Sermons from Mission Hills UCC San Diego, California Rev. Dr. David Bahr [email protected] October 23, 2022 “I Am Them” Luke 18: 9-14 –The Message He told his next story to some who were complacently pleased with themselves over their moral performance and looked down their noses at the common people: “Two men went up to the Temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax man. The Pharisee posed and prayed like this: ‘Oh, God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, crooks, adulterers, or, heaven forbid, like this tax man. I fast twice a week and tithe on all my income.’ 13 “Meanwhile the tax man, slumped in the shadows, his face in his hands, not daring to look up, said, ‘God, give mercy. Forgive me, a sinner.’” 14 Jesus commented, “This tax man, not the other, went home made right with God. If you walk around with your nose in the air, you’re going to end up flat on your face, but if you’re content to be simply yourself, you will become more than yourself.” At least the Pharisee didn’t say it to his face – “Thank God I’m not like you.” But perhaps that’s only because he was too busy praising himself. “God, you’re so lucky to have me!” Unlike most parables, this one is straightforward, easy to understand. “Don’t be like the Pharisee.” Full of himself. Arrogant. Self-righteous. “Be more like the tax collector.” Repentant. Humble. Self-effacing. Easy peezy. Amen. Thanks for coming today. But, it’s a parable, so it can’t be that easy. I like how Eugene Peterson translated the last line: “If you walk around with your nose in the air, you’re going to end up flat on your face.” Here’s a more traditional translation: “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.” You might recognize that this sounds very much like Mary’s Magnificat, the song she sang while Jesus was still in her womb. With his birth, she sang, “the humble are lifted high and those on their thrones are toppled.” Mary sang of her baby that with his birth, “God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.”[1] This story is that song in practice. A reversal of fortune. A reversal of expectations. Because one would expect the Pharisee to be the good guy and the tax collector to be bad. Well, almost. Pharisees are complicated. In our ears, we often hear the word Pharisee and associate it with negative connotations. The original audience wouldn’t have necessarily felt that way. Yes, Pharisees were often the foils of Jesus who fuss and complain and condemn… in ways that help Jesus make his point. But Pharisees were also part of his movement, even the early church. We have stories of how they have invited Jesus to dinner, Pharisees who came to ask sincere questions, some even warned Jesus to protect himself from Herod. Perhaps surprisingly, Marjorie Proctor-Smith argues that “Pharisees held to a liberal interpretation of Scripture, the aim of which was to make observance of Torah available to all.”[2] Jesus too tried to make their shared religion more accessible to everyone. We may be conditioned to think of Pharisees as nitpicking hypocrites more concerned about the letter of the law than the spirit. But Amy-Jill Levine, a Jewish scholar of Christian scripture, says that negative views of the Pharisees are often used as anti-Semitic tropes.[3] Law vs. grace. Pharisees are the caretakers of a beloved tradition yet remarkably open to new ideas. And so, to remember, while this particular Pharisee is acting arrogantly, the audience wouldn’t have immediately concluded that meant all Pharisees. They may have been quite surprised by that characterization. On the other hand, hearing the words “tax collector” would have caused a justifiably immediate, visceral reaction. No surprise there. These are not IRS agents helping us citizens follow the law to provide mutual benefits to the people of our country. Elizabeth Johnson describes ancient Palestinian tax collectors as “franchisees of a corrupt and byzantine system that gouges the poor and enriches the wealthy.” Well, maybe that isn’t so different than current tax policy, but I digress. Tax collectors were seen as collaborators with the violent oppressors of their own people. Rome allowed them to take some portion for themselves as compensation but many took much more than that. In next week’s story of Zacchaeus, he admits he defrauded people and promised to pay it back four-fold. There is no mention of that in this parable. Again, for the original audience: Pharisees were the good guys. Tax collectors were the bad guys. But, shockingly, Jesus praises the tax collector. It doesn’t shock us like it would have them. Just like no one back then would have put the words “good” and “Samaritan” in the same sentence. There was no such thing as a “good” Samaritan. We can’t fully appreciate reversals of expectations like these: Be like the tax collector who pleaded for mercy and not prideful like that arrogant, full of himself, Pharisee. Easy peezy. Amen. Thanks for coming today. But if that’s the only message we take from this parable, we’ve missed the mark because that’s the same thing as saying, “Thank God I’m not like those other people.” In fact, if you take it too far, soon we’re trying to be humble enough to take pride in our amazing accomplishment. “God, you’re so lucky to have someone as humble as me.” The reward for which will be… humble pie. There’s an important distinction between humility and humiliation. And some people don’t need extra encouragement to be humble. “Just like the self-righteous Pharisee is not a model for living, neither is a permanent spiritual posture of self-deprecation,” imposed by either ourselves or upon us by others. “The self-deprecating penitence of the tax collector is not to become our permanent spiritual posture.”[4] William Muehl wrote about his fear of preaching that is dominated by a "gospel of guilt." He said, “if this prayer was the only one the tax collector ever recited for the rest of his life, if a sense of unworthiness invaded and dominated all his thoughts and self-perception for the rest of his life, then he is the last person with whom we would want to identify. There comes a time when we need to trust that we are forgiven and accept divine grace to move beyond regret, remorse, and acknowledgment of our sins. Not until then will we be any good for anyone else.” We can’t be a blessing for others if we don’t recognize we are blessed by virtue of being a beloved child of God. I hope the tax collector left the Temple joyfully, as joyful as any of the fully healed lepers would have been as they danced away with their freedom. It’s telling that Jesus specifically addressed this parable to those who were “complacently pleased with their moral performance.” This group needed to get their minds right and change their arrogance to humility. But, “neither can we remain habitually mired in a sense of worthlessness.” God made you to be more than that. As I wrestled with this parable, I realized the challenge, no matter whether we identify as Pharisee or tax collector, “I am Them.” In the end, we are each other. In this incredibly divided country, we can’t say “thank God I’m not like those other people” because as soon as we do, we are exactly “those people.” We’re saying it about ourselves. May God have mercy for every time any of us have done exactly that. [1] Luke 1:51 [2] Marjorie Proctor-Smith, Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 4, Westminster John Knox, 2010, page 213-216 [3] Amy-Jill Levine, The Short Stories of Jesus, HarperOne, 2014, Chapter 6 [4] Alyce McKenzie, patheos.com, “The Power of Persistence” 2013
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