Our Bible reading today follows right after the
passage we read last week. And as we continue our sermon series on Humor
in the Bible. Jesus is kind of getting
on a roll. He just told a story about a widow and an unjust judge. Now, Jesus tells another story. This one is about a Pharisee and a tax
collector.
This is one where the humor is a little more obvious, at
least if we can put ourselves into the story. You know, one of the many
incredible things about Jesus is how he was able to put such instantly
recognizable characters into his stories. Remember last week, I told you
that when Jesus described the judge it instantly brought to mind a judge I’d
had dealings with. It’s the same thing
here. The people listening to Jesus would immediately recognize the
characters in this story. In fact, they
probably thought of specific people they knew when they heard this story.
Jesus sets up the story, and he keeps it simple. In
fact, it’s such a simple, well-crafted story that I wonder if Jesus might have
worked it out ahead of time and was just waiting for a chance to use it.
There are only two characters. We
have a Pharisee, and we have a tax collector.
That’s it. No extraneous
characters to muddle the story. And we
have only one location. The temple.
Let’s start with the Pharisee. The Pharisees were the
leaders of the most powerful religious group in Jerusalem at the time.
People respected them for that.
That respect was real--there was nothing phony or artificial about it.
The Pharisees were considered to be Very Religious People. But at the same time, people knew that the
Pharisees could be pretty arrogant and full of themselves sometimes. Not,
probably, to the extent Jesus suggests here, but still. They had that attitude about them that they
thought they were better than everyone else.
So Jesus has this Pharisee go to the temple to pray.
And of course, as a Very Religious Person, the Pharisee addresses his
prayer to God. The prayer is addressed to God, and yet--the Pharisee’s
prayer is really all about himself. And he’s praying good and loud, to
make sure everyone can hear him. He may
technically be talking to God, but he’s clearly playing to his human audience,
too.
Jesus has the Pharisee going on and on and on about how
great he is. How he’s better than this person and that person and another
person. And as he does, I can just hear
Jesus’ audience start laughing. They’re going, yep, that’s a Pharisee,
all right. That’s exactly how they
are. They’d have been getting a good
laugh about this Pharisee Jesus was telling them about.
Then there’s the tax collector. The tax collectors
were almost universally disliked at that time. Not that tax collectors
are so popular now, but remember how the tax system worked back then. The
tax collector’s job was to send a certain amount of money to Rome. That was it.
How the tax collector got the money was his problem. He just had
to get it and send it to Rome.
And the thing was, the way the tax collector got paid for
his job was by collecting more money than he was required to send to Rome.
Anything he could collect over and above what he had to send in was his
to keep. So what we’re basically talking
about is legally authorized theft. The tax collector had an incentive to
collect as much money as he could, because that was what his income was based
on.
Now, I’m sure there were some tax collectors who were fair
and honest and just and they only taxed people enough so that they could get a
fair wage for their services. But there were enough who were not that it
ruined the reputation of all of them.
People may not always have liked the Pharisees, but they did respect
them as religious authorities. People neither liked nor respected the tax
collectors. They may have feared them,
but that was all.
So again, when Jesus starts talking about the tax
collector, an instant picture forms in people’s minds. And when Jesus has
the tax collector asking for mercy from God, people probably laughed
again. Not because they could imagine a
tax collector praying that way, but because they could not. Like any tax
collector would care about God. And like
God would give mercy to somebody like that anyway.
So people are laughing at both of these characters.
And they’re ready for the punch line.
And Jesus gives it to them. Jesus says it’s the tax collector,
rather than the Pharisee, who was justified before God.
And all of a sudden, the laughter stops. Everyone
goes, “Huh?” They look at each other,
puzzled. That was not the punch line anyone expected. They might, possibly, have expected the
Pharisee to get knocked down a peg or two. But they certainly did not
expect the tax collector to be the hero of the story. A tax collector? Getting forgiveness and honor before God?
Instead of a Pharisee? How does
that make any sense?
Jesus goes on to tell them the point. “All those who
exalt themselves will be humbled, and those humble themselves will be exalted.”
Once again, I’m struck by how many times the Bible talks about the sin of
arrogance. It’s all through the Old Testament.
It’s all through the New Testament, too.
I think the reason why is that it’s such an easy sin for us
to fall into. It’s so easy for us to start thinking we’re better than we
are. It’s easy for us to think we’re
better than others, too. And every time we do, we commit the sin of
arrogance.
Because here’s the other thing about how great Jesus was at
describing the characters in his stories. I said that we all can
recognize someone we know when we hear Jesus describe those characters, and
that’s true. But if we’re honest, if we’re really honest with ourselves,
we can also recognize ourselves.
Because the truth is that each one of us has some of both
of these characters within us. Each one of us has a little bit of the Pharisee
in us. We would never come out and say
it the way the Pharisee in Jesus’ story did, but we still have that in us.
We look at certain people--the people who are looked down upon in
society--and we say, well, I may not be perfect, but I’m a lot better than they
are. I go to church, at least sometimes.
I’m honest--more or less. I don’t
cheat people--well, not to any great extent, anyway. I’m not claiming to be perfect, but there are
a lot of people out there who are worse.
So overall, I think I’m probably pretty much okay.
It’s arrogance. We make excuses for ourselves.
We give ourselves a break for all the things we do wrong. We look
down on others, thinking they’re worse.
We convince ourselves that we’re better than we are, and we convince ourselves
we’re better than others. Arrogance.
But at the same time, each one of us has a little bit of
the tax collector in us, too. Deep down, we know that those excuses we
make for ourselves don’t really work. We
know that we’re not as good as we try to convince ourselves we are. We
know that, no matter how hard we might try to convince ourselves, we’re not
really any better than others, either.
And we know that, ultimately, it does not matter whether we’re better
than others, because God is not going to compare us to any others. God
sees each one of us, and sees in each of us a sinner, in need of forgiveness
and salvation. We know that we are the
tax collector, that we don’t even belong in God’s presence, and yet knowing
that we need to humbly ask God to have mercy on us for all of our sins.
If we’re really honest with
ourselves, we can see ourselves in both of the characters of this story.
So the question is, which one will we ultimately be? Will we be the Pharisee, convincing ourselves
that we’re better than others? Or will we be the tax collector, knowing
that we are sinners in need of forgiveness and mercy?
We cannot just answer that question today. We need to
answer it tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that, and every day of
our lives. Every day, we decide whether we’re the Pharisee or the tax
collector. We may not be conscious of
making the decision. But we make it just the same.
The Pharisee was convinced that he was better than others.
He even cited evidence to prove it.
But the tax collector knew that he was a sinner who did not even deserve
to be in the presence of God. All he could do was ask God for mercy. And God gave it to him. If you and I go to God and humbly ask for
mercy, God will give it to us, too. And then, like the tax collector,
we’ll find ourselves justified and exalted by God.
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