Show me the alley, show me the train,
Show me the homeless man who sleeps out in the rain...
And I’ll show you a young man with so many reasons why,
There but for fortune go you or I, you or I.
Show me the whiskey stains on the floor,
Show me the drunkard as he stumbles out the door...
And I’ll show you a young man with so many reasons why,
There but for fortune go you or I, you or I.
Show me the bruises hidden from sight,
Show me the children who cry out in the night.
And I’ll show you a young one with so many reasons why,
There but for fortune go you or I, you or I.
The only problem with this beautiful, poignant little song is of course that it says “there but for fortune” rather than “there but for the grace of God,” but you get the idea. Do you ever think that to yourself - when you pass someone carrying a sign, “will work for food” - do you ever think, I could be that man? When single moms came in to our food shelf, I sometimes saw myself in them. If my life had taken a different turn, what would I have done in their shoes? How close have you ever come to being one of those people most of us want to pass by with averted eyes?
The Pharisee in Jesus’ parable starts out by thanking God that he is "not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector." [v. 11] This is good. He should thank God for his success in life, his good status, his clear conscience. And we also do well to thank God that we are sitting here in our pews, clothed and warm and reasonably well fed. There’s nothing wrong with that at all.
And before we get too critical of him, we should remember that the Pharisees did have a lot to be proud of. They were the Reformers, the Luther and Calvin and Zwingli of the first century. They were the people who had taken religious power away from the hereditary priestly class, the “entrenched power” of the day, and had given it to the people by insisting that everyone should learn the law, the Torah, not just the upper classes. They taught that God’s favor was accessible to those who sought it, not just those who were born to it. They cared about learning, they cared about obedience, they cared about honoring God. At least most of them did. And that was good.
The problem with this particular Pharisee was, that although he started praising God, the prayer wound up being a psalm to his own righteousness instead. God, I thank you that I am not like other people. [Lk 18:11b] He uses the first person “I” four times in the course of this brief prayer. And note, too, that he wasn’t thanking God for anything God had done; he was inviting God to notice what he had done. There he was, standing in front of God with another human being, and he was inviting God to join him in condemning the other man. “See, God, aren’t you lucky that you have me? Aren’t you offended that the sinner over there dares to presume?”
There’s not even anything wrong with this Pharisee thanking God that he had developed some good spiritual practices. Consider: Does coming to church regularly help you cope with life? Does reading your Bible help you steer a straight course in life? Does prayer help you keep your balance and your perspective? It would be terrific if what the Pharisee had meant by his prayer was “Thank you, God, that you have called me to yourself and showed me how to live in a right relationship with you.”
Unfortunately, the Pharisees’ reforms hadn’t gone far enough. Although they taught that anyone - rich or poor, of priestly descent or common - could come closer to God by reading Scripture and obeying the law, they created a barrier between the haves and the have-nots just as wide as the old wall had been. That’s one of the reasons why the Pharisees were sure Jesus couldn’t possibly be the Messiah; they were so sure they would be seated at the head of God’s banquet table that when Jesus didn’t notice how righteous they were, they just knew he couldn’t be the real thing. How could he miss it? They’d been trumpeting it loudly enough. If he didn’t admire their righteousness, he had to be an imposter, because God owed them.
The Pharisees had it backwards. God didn’t owe them anything, because he had already given them everything. Their mistake was in thinking that they deserved what God had given them: their standing in the community, the seat in the synagogue, their own sense of self-righteousness. It was only right that God should recognize their outstanding qualities and reward them appropriately. It never occurred to them that the gifts they had received weren’t supposed to stop there.
The tax collector, on the other hand, knew he had nothing to offer God. He knew he fell short by every standard he had been taught to value. Mind you, he may very well have been richer and better dressed than the Pharisee, but he knew that he had made the wrong choices in life. He knew that no matter what he looked like on the outside, what he really needed was something money could not buy.
Now what you need to understand is that in those days tax collectors made lots of money. They weren’t on salary like IRS agents and auditors and accountants. They were entrepreneurs. They were subcontractors for the Roman government, and as long as they turned over the agreed-on amount to Rome, they could keep whatever else they could wring from the local population. They usually were from the local population themselves, because you had to know the natives in order to be able to uncover who had what, and how much you could get out of them. Which made them traitors. And so, hand in hand with the money, which had probably seemed very attractive as this particular tax collector started out on his career, came contempt and social isolation. This fellow had found that the money he made didn’t cover his losses. And like Zacchaeus and Levi, the other two tax collectors the gospels tell us about, I suspect that he would have given everything he had to be back in God’s favor. When you’re really hungry, nothing is too much to pay.
Some people turn to God when they hit bottom. That’s why Jesus was so attractive to the people on the fringes of society, the lepers and the prostitutes, the poor and the oppressed. But other people come to God when they reach the top. They work all their lives to get the silver Lexus, the title on the door, the government contract, the starring role... And then they find out that it wasn’t what they were looking for after all, that there has to be something more. That was my experience; it wasn’t ‘til I started making it up the corporate ladder that I discovered that, although success was fun, it wasn’t filling. Not until then was I ready to listen when God called.
Unlike the tax collector in our story, the Pharisee wasn’t hungry. He was satisfied. Unfortunately, he wasn’t God-satisfied, he was self-satisfied. What’s the difference?
First of all, the Holy Spirit had not yet been given. There had been people in the past, in Israel’s history, who had a personal relationship with God, but they were few and far between, specially anointed for particular purposes in God’s history. Abraham and Moses and David all had that kind of special relationship. But the religious Jews in the first century who really hungered for God knew there was something more, they know that there was still a separation between themselves and God. That is what drove temple bigwig Nicodemus to seek Jesus out by night to find out if the “something more” he had been waiting for had finally appeared.
The second difference between being self-satisfied and God-satisfied is that when you’re self-satisfied you don’t feel like giving yourself away. After all, if you give yourself away, what will you have left? You’ll be really empty, then, because no matter how full of yourself you get, there’s something in every one of us who realizes that there really isn’t much to spare. If we are all we have, we better hang onto it.
But those who are full of God can’t wait to give it away. Because the more we give away the more room there is to be re-filled, and it’s the living dynamic of being continually being filled and refilled with God’s spirit that provides the joy that powers our lives.
Jesus doesn’t praise the tax collector because he’s more virtuous than the Pharisee. He isn’t. The Pharisee is unquestionably more virtuous than the tax collector. He has good values and habits, and God is pleased when we pay attention to his word and take his advice. Jesus isn’t telling us to emulate the tax collector’s bad choices, he’s telling us to emulate his understanding of his relationship with God, which is always as a supplicant waiting to be filled.
Some people know Jesus from babyhood, and have never done anything that would shock the neighbors. God rescues other people from pits most of us don’t even like to think about. Is the conscious sinner who has had a powerful experience of God which wrenched them, tires squealing, off the road to destruction and onto the paths of righteousness - what some call a born-again experience - more fortunate than those whose relationship with God has been solid and constant and nourishing for their entire lives? That’s sort of like asking if the prodigal son is better off than the older brother.
What do you think?
Is it possible to know yourself as empty before God even when you have everything you need?
Is it possible to be humble before God when you haven’t done anything to be ashamed of?
Unhappy are the rich in spirit, for what they have now is all they’re going to get.
Unhappy are those who withhold mercy, for they won’t get it when they need it.
Unhappy are those who are filled with their own righteousness, for they will eventually starve to death.
On at least three different occasions this last month someone has said to me, “God never gives you more than you can handle.” Each time I have answered, “that is not true.” God never gives us more than HE can handle, but he frequently gives us more enough to drive us to our knees, so that we won’t start thinking like the Pharisee, that we’ve got it all together and can make it through life on our own. This is how Paul puts it, as he explains to the Corinthians why it is that God has chosen not to relieve him of what he calls a thorn in the flesh.
"Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.' So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong." [2 Cor 12:8-10]
It is not virtue that keeps us apart from God, it is pride. And it is not sin that brings us close to God, it is humility. Paul was a Pharisee, with more to be proud of than the one Jesus described in his parable. And yet he gave it all away, completely letting go of every attribute of the good Jew, from circumcision to dietary laws, in order to give away the far greater treasure he had received from Christ.
Having been filled with the Holy Spirit, Paul recognized the hunger in the people around him, and instead of holding himself aloof from their emptiness, for fear he might be contaminated or taken advantage of, he poured his own life - which he understood that God had given him for that very purpose - into them. Let us do the same.
