Meg Peery McLaughlin
Stories Jesus Told: The One about the Pharisee and the Tax Collector
February 23, 2025
Luke 18: 9-14
Prayer for Illumination
Tell us a story, Lord Jesus.
And hold us close when it rattles us with your truth.
Your Spirit is here and we are listening. Amen.
Scripture
Jesus 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. 11 The 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. 12 I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ 13 But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ 14 I 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.”
Sermon
Well, church, buckle up because this morning I am going to take you on a journey of spectacular failure.
The act of preaching creates a triangle between me,
the biblical text, and you, the congregation.
And as all the good students of systems theory know,
triangles almost always become relationships where two gang up on the one.
Now when the preacher and the Bible gang up to beat some truth against the congregation’s heads—well I don’t think that’s faithful preaching.
More often what we try to do here at UPC is have the preacher saddle up with you, and the two of us point up at the scripture and try to learn from it, together.
Today, it’s you and this text getting a good view of where I, as preacher, went wrong—where I went wrong three times with this parable. Ready?
Failure number #1:
I became just like the Pharisee.
I looked at him and said: Thank God UPC is not filled with folks like him.
Because y’all: this guy. His prayer is more like a swagger.
He doesn’t ask anything of God, he only brags, brags about his goodness.
And did you notice where he stands? Luke says he stands by himself.
It’s like he doesn’t want his self-righteousness to be infected by the presence of anyone less worthy.
In his prayer, he doesn’t put his attention on God, but rather he prays with “peripheral vision” – not knowing what to pray unless he can make an assessment of everyone else.
I couldn’t help it,
I said thank God that the folks who show up at UPC are nothing like this guy.
Thank God we don’t have people here
who have to be first and like to talk about how first they are;
who want distance from everyone who is different,
who refuse to be in relationship with those who may be in need,
and in fact can’t even deign to discuss them.
Thank God this is not a congregation full of people
who rattle off whole lists of people and categorically dismiss them
who flaunt their generosity and never connect it to their privilege
or to their gratitude for the grace given to them.
But of course it is that exact arrogant sentiment
that causes the trouble for this Pharisee.
It’s a classic trap of this parable and I fell right in it.
When we judge this Pharisee, and thank God that we are not like him,
we become the very evil we hate.
Failure #2:
I tried to make God fair.
This parable makes obvious that God is a God of surprising grace.
Because we’ve read enough stories like the one about Zaccheaus, where tax collectors shone in a positive light, where Jesus sits to break bread with them,
we forget how shocking this was.
But if the tax collector gets this grace, why not the Pharisee?
Isn’t that how grace works? Lavishly, amazingly?
In your pew bible, which is the NRSV bible, Verse 14 of this parable reads:
“this man went to his home justified–rather than the other.”
This tax collector went home made right with God rather than the Pharisee.
I read Amy Jill Levine’s scholarship that indicated that rather than could also be translated alongside, which changes the meaning completely.
It would mean that both men get equal measure, the same thing– they both go home justified. Fair and square.
The preposition used in verse 14 is para, like we use in the word parallel.
Which is why Levine’s argument made sense to me and led me to ask:
why did the NRSV make God into a meanie – the kind of God who would pick a cheat like a tax collector over a faithful guy like the Pharisee who clearly helps balance the church budget every year, even if the cheat’s prayer was more sincere?
Surely grace is big enough for both.
I really wanted the alternative translation to be true.
My greek grammar is rusty, so I emailed three of my NT professors
and UPC’s own Greek scholar Matt Sherry, for help.
That’s right, I emailed 4 PhDs, in the hopes I’d hear from one of them.
All of them wrote me back confirming that what is in that pew bible is right.
As much as we might want to prescribe grace in a certain way, and protect God’s image, Jesus tells a story where one is justified and the other just isn’t.
Failure #3:
I whittled down the gospel to a moral lesson: Be humble.
After all, the final line of Jesus’ story is: all who humble themselves will be exalted.
So maybe church should be a place where we practice that humility—
practice beating our breasts,
standing far off, not daring to presume chumminess with the holy,
keeping our eyes low, whispering the truth of our sinfulness.
To be humble is to see yourself rightly in the scheme of things, to be grounded, that’s where we get the word after all, to stand on the humus, the earth.
But this week a dear family friend, Monica, came for a visit from DC,
where she was on break from teaching special education.
Monica is an immigrant from Colombia. She is not a US Citizen.
I don’t know the right word for her status.
I suppose it is undocumented,
even when she is years and years deep into a process of documentation.
What I know is that the ground I stand on and the ground Monica stands on is uneven.
And it makes me ask: what is humility when the ground we once knew is sinking?
What do we say about humility when people’s very personhood is denied?
When people’s livelihoods are being erased?
Ethicist Miquel de la Torre wrote on this parable:
those who are already humble don’t need sermons advocating humility.
In the middle of all these failed attempts to write this sermon,
I was sitting at the kitchen table, snow falling outside.
Zanna was doing school work, a la the old covid days.
Monica was typing out a document for her attorney,
I was working on the liturgy for the bulletin you’re holding.
I had the hymnal out.
Zanna said “Oh, let’s sing hymn #100 on Sunday. It’s my favorite.”
To save you from getting out of your hymnal, it’s Canticle of the Turning,
and it’s also her dad’s favorite. The hymn is a reworking of the Magnificat,
where Mary sings of the world order being turned upside down. Monica was curious.
I decided I’d just read the lyrics out loud. I got to the refrain:
My heart shall sing of the day you bring.
Let the fires of your justice burn.
Wipe away all tears, for the dawn draws near,
And the world is about to turn.
I could barely get the words out around the giant lump in my throat.
And I found myself with tears as fat as the snowflakes falling down my cheeks.
“What’s wrong, mama?” a surprised Zanna asked.
“I suppose I’m sad that it’s taking so long, Zanna,
I’m desperate for the world to turn. It’s my prayer.”
At the beginning of this chapter of the gospel, Luke says that Jesus told the disciples a parable about their need to pray always and not lose heart.
And he tells the one about the widow and the judge.
And right on it’s heels, Luke says Jesus also told this parable
(ours today- the one about the pharisee and the tax collector),
told it to some who
trusted in themselves. . . . that’s what Luke says.
Jesus told this story to those who trusted in themselves
instead of the God to whom they are praying.
And that’s just it, isn’t it church?
Leave it to us, and we will get it wrong, we’ll fail. . . preacher included.
This is a time for praying to God and doing our darnedest to not lose heart.
This is a time for trusting not in ourselves,
not in our keen ability to categorize and judge others
not in our over-confident understanding of the ways of God
not in our self-improvement plans for ourselves and the world around us.
This is a time for weeping, for lumps in our throat.
This is a time for sitting with the pain, and with people who are scared.
This is a time for prayer.
Time to put our trust in God—
the one who is outside the limits of our own knowledge and comfort and control.
We’re not that good at trusting like that, it turns out,
which is probably why Jesus tells this story in the first place.
But here, together,
we can try again.
We can pray–
saying, Kum ba Yah, my Lord, come by here.
We need you.