The Pharisee and the Tax Collector

Luke 18:9-14

In June 2006 I was asked to visit a village outside of Ouarzazate to check out a proposed project to start schools in rural areas. They had requested funding from a group in the US and that group wanted me to visit the project and report back to them. So I flew with a friend into Ouarzazate and was picked up in a 4X4. We drove for two to three hours over rough roads and dry river beds to get to this Berber village. (We went to a second, nearby, Berber village and were told we were the first foreigners to ever enter this village. I am not sure that is true but this was quite remote.)

When we entered the village, we were taken to a building with a rectangular room that had two small tables, carpets on the floor and just a few cushions. As a guest I was, of course, given several of the cushions to sit on. In the room there were about a dozen boys who would benefit from the school, eight of the men from the village and the local imam. Although the school insisted there be equal numbers of boys and girls in the school, only the boys were present.

I wanted to hear their stories and tried getting information but was not getting anywhere so I decided to tell the story of the ungrateful tiger. I had just told this story as part of the sermon the previous Sunday so it was fresh in my mind. I talked in French and the man who drove us to the village translated into Berber.

Let me give a quick summary of the story. A village in India was being bothered by tigers so they dug some deep holes, covered them with palm branches, and waited to catch the tigers. A young boy came to the village to visit his uncle and heard a tiger growling and came to see what was going on. The tiger told him he had fallen in the hole and if he did not get out his wife and children would suffer. The boy felt sorry for the tiger and put a branch down into the hole so the tiger could climb out.

Then the tiger announced he was going to eat the boy. The boy protested that he had been kind to the tiger so why should he eat him and the tiger responded that this is what tigers do, they eat people. The boy suggested they ask someone what would be the fair thing to do and they went to talk to an ox. The ox said that men worked him hard and then cut him up and ate him so he thought the tiger should eat the boy.

The boy quickly suggested they ask someone else and asked a tree. The tree said men chopped him down and burned him so he thought it was fair for the tiger to eat the boy.

Just then the boy saw a rabbit and suggested they ask him. The rabbit said he needed to see the situation as it had been so he could make a wise decision. They went back to the hole. The rabbit asked where the tiger had been and the tiger climbed into the pit. The rabbit asked where the branch had been and the boy pulled up the branch.

Now with the tiger in the pit and the boy free from the tiger, the rabbit said the tiger should have been grateful and the boy went to the village to see his uncle.

Telling that story was the most amazing experience. As the story was told and then translated into Berber, I looked around and everyone was leaning forward, listening and eager to hear what happened next. When I said the tiger and the boy asked Mr. Cow for his advice, everyone burst into laughter. I have never heard a story listened to so intently.

Rural Morocco is an oral culture where stories are king and telling that story in this cultural setting helped me see how the stories of Jesus were received.

We are beginning a series of eleven sermons on the parables of Jesus and here at the beginning, I want to help us understand how to hear these parables.

The Adult Sunday School class has been listening to Gordon Fee lecture about how to read the Bible and just recently he talked about how to read the parables. Fee said that a good parable is like a good joke. A joke has a story that is told with points of reference and then at the end there is a punch line, something that is completely unexpected and if you have understood the points of reference, the punch line makes you laugh. But if you miss the points of reference, the punch line is not funny at all. And when I explain the points of reference, you may say, “Oh, I see,” but you will not laugh.

Let me illustrate with this joke:
Pablo Picasso surprised a burglar at work in his studio. The burglar got away, but Picasso told the police he could do a rough sketch of what he looked like. On the basis of his drawing, the police arrested a mother superior, a washing machine, and the Eiffel tower.

Did you laugh? If not, why not? It really is a good joke.

What are the points of reference in this joke? Pablo Picasso is the main point of reference and if you do not know who he is, the joke will not mean anything to you. You have to know that Pablo Picasso is a famous artist but even that is not enough. You have to know that a portrait of someone by Picasso is likely to have eyes and other body parts where they do not belong and there may be extra body parts in the picture. So a rough sketch of the burglar would not show any resemblance at all to the burglar. This leads to the punch line that on the basis of his drawing, they arrested a nun, a washing machine and the Eiffel tower. Each of these looked as much like his drawing as the burglar. The joke pokes fun at the art style of Picasso.

If you know the points of reference of a joke, you will laugh when the punch line is delivered. But if you do not know the points of reference, who Pablo Picasso is or what kind of art he made, then that has to be explained and at the end you will say, “Oh, I see,” but you will not laugh. The joke will not be funny.

The same is true with the parables. Because we do not live in the culture of Palestine at the time of Jesus, we miss the points of reference and they need to be explained to us. And when they are, we understand the punch line at the end and say, “Oh, I see,” but we miss the power of the parable. We do not experience the parable the way Jesus’ hearers did or like the men and boys in the village outside of Ouarzazate experienced the story of the ungrateful tiger.

Let me illustrate this with the parable of the Good Samaritan. In this parable the reference points are the man who is beaten and robbed, the priest and the Levite who pass by and the Samaritan who stops to help. The punch line is that the Samaritan is the one of the three who stopped to help him. In order to get the punch line, you have to know that the priest and the Levite were considered holy and righteous men. These were men you would be proud to have as sons and fathers. But the Samaritan was despised. When religious Jews crossed through Samaria to come to Jerusalem, when they stepped over the border from Samaria into Israel, they wiped the dust off their feet as rejection of this nation that had defiled itself.

When Jesus told this parable, you could hear the sounds of disapproval when the priest and the Levite passed by. They did not do what they should have done. But when Jesus said the Samaritan stopped to help, there was a loud gasp of astonishment and disapproval. I don’t think people were pleased when they heard Jesus tell this parable. This was a highly provocative story.

How do we interpret the parables? A parable is not an allegory in which each part of the story means something else. Augustine in the third century interpreted the parable of the Good Samaritan as an allegory in which every detail was given a spiritual meaning. The man was Adam, who lost his immortality when he was beaten up by the robbers, who represent the devil and his angels. The Samaritan represents Christ, who took the man to the inn, which represents the church. Even the two coins represent this life and the life to come, and the innkeeper is Paul.

But the point of the parable was to address the question the expert in the law asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” Augustine turned the parable into a presentation of the Gospel, including Paul who was not a part of the church when Jesus told the parable.

When Jesus told his parables, he told them in order to make a point. The story itself had a beginning and an end and a plot, but the details of the story were not making any particular point. The punch line, the unexpected twist at the end of the parable was the point. The details of the story were simply points of reference to set up the story for the unexpected ending and it is the ending that is the point of the parable.

As we preach through the parables we will try to make clear the points of reference that set up the punch line at the end. And then we will try to help us understand what the point of the parable is. Why did Jesus tell this parable to these people at this particular point in time. That context tells us what the point of the parable is.

We may not hear the parables the way those who heard Jesus tell the parable did, but we will try to come as close to that experience as we can.

With this as an introduction, listen to the parable for this morning.

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable:  10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.  11 The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector.  12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’
13 “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
14 “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

“To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable:” Luke sets the context for this parable so we know that the point of this parable is going to be about who is righteous.

What are the points of reference in this parable? Who are the players in this story?

In order of appearance, the Pharisee comes first. The Pharisees were a small, powerful religious sect whose primary concern was keeping the law in all its detail. When we hear the word “Pharisee” we hear “the bad guys – the ones who were against Jesus”. But these were not bad guys. To the people listening to Jesus, Pharisees were especially devout, godly people.

If your son was a Pharisee, you never had to hang your head when discussing your child with other parents. You were honored because your son was highly educated, and in a highly honored position. To the hearers of this parable of Jesus, the Pharisee was the good guy.

Next in this parable comes the tax collector. No hearer of this parable viewed this person as the good guy. To Jesus’ hearers, the tax collector was as well liked as a robber or murderer. Tax collectors were thought to be traitors because they collaborated with the Roman authorities in order to become wealthy. Only the tax collector knew the tax rate required by Rome so he could charge as much as he was able to collect and keep the excess.

When you hear Pharisee, think respectable, honorable, decent, honest, educated, admirable.

When you hear tax collector, think of the French collaborators who cooperated with the Nazis during WWII. After the war, the heads of the women who had cooperated with the Nazis were shaved to make public their shame in having betrayed their country.

In my Norwegian heritage, there is a relative, Gulbrand Lunde, who was Propaganda Minister and second in command of Quisling’s WWII Government in Norway.  He was despised by his fellow Norwegians because of his cooperation with the Nazis and in November 1942 when they heard of his death they rejoiced in the news. His car was on a ferry when it slipped into the fiord they were crossing. The suspicion was that the chauffeur released the parking brake to allow the car to slide into the fjord. The skipper of the ferry dove down twice to the car and the jest was that the ferryboat skipper had made those dives to be sure the car doors were locked.

When you think of tax collector, think of the WWII French collaborators, think of Gulbrand Lunde. The tax collectors were collaborators with the Romans and took advantage of their fellow Jews to become rich. They were despised by their fellow Jews.

Now we come to the scene that Jesus paints in his parable.

Two times each day, the priests at the temple offered a lamb as a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the people. At these services, people would gather to join in the liturgy and to pray.

Jesus says in the parable that the tax collector stood at a distance. From this, we can infer that the Pharisee stood as close as possible to the Most Holy Place in the temple because he assumed the right to draw near to the presence of God.

This Pharisee was a man who knew that he was a good person. He was confident of his own righteousness.

In the Talmud, a collection of interpretation and commentary of the Mosaic and rabbinic law, one rabbi was reported to have been so confident of his own righteousness that were only a hundred saved from judgement, he and his son would be among that number; if only two, then he felt that it would be he and his son who would be saved.

This Pharisee has that confidence. As a good person and as a Pharisee, he feels it his responsibility to instruct others through his prayer. Because of his moral superiority, he believes that others will benefit from his prayer and example.

‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector.  12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

We find this a strange prayer. Even if some of us might think like that, we would never say so in public and yet this was not an untypical prayer for a holy man in the time of Jesus. As I said, he views it as his responsibility to teach others through his prayer and to hold himself up as an example. He does what he considers to be the right thing to do.

The Pharisee prays – instructs, “I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.”

Jews were required to fast once a year, on the Day of Atonement. Pharisees fasted every Monday and Thursday. All Jews were required to give a tithe of their produce but Pharisees tithed even things that were not required. From all appearances, this Pharisee is a commendable person. The performance of his religious duties, at least from the outside, is exemplary.

To the hearers of this parable of Jesus, this Pharisee was a wonderful man. How fortunate the temple was to have him present to add to the holiness of the daily sacrifice.

Now we come to the tax collector. He stood at a distance, too ashamed to be among them. In fact, he was probably aware that he was not welcome in this gathering. He did not lift his eyes to the heavens, but beat his breast. This was an uncommon action for a Middle Eastern man and indicated great anguish was being experienced. He pleads with God that this atoning sacrifice of a lamb at the temple might apply to him. He realizes he has no hope for himself. He has no pretense. He knows who he is, what he does, and against all hope, pleads for mercy.

“God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

As I said, every parable of Jesus has a punch line, a twist, something unexpected. Here is the twist in this one. The Pharisee is the bad guy and the tax collector is the good guy. Jesus’ hearers listened in disbelief as Jesus said,
“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

People were gathered in the temple because they knew they were separated from God by their sin. The priest sacrificed a lamb to pay the price of death for their sins. The prayer of the people was to participate in the death of the lamb so their sins would be absolved and they would be made right with God. They would be righteous in the eyes of God.

The message of the parable is clear. It is not external religious acts that make a person righteous. The Pharisee, who was a model of excellent religious behavior, failed in his prayer to be made right with God. It was the tax collector, miserable sinner that he was, who was made right with God, because of his humble plea for mercy. It is when we realize that we have no hope apart from God’s grace and throw ourselves on his mercy, that we are made right with God.

Now here is the problem for us. When we come to Christ, we have an awareness of our sinfulness. We come to Christ and stand on the side of the tax collector. We may have led lives of obvious sin: drunkenness, drug abuse, improper sexual relations, theft and deceit. Or we may have led lives that on a relative scale, were pure. In either case, when we become
Christians, we have a sense that we are not what we should be, we are less than perfect, we are less than righteous, we stand on the side of the tax collector.

But then, as time passes, we read our Bible and pray, help the poor, teach Sunday School and sing in the choir. We no longer get drunk and have extra-marital affairs. We become distanced from our sinful past, from a time when we were aware of our sin. We move, over time, to the side of the Pharisee. We become respectable people. When we come to a new church, people are delighted to see us come. We are the kind of people that society needs more of. We are the decent, God-fearing, honest people the world needs.

We hear of a person who has an adulterous relationship and we shudder. “What a terrible person to do that.” We see a drunk by the side of the road and think, “What a mess! What’s wrong with that person?”

We differentiate between people: good Christian people and sinners. We move, over time, to the viewpoint of the people in the church in Ohio where I was a pastor who did not think our church was the right place for my huntin’, fishin’, woman chasing, beer drinking, good old boy neighbors.

And so we begin to pray the prayer of the Pharisee.

‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector.  12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

Matthew, the write of the gospel according to Matthew, was a tax collector and when Jesus called him to come follow him, he invited Jesus and his disciples to a meal at his home. (Matthew 9:10–13)
And as Jesus reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples. 11 And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” 12 But when he heard it, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. 13 Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”

When you stand with the Pharisee and look down on the sinners around you, there is no place for you in the kingdom of heaven. You really do not need Jesus. He may be an inspirational figure, but you don’t need his help. You think you will be able to make it into heaven on your own. You think heaven will welcome you and be glad to have such a wonderful person enter in.

It is sinners who realize that they need help and have no hope apart from Jesus.

Awareness of sin moves me from identifying with the Pharisee to identifying with the tax collector.

How much sin do you need to be a sinner in need of God’s mercy and grace?

Ted Bundy was a serial rapist and murderer in the United States. He was finally caught, put on trial and sentenced to death. While in jail, awaiting his death, he became a Christian and was interviewed by James Dobson, a well-known American psychologist who had a very popular Christian radio program. So here’s the question, who needed Jesus’ forgiveness more, Ted Bundy or you? Did Jesus need to die a lot on the cross for Ted Bundy and only a little for you?

Perhaps you have always been sexually responsible, waiting for marriage to have a sexual relationship, and when married you have been faithful to your spouse. You have been a loving and caring husband or wife. On the other hand the world is full of those who are sexually promiscuous before and after marriage. Who needs Jesus more, you or the sexually irresponsible?

Perhaps you have never taken anything that was not yours. When you find a wallet, you search for its owner. On the other hand there are robbers who search for opportunities to take something from your car or home. Who needs Jesus more, you or the robbers?

Perhaps you have been a responsible citizen and worked hard at school, worked hard to pay your taxes. On the other hand there are those who did not study at school, dropped out, became addicted to drugs and alcohol and now live in your neighborhood depending on handouts to survive. Who needs Jesus more, you or the town drunk?

I tell you this morning, although you may be unaware of this truth, that you are in as much need as any person in the world of the cross of Jesus. As decent and respectable and honest as you are, you have no hope of eternal life apart from the death of Jesus.

The only reason you think of yourself as being such a decent, respectable person is that you have so little competition. Relative to those in this world, you are a decent, respectable person. But when you come into the presence of God, all your efforts to be respectable will be insignificant. Others will not be the benchmark against which you will be measured. You will be measured against the perfection of Jesus and nothing short of his perfection will be adequate. You, the Pharisee, and the Tax Collector desperately need Jesus.

What can you do if you have a problem seeing yourself as a sinner? Should you get a list of sins and study them so you can be more familiar with them? The Pharisee was an expert on sin. He knew all about sin. But his problem is he did not know God.

So if you do not see yourself as a sinner, desperately in need of being saved by Jesus, this is what you need to do. Grow in your relationship with God; read your Bible; study the Bible with a small group; come to church prepared to worship and open yourself to the work of God in your life.

If you do not see yourself as a sinner, the problem is that you have a far too small view of who Jesus is.

Take a look sometime at how the Apostle Paul evolved in his understanding of who he was. In the first of his letters, Galatians, he identifies himself as (Galatians 1:1)
an apostle—not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead—

He began with a measure of confidence and even a bit of arrogance but move toward the end of his life and in 1 Timothy 1:15–16 he writes:
The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.

Paul no longer presented himself as an apostle who was taught directly by the risen Jesus; he presented himself as a sinner desperately in need of being saved by Jesus. What made the difference? Paul had grown in his experience of God and as he saw more clearly who Jesus was, he saw himself more clearly as well.

When we judge others, we are comparing ourselves to them, but we have the wrong benchmark. To find out who we truly are, we need to compare ourselves to Jesus, not to each other.

Awareness of sin is a gift from God because it makes us aware of how desperately we need him. We cling to Jesus with gratitude at being saved. We are filled with joy because in his mercy and grace he forgives our sin and offers us new life in him. As John Calvin said, Know God and you will know yourself.