The Pharisee and the Tax Collector: Last after Trinity

Last after Trinity 2019

Psalm 84, Luke 18.9-14

A Pharisee and a Tax Collector walk into a Temple…

It does sound a bit like the beginning of a joke, and maybe Jesus meant it to. There’s something wonderfully over the top about his description of these two men. Jesus is definitely hamming it up in his description of the Pharisee’s pomposity and the Tax Collector’s humility. This is a tiny satire, just over a hundred words long, but with a world of meaning in it. 

Who are these people? Jesus’ first audience would have known very well, but we might not. 

The Pharisees, who often feature in the Gospels, were one of the main religious groups of Jesus’ time, one of many factions within Judaism fighting for their version of the true faith.  They were known for being very serious about the religious law. They saw it as a gift from God to help them live well. They delighted in it, debated it, argued about it zealously.   

But zeal about anything can easily slide into legalism and puritanism, and some of the Pharisees – not all, but some – seem to have behaved like this. They were offended by what they saw as Jesus’ lax observance of the law, as he welcomed all comers and accepted people as they were. They’re often treated as stock villains by the Gospel writers, which really isn’t fair, because we are all capable of behaving like this.

The Pharisee Jesus describes in his little story is, on the face of it, a good man. If we take him at his word - and I think we are meant to - he isn’t a thief, a rogue or an adulterer.  He takes pains to establish publicly  here that he isn’t a tax collector either. They were despised for very good reason. They collected taxes on behalf of the Romans, to fund their occupation. They were seen as collaborators, traitors, and they often lined their own pockets at the expense of their own people, making them pay for their own oppression. When the Pharisee in Jesus’ story says that he is not like one of these, most right-thinking people would have nodded in approval.  

But however good he looks superficially, there are hints in the story that he isn’t going to turn out to be the hero. He stands by himself – making sure that everyone can see and hear him – but there’s no real conversation with God happening. He might as well be talking to himself.  It’s the tax-collector, Jesus says, who “went down to his home justified”, not this apparently pious Pharisee. ‘Justified’ in the Biblical context, means ‘put right’, sorted out. The tax collector, for all his sins – and they probably were many – goes home having done the business with God that he needed to do. The Pharisee, though, goes home exactly the same as he came in. Nothing has changed in his heart, so nothing will change in his life, because he doesn’t think there is anything to change, or if he does, he isn’t willing to acknowledge it, to others or to himself. God can’t do anything with him, because he won’t admit that he needs help. If we don’t acknowledge our need, how can God meet it? If we don’t accept that we need to change, how can God change us? There’s a lovely promise in the book of Revelation that God will “wipe every tear from our eyes”. John Donne, the 17th century poet and preacher once commented in a sermon on it  “then what shall God do with that eye that hath never wept?” If we deny our need for help and consolation, we miss out of the joy of that beautiful moment, he says.

The Pharisee thinks he’s got his life all sorted out – or he wants others to think that. What can God possibly need to do for him? God has been made redundant! But the tax collector, knows that he needs God. He knows that he can’t do this whole messy business of living on his own and he’s not pretending that he can. He comes to God because he has to, and, as a result, he is the one who goes home set right, with his tears wiped away, knowing he is loved. 

The Psalm we heard this morning, Psalm 84, is thought to have been sung by Jewish pilgrims on their way to the Temple in Jerusalem for one of the big festivals there.  Zion is another name for Jerusalem. As they slogged along the path in the scorching heat, they sang to remind themselves of why they were making this journey. They were going to the place which was, for them, their true home. “How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts! My soul longs, indeed it faints, for the courts of the Lord.” Even the birds were welcome to make their nests there! 

It wasn’t just the physical beauty of the place which drew them. They expected to meet God there. Of course, God could be encountered anywhere, but this, for them was his dwelling place, the focus of their faith. The Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD and there is a mosque on the site now, but Jewish people still go to its last remnant, the Western Wall, to pray, and they do so for the same reason as their ancestors. It’s the symbol of their relationship with God, a reminder of his presence with them wherever they are. 

For Christians, it’s Jesus who embodies God, who is his Temple, his presence with us. We encounter him in the words of the Bible, in the bread and wine of the Eucharist, in one another, and in those we are called to serve and love. The Psalm invites us to look on those places with the same delight those Jewish pilgrims expressed.

But however we meet God, this parable tells us is that if it’s going to change us, it has to be an honest meeting.  We may seek God in an ancient sacred site, an ordinary parish church, at home, at work, out shopping, on the weary commute on the train, in a conversation with a friend, or even a confrontation with an enemy conducted with integrity. The important thing is that we are ready and willing to do the business that needs to be done with him, to hear his word of comfort or challenge, or welcome, or guidance, to take it in and let it change us, not to try to hide, to pretend that all is right, to justify ourselves – we’ve seen plenty of that from politicians in recent weeks, but it’s something we are all capable of. 

 “Happy are those in whose hearts are the highways to Zion”, says the Psalm.  “Happy are you” in other words, “if you have, deep within you, well-trodden paths, familiar routes that lead you into God’s presence”. Highways aren’t made by accident. They take work, and time and intention. There’s likely to be mess and disruption too. Our pathways to God are no different. Sometimes God has to dig around in us, blast away the obstacles, move tons of spiritual earth - and we need to let him, opening our ears and our hearts to him so he can change us. 

A Pharisee and a tax collector walk into a temple… and so can we, if we want to, into the place where we meet the living God. But will we go home, like the Pharisee, the same people we were when we came in, or will we go home justified, changed, even just a little, like the tax collector?  That depends on us.

Amen