Readings:
Hosea 5:15-6:6; Psalm 51; Luke 18:9-14

‘What I want is love, not sacrifice; knowledge of God, not holocausts.‘
Hosea 6:6

The Pharisee stood there and said this prayer to himself, ‘I thank you, God, that I am not grasping, unjust, adulterous like the rest of mankind, and particularly that I am not like this tax collector here. I fast twice a week: I pay tithes on all I get.’ The tax collector stood some distance away, not daring even to raise his eyes to heaven; but he beat his breast and said, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner. This man, I tell you, went home again at rights with God: the other did not. Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the humble will be exalted.
Luke 18:11-14

It is very natural to feel right with ourselves if we have acted justly, or generously, if we have prayed, or if we have fasted, so Jesus cannot be condemning us for experiencing the inner peace which comes of right action.

Tax collectors were employed to collect taxes on behalf of the Romans, a profitable occupation for the tax collectors, but it earned them the contempt of their own people. The tax collector of the parable may well have been guilty of all those sins which the Pharisee attributed to the rest of mankind, was probably also a non-practising Jew, neither paying taxes nor fasting. The Pharisee is morally superior and, in religious practice, religiously superior to the tax collector, so what is wrong with his acknowledging this superiority and thanking God for it? We need to feel this question for ourselves and see what answer we give.

The parable is introduced, ‘Jesus spoke the following parable to some people who prided themselves on being virtuous and despised everyone else. What Jesus is condemning is the Pharisee’s sense of superiority, which leads him to despise the tax collector.

A few verses before this parable, Luke gives the story of the rich young man who addresses Jesus, ‘Good Master’, to which Jesus replies, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.’ The Pharisee’s failure, in spite of all his correct behaviour and faithful observance, is that he attributes his virtue to himself, so that he considers himself author and owner of his own virtue, so lamentably lacking in the tax collector. Consequently, the Pharisee will feel fully justified in his contempt for the tax collector. In Jesus’ thinking, this is a far greater sin than those which the Pharisee attributes to the tax collector and to the rest of mankind.

The tax collector is aware of his own failure. He makes no appeal to any good he may have done, makes no attempt to justify himself, but abandons himself to the mercy of God. He knows ‘no one is good but God alone.’ ‘This man,’ Jesus said, ‘went home at rights with God; the other did not.’

This is a profoundly important parable, and the more religious we are, the more we need to ponder it.

God alone is author of any good I may have done, or may ever do. God’s ways are not our ways, his judgments are not our judgments. God may well be much closer to the person considered a moral reprobate, and who is not churchgoing, than he is to the person who appears to be a model of rectitude and pillar of the Church.

It is not only the tax collector whom the Pharisee will despise. He will also despise and try to disown those aspects of himself which are akin to those of the tax collector. As he considers himself the author of all his own virtue and goodness, therefore, when confronted with his own darkness, he will either try to deny it, or be tempted to despair.

From this parable it seems that what matters to God is not so much our achievements and observances, but the attitude of the sheepdog part of ourselves, that we should turn to him in the depths of ourselves, acknowledge that he alone is good, and so pray that he may be God to us and through us.

Prayer
Save us, Lord, from the idol of self-righteousness. Help us to know you, source of all goodness, and to trust always in your mercy for us all. We ask you this through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Amen.