Sermon — October 23, 2022
The Rev. Greg Johnston
I don’t know if you realize this, but if you’re sitting here in church on a beautiful Sunday morning in October, you’re probably more like a Pharisee than a tax collector.
I’m not trying to insult you. I’m not talking about this Pharisee or this tax collector. I’m not saying you’re prideful or arrogant. It’s just that you’re probably exactly the kind of person that a Pharisee in general would be. “Pharisees” have gotten a very bad rap in Christianity. In some circles, “Pharisee” has become a synonym for a self-righteous, hypocritical, judgmental person. But that’s completely missing the point of what Jesus is saying.
There’s nothing wrong with Pharisees. The Pharisees were a movement of reformers, a group calling people to return to a genuine and heartfelt practice of their religion. They were, for the most part, salt-of-the-earth people, craftspeople and workers trying to live their lives according to God’s will. While the aristocratic Sadducees were more concerned with the priestly intricacies of Temple ritual, the humbler Pharisees focused their attention on personal religious study and how to live in a holy way in your own home. “Pharisee” was not a dirty word. It was the name of a genuinely popular and quite beautiful religious movement. Jesus uses Pharisees in his stories not because they were notoriously bad, but because they were notoriously good. (The “tax collector,” on the other hand, was really a troubling figure. The tax collector’s job was to fund the Roman Empire by extorting money from his own people, and to line his own pockets by adding a premium on top. When you hear “tax collector,” don’t like “IRS agent with a pocket protector.” Think of the Sherriff of Nottingham.)
So when it’s the tax collector and not the Pharisee who “goes down to his home justified,” you’re supposed to be surprised. It would normally be the other way around.
This is why I say that we’re all probably more like the Pharisee than the tax collector. Not because I think we’re condescending or rude, but because I think we’re generally upstanding people, doing our best to live good lives.
But I’ll admit that some of us, sometimes, are like the Pharisee in this particular story, as well. Maybe you’ve never quite said these things in prayer exactly, certainly not standing in the Temple, but I suspect some of you have had the occasional thought: “Thank God that I’m not like other people.” (It’s okay to admit it—I stand before you confessing that I’ve thought this very thing myself.)
Maybe it’s about religious things, like the Pharisee’s prayer. “Thank God that I’m not like those Sunday-morning layabouts and those Christmas-and-Easter Christians.” I’m doing my part to support the church. “I come to church twice a week—or at least twice a month.” “I give”—and here I have to beg forgiveness from our stewardship chair for this sermon—“I give a tenth of all my income.” Thank God that I’m not like other people. (Or maybe for you the religious one is a little different: “Thank God I’m not like those other Christians…”)
Maybe it’s about family things. “Thank God that I’m not like my husband (partner, housemate). I cook dinner every night. I take out all the trash. I’m the only one who even knows where the toilet brush is.” Thank God that I’m not like other people.
Or maybe “Thank God I’m not like my coworkers, or we’d never get anything done.” “Thank God I’m not like my teammates, who’ve been slacking off all season.” “Thank God I’m not like that person next to me on the airplane who’s dressed head to toe in a leopard-print sweatsuit.” Thank God I’m not like other people.
And it’s tempting, right, to take this text and run with it, to say, “Don’t be like the Pharisee; be like the tax collector. Don’t puff yourself up for your own piety or your own achievements. Don’t put other people down because they’re not as good as you.” But in a funny way, our very desire not to be the Pharisee turns our words into a paraphrase of the Pharisee’s own prayer: “Thank God that we’re not like that Pharisee, who proudly boasts of his own achievements and spends his time judging other people!” It’s surprising how easy it is to exalt yourself for how humble you are.
So I want to ask a question instead: Who do you think the Pharisee is trying to convince with this prayer?
The Pharisee is good, and imperfect. God knows that he is good, and imperfect. But it seems like the Pharisee has a hard time really accepting his own goodness, and he certainly has a hard time admitting his imperfection. He can only prove his goodness, it seems, by repeating over and over that it’s different from those people’s badness. And if his goodness is defined by someone else’s badness, then he can’t admit that he himself has any flaws, or he would be like them. And you can feel his spiritual muscles straining as he tries to hold these two aspects of himself as far apart as he possibly can—to prove to himself that he is good, and to hide from God that he’s imperfect, too.
And this is what’s so refreshing about the tax collector’s prayer. He is not the “good guy” of this story. He knows his work is wrong. He knows the life he’s living is not as just or as ethical as it could be. The only thing he’s got going for him is his self-knowledge, that is, that he knows exactly how imperfect he is. And that self-knowledge has freed him from the anxiety of comparison, from the need to justify himself by how good he is relative to someone else, rather than just as he is.
So what about you? You are, like the Pharisee, like the tax collector, good and imperfect. What would it feel like to know that you are good as yourself? What does it feel like to have to prove that you are better than someone else? What would it feel like to know that God will love you, however imperfect you are? That while God wants you to be good, more than anything else God wants to set you free, so that you, too, can go home justified—not by your own achievements in comparison to anyone else’s, but by God’s eternal and unconditional love for you.