 | The Geelong City Parish, UCA |
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We Australians like today’s parable because it connects with some of the things that we claim are important to our national psyche: We claim we are for the underdog; we claim we don’t like pomposity; we claim we don’t like people who are full of themselves or who are two-faced types; we claim we don’t like spin and claim that we have highly tuned garbage detectors.
So we like this parable
because at first glance it looks like the underdog, getting one-up
on the establishment types.
We like the introduction…
[Jesus] also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves
that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt. (Luke
18:9)
We like the conclusion:
| 14I tell you, this man [the tax-collector] went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Luke 18:14) |
Yeah!
But the truth is Jesus isn’t telling a story about winners and losers; he doesn’t want us to cheer the tax-collector and boo the Pharisees, he wants us to have a good look at our selves – because the truth is if we have a good look at ourselves we will recognise something of the Pharisee and the tax-collector lives within each of us.
So with this in mind, before we go further, let us be clear about what this parable does not tell us:
It does not tell us to leave this place thinking, “I am glad I am not like that Pharisee!” Equally it does not mean that we should all become tax-collectors. There was nothing wrong with being a Pharisee in Jesus day – the Pharisees, unlike the establishment Sadducees, were reformers and enthusiasts for the faith – and while some opposed Jesus - there were others who could see that God might be active in this man from Nazareth and his followers – think of Nicodemus or Gamaliel. The Pharisee in this story lived a good life. He was no Hollywood black hatted baddie. We should not get too sentimental about the tax collector: the tax collector extorted money from others, was a collaborator with the Roman occupying forces and no doubt continued to act in this crooked and treacherous way even after making his confession. “Well you’ve got to pay your bills somehow: I’ve got three children at the Jerusalem University with HEC debts and all the extras – and they all want their own chariots and mobile scrolls!” |
The parable is not about winners or losers it is actually all about honesty and grace – an honesty with self and God which leads to a willingness to reach out and receive the unconditional love of God.
Jesus commends the tax-collector not because of his occupation but because he was honest before God and with himself about the state of his life and his need of God’s forgiveness. “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ (Luke 18:13)
Jesus points the finger at the Pharisee, on the other hand, because he sought to justify himself – he failed to realise that he needed help as much as the tax collector. Indeed the sin of the Pharisee’s prayer, as suggested by one commentator, was his side-ways glance at the tax-collector and thus a failure to engage in a serious reflection on the state of his own soul.1
| God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ (Luke 18:11-12) |
In an article about honesty and self-deception I came across this following story:
| Once when Frederick
II, an 18th-century king of Prussia, went on an inspection tour
of a Berlin prison, he was greeted with the cries of prisoners,
who fell on their knees and protested their unjust imprisonment.
While listening to these pleas of innocence, Frederick’s
eye was caught by a solitary figure in the corner, a prisoner
seemingly unconcerned with all the commotion. "Why are you here?" Frederick asked him. "Armed robbery, Your Majesty." "Were you guilty?" the king asked. "Oh yes, indeed, Your Majesty. I entirely deserve my punishment." At that Frederick summoned the jailer. "Release this guilty man at once," he said. "I will not have him kept in this prison where he will corrupt all the fine innocent people who occupy it."2 |
The author of the article one Lloyd Steffen goes onto say:
| We exhibit an amazing agility in avoiding the truth about who we are and what we do. Our failures in being honest with ourselves are instances of self-deception. And all of us are, have been, or could be self-deceivers. We are prone to it, capable of it, and never more likely to be in its grip than in those moments when we are sure we are not. As people of faith, we are called to be honest in our dealings with God, with others and with ourselves. Self-deception can disrupt all of those relations.3 |
Samuel Johnson (of the Dictionary fame) wrote that self-deceivers “dwell on the faults of others,” avoid the company of those who know “…what they are like, preferring the company of those who will not expose them to themselves.”4
The Pharisee is such a self-deceiver. He tries to avoid the reality that he needed help too. Why on earth he thought he could hide the truth from God, who knows?
But it is so easy to fall into this trap.
“Thank God I am
not a fundamentalist.”
“Thank God I am so sensibly mainstream.”
“Thank God I have better morals than so and so.”
“Thank God I am not a prostitute or a convicted felon …”
“Thank God I am not one of those self-serving politicians…”
“Thank God I am not like Ben Cousins or Britney Spears…”
Thank God I can fill up my prayers with all the people I am not, so I don’t actually have a real look at myself!
But the parable challenges us to recognise that just like all of THEM, just like the tax-collector, WE need the grace of God, we need help, we cannot do it on our own.
There is so many forces in life which push in another direction which rather than encouraging us to rely on the good news that we are valued by God seem to push us to believe that we by ourselves have to make something of ourselves, we as individuals by ourselves have to justify ourselves.
Lisa has written about this in yesterday’s Church and Life article in the Geelong Advertiser in terms of the way people approach the VCE.
But justifying yourself is not just about passing formal examinations, it can be about all sorts of things to fit in the crowd to make sure people know you are somebody and you are cool.
It can be mean having the right house; going to the right school; having the right car; shopping at the right shops…
For young people particularly, it can involve engaging in dangerous, even life-threatening behaviours and activities.
I hate to say it, but often for Christians it can involve embracing a certain look and dress code to show that one is a real Christian! (Thank God I don’t dress like them!)
Some of what is involved in justifying one-self in the eyes of others can be easier to take than other things.
I hope the trouser-falling- down-with- boxer-shorts-exposed-look amongst young males (and old ones) is only a short blip in the history of being seen to be cool! (Thank God I don’t dress like them!)
But the point of the parable is – the heart of the Gospel is - that in the end you as a person are not judged worthwhile based on what you do, say or wear, but because you are open enough to be valued by God!
The tax-collector went home in good relations with his Lord because he owned this truth! He admitted his need!
I was looking up the internet recently and read with interest about a book that the Archbishop of Canterbury has recently written in which he highlights the joy of resting in the grace – the unconditional love of God – rather than the burden of trying to justify yourself and in the process no doubt deceive yourself!5
Some of us are reading Thomas Merton’s autobiography entitled The seven storey mountain. It is a lively and interesting read, filled with Merton’s beautiful word pictures. He draws you right into his own life journey: a journey which involved some very earthy living; a journey which reflecting back from the vantage point of being a Monk he realises was marked by him being chased by the hound of heaven – a life marked by the love of God seeking him out each step of the way.
Perhaps fuelled by his reading of some of the satirical English writers of his era like Evelyn Waugh, Merton has some cutting things to say about the religious life of 1930s England. In one section he writes about a chaplain at his senior secondary school who at least in one sermon seems to have completely lost the core of the gospel and the core message of today’s parable. The chaplain develops an argument which has far more to do with some pre-World War 2 English male ideas about what it meant to be justified in the sight of others than the gospel of grace.
The Chaplain took 1 Corinthians 13 as his text and it becomes quickly clear that charity/that love meant something a bit different from what one normally expects. Indeed Merton tells us that, according to this chaplain, “…charity meant good-sportsmanship, cricket, the decent thing, wearing the right kind of clothes, using the proper spoon, not being a cad or a bounder.”6
Merton quotes the Chaplain as saying:
| One might go through this chapter of St. Paul and simply substitute the word ‘gentleman’ for ‘charity’ wherever it occurs. ‘If I talk with the tongues of men and of angels, and be not a gentleman, I am become as [a] sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal… A gentleman is patient, is kind; a gentleman envieth not, dealeth not perversely; is not puffed up … A gentleman never falleth away’… 7 |
While apparently he did not conclude with the words that faith, hope and gentlemanliness were the greatest things, Merton muses that the Apostles might have been a bit surprised to discover that Jesus suffered and died so we might be gentlemen.8
Sisters and brothers,
Let us not be seduced by the measuring yard-sticks of the world – yardsticks which may lead us to deceive ourselves into believing that we are only valued by how we appear or what we have achieved.
May we dare to be honest about who we really are? May we dare to actually journey into our true selves? May we each know that you and I --the real you and I – not some pretend you and I – the real you and the real I – are loved by God.
And may we rejoice in this knowledge and the good news that we do not have to be burdened with living a lie and trying to justify to God, others and ourselves that we are someone who we are really not! God loves us because we are who we are! Not, of course, that we each cannot do with an odd renovation - but that is another story.
Resources:
1 Paul D.
Duke, “Praying with a sideward glance - Luke 18:9-14 - Living
by the Word – Column”, Christian Century, October 11,
1995
2 Lloyd H. Steffen, “On Honesty and Self-deception:
‘You Are the Man’”
Christian Century, April 29, 1987, p. 403.
3
Lloyd H. Steffen, op.cit.
4 Ibid.
5 http://www.amazon.com/Where-God-Happens-Discovering-Another/dp/1590302311
6 T Merton, The seven storey mountain, fiftieth anniversary
edition, Harcout Brace and co., 1999, 81.
7 Ibid.
8 Merton, op.cit 81-82.
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