Luke 18:9-14
9Jesus also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: 10“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ 13But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ 14I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”
Flannery O’Connor, a southern Roman Catholic writer who died in 1964, wrote 31 short stories. She captures the movement of grace among some of the most grotesque of characters. In her story, Revelation, she presents Mrs. Turpin, a self-righteous, pompous Southern lady, filled with judgements about all the people surrounding her in a doctor’s waiting room. She looks upon the people around her with great condescension thinking of herself as superior to all of them. She masks her arrogance with Southern gentility.
Mary Grace, an overweight college student, can hardly tolerate Mrs. Turpin’s haughtiness. Mrs. Turpin considers Mary Grace to be white trash. Mary Grace’s seething anger continually grows until she explodes like a volcano, throws her book at Mrs. Turpin’s face then rushes over to choak her. The doctor, hearing the commotion, rushes into the waiting room, determines that Mary Grace is mentally disturbed, returns with a needle and sedates Mary Grace. As the sedative quiets Mary Grace, Mrs. Turpin demands of her: “What you got to say to me?” Mary Grace tells her: “Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog.”
Overwhelmed, Mrs. Turpin returns home with her husband. They both lay down on their bed to recover from the tumult. Later that afternoon, Mrs. Turpin goes to their pig stye, a concrete floored pig parlor, to clean the floor from the pig’s slop. She starts praying to God, demanding why she was called a hog. She is no wart hog from hell. She screams at God: “If you like trash better, go get yourself trash then.” In a final surge of fury she demands of God: Who do you think you are?
Finally a vision dawns for her. She sees a trail leading up to heaven with all the white trash and the blacks dressed in splendid white clothing, and battalions of freaks and lunatics dancing their way up to heaven. Behind them solemnly marched people like her, white, respectable, people like her, marching to the beat. Only their faces displayed that even their virtues were being burned away. She could hear the voices crying out Hallelujah!
Today’s parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector should disturb us as much as that short story by Flannery O’Connor. It’s a short story of Jesus that turns our world upside down. For years we have heard this parable and for years we have thought of ourselves as the tax collector, the humble one who prays for mercy. We would never identify with the Pharisee. We would never imagine that our hearts were filled with the arrogance and contempt of the Pharisee.
Yet as soon as we judge the Pharisee, we fall into the trap of the parable. In judging the Pharisee we reveal our own arrogance and contempt.
Each of us knows that the Gospels paint a picture of the Pharisees which makes them out to be the villains of the Jesus story.
But we should remember that Jesus would count himself as a Pharisee, as a person who tried to open the eyes of people to see a God as close to God’s people as the food they ate, or the clothing they wore, or the way they treated one another. We should beware of the danger of judging the Pharisee. Then we become the Pharisee.
If you only think that this parable is about two people, you have missed the main character. God, our wildly merciful God, dominates the story. Our wildly merciful God receives the prayer of thanksgiving from the Pharisee. Our wildly merciful God accepts the repentance of the tax collector. Our wildly merciful God invites us to live lives of boundless mercy. Only when we see ourselves not as the Pharisee, not as the Tax Collector. We will get this parable only when we see ourselves as this wildly merciful God.