
Tom Wright, Luke for Everyone (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2004).