I’ve never done that before – changed the words of the Gospel reading like that on the fly – but it seemed to me, today anyway, that the labels Pharisee and tax collector just don’t pack the same kind of punch as Episcopal priest and ambulance chaser do.  It’s not a perfect match, as cultural translations go, but the point is that this story that Jesus told was shocking.  John Dominic Crossan goes one better – he’s a Roman Catholic theologian who retells this story as “a Pope and a pimp went into St. Peter’s to pray.” (1)  In a Gospel reading with the words Pharisee and tax collector, and nearly 2000 intervening years, the parable has lost its edginess and its challenge.  Those of us who have spent any considerable amount of time in the church have heard so many bad things about Pharisees that we are not shocked to hear that Jesus might declare a Pharisee unjustified in comparison to a tax collector.  Many of us who earn income or own property typically do not have the scornful response to the mention of a tax collector as would Jesus’ first century audience.  Today it is possible for someone to be a faithful Christian and work for the IRS.  It is possible.

In Jesus’ time, Pharisees were typically beyond reproach; and tax collectors typically ripped people off.  Pharisees were typically upstanding members of the community.  Tax collectors were typically notorious sinners – they were loathed by the general population.  There was no such thing as a faithful tax collector in Jesus’ time.  Faithful people, in Jesus’ time, were not permitted to jobs like collecting taxes for the Roman government.  The tricky part is that within 60 years after Jesus’ death, when Luke’s Gospel was being written down somewhere out in gentile territory, the Jerusalem Temple had been demolished, relationships with Pharisees had become not so good, and tax collectors who were servicing Roman patrons, had become not so bad.  The group of Jesus followers had grown among the gentiles in the Roman Empire because of the evangelism of Paul and others.  But if we imagine the circumstances of the parable in Jesus’ time, then the Pharisee is not necessarily being portrayed as arrogant in his prayer of thanksgiving.  He can be viewed as an example of a faithful person who is saying the kind of prayer that I hear thankful people say all the time, “there but for the grace of God, go I.” 

Ironically, if we hear the prayer and think, “thank God I am not like one of those Pharisees (or like one of those Episcopal priests)” where does that leave us? (2)  (Well for one thing, it leaves us with a long history of Christian violence against Jews.)  So what is the problem with the Pharisees?  Certainly the problem canNOT be that the Pharisee is fasting twice a week and tithing.  Perhaps the problem is trusting in one’s own self and regarding anyone else with contempt.  Perhaps the warning in this story is for anyone who trusts in herself that she is doing things right and well and regards people who are thieves, cheaters, extortionists, as somehow “less than.”  And if so, we’d all better proceed with extreme caution.    

Ronald Allen and Clark Williamson have written a great book of Biblical lectionary commentary.  When I tell you the name of it, you will immediately know why I like it so much.  It’s called Preaching the Gospels without Blaming the Jews.  I wish that every Christian preacher had a copy of this book on the shelf right next to her study bible.  About this passage, Allen and Williamson point out many similar rabbinical sayings.  Rabbi Gamaliel said, “Do not have confidence in yourself until the day you die.  And do not judge your companion until you are in his place.”  Rabbi Simeon said, “And when you pray, don’t treat your praying as a matter of routine; but let it be a plea for mercy and supplication before the Omnipresent, the blessed.”  Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa said, “for anyone whose wisdom takes precedence over his fear of sin, his wisdom will not endure.  The Rabbis of Javneh said “We have learned that it matters not whether a man does much or little, if only he directs his heart to heaven.”  Allen and Williamson write that the Rabbis of the first century CE “joked about overly pious Pharisees who walked mincingly to show their piety and bled from the forehead from bumping into obstacles because they walked with their eyes closed to avoid temptation.” (3)

That sounds silly, but if I challenged us all to get from now until the end of this very service without one single temptation of an arrogant thought, keeping our eyes closed would probably be the best strategy!  So I get poking at the Pharisees’ pride – but how is it that the tax collector goes home justified rather than the other?  How is it that the Pharisee is not justified in his prayer?  How is it that the tax collector, who has made no attempt at restitution, no promise of repentance, just a plea for mercy, is justified?  It’s very easy to get ourselves all wrapped around the axle trying to get this lesson to tell us what we are supposed to do or not do to win God over, or what we are supposed to think or not think to get it right.

The thing is, I don’t think Jesus was telling a story about easy answers or how to behave if you want to get to heaven – because Jesus never tells stories like that as far as I can tell.  Eugene Peterson, in his book, Tell it Slant, writes, “Every time Jesus tells a story, the world of those who listen enlarges, understanding deepens, imaginations are energized.” (4)  That sounds about right to me.  So how could this story enlarge our world, deepen our understanding, energize our imaginations?
It seems to me that Jesus was teaching a lesson about humility.  Humility is the answer to the childhood riddle:  What is the one thing that you may have, and the moment you say you have it, it is gone and you have it no more.  Humility.  Frederick Buechner defines humility as “thinking yourself as neither better nor worse than you are.”  I like that definition because while I do know that pride can be a deadly sin, my experience with shame is that it is every bit as deadly.  The kind of humility I’m talking about is the mid-point between arrogance or self-reliance, and self-degradation.  Being humble is acknowledging our reliance on God and at the same time, acknowledging the intrinsic worth bestowed by God on every other living creature.  That means acknowledging the intrinsic worth of a Pharisee and an Episcopal priest, even a Pope, and of a tax collector and an ambulance chaser and a pimp, of the most upstanding and the lowest of the low.  Because in our purest heart of hearts we know that we are all combinations of characters and actions – holy and profane.

As I sit with this passage, I find that the central character of this parable is not the tax collector.  It’s not the Pharisee, not even Jesus.  The star of this parable is unnamed in the text.  God.  And I want to suggest that at its core, this is a story – like the story of all the Gospels, like the story of all of scripture – this is a story about possibility in the face of what seems impossible.  It seems impossible to the hearers of this story that God would not look down on thieves, rogues, adulterers and extortionists or swindlers.  It seems impossible that God would offer them mercy without demonstrated repentance.  And yet God does offer mercy – even justification.  It seems just as impossible (at least to the religious man) that anything more could be asked of him by God – because, after all, this religious man is already doing A LOT – more than is required.  And yet God does ask for more.  God does what seems impossible and God asks for what seems impossible.
It seems to me that this is a story in which Jesus is saying, you know that chart of the world that you keep in your heads with it’s lists of good guys and bad guys, good neighborhoods and bad neighborhoods, insiders and outsiders, proper and improper, pure and impure, healthy and sick, able and disabled, credentialed and un-credentialed, citizens and aliens, documented and undocumented – you know that chart?  Well it does not apply in the kingdom of God.  The map of good and bad with regard to the kingdom of God has been abandoned.  It will no longer work to predict who is in and who is out of the love of God. (5)

Pray that we might be brave enough to keep our eyes open today and in the days to come.  Pray for an abundant measure of humility so that our world gets larger, our understanding gets deeper, and our imaginations get energized to receive and to do and to give what seems impossible.