Kendall's Notebook, Page 70

Title: The Publican and Pharisee

Date: October 28, 2007

Text: Luke 18: 9-14

By: Kendall Brown

As we draw into the final weeks of the church year before the new beginning brought in by Advent, we continue to be led in worship by parables and stories of Jesus as they were remembered and interpreted by Luke. Today’s lesson is the well known story about the prayers of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector, or Publican if you were brought up with the KJ Translation of the Scriptures.

There are different ways to read the Scriptures. This past week I was in the mountains with some of you. I had the opportunity to view the landscape from different perspectives offered by looking over the valley from points on different sides. It was the same valley below, but from different angles it could look quite different. And from different points of view different things would come into view.

Most of the times when we read the parables, we read them from a very human point of view. We assume that what the parables are all about is human attitude or behavior. So we read today’s parable; and what is right and what is wrong seems pretty obvious. Yes, the Pharisee does all the right things – he tithes, he fasts, he honors all the right rituals and customs of the religious law. But he has one big fault. He needs a huge attitude adjustment and a large dose of humility. The Publican on the other hand, has the right measure of humility. The Publican wins so to speak in today’s attitude contest. As Jesus said, “He went home justified before God.” That sounds like winning in a big way.

So the minister preaches a sermon on humility. Lifted up in the pulpit is the Tax Collector as a great example of humility and the Pharisee as a horrible example of humility. The congregation is encouraged to be humble and congratulated for being humble. And we all go home patting ourselves on the back for our humility and lack of arrogance and thanking god that we are not like all those other people who haven’t heard today’s sermon.

Hey, wait a minute. If we end up being Pharisees haven’t we missed the point? And just exactly what is the point?

Let us back up and try again. Let us consider the Tax Collector for a minute or two. Let us assume that the Tax Collector was engaged in some wrong doing. The parable doesn’t tell us that he was up to no good in his work although we know that he had plenty of opportunity in his position to rip off people left and right. We know that many of his colleagues did just that. He calls himself a sinner but we teach all the time that everyone is a sinner and only sinners are found in churches. If he was a sinner, we are not told that his sin was cheating anyone. Maybe what we are looking at here is a humble and honest tax collector and nothing more.

On the other maybe the tax collector was of a different personality make up. Maybe he was more like Tony Soprano. I really have trouble imagining in today’s world mentioning Tony and having anyone not knowing who I am talking about. But just in case someone has had better things to do than keep up with HBO serial programming, I will give a brief introduction. Tony is the lead character in the immensely popular HBO program The Sopranos. Tony is a New Jersey gansta boss who is really bad. He does bad things to people and has more bad things done to other people. Tony’s wife is forever checking in with her priest and Tony has a relationship himself with the church. He and his band of thugs take over a huge church street fair and siphon off 1000s in kickback profit every year.

Let us imagine that the tax collector is Tony. Jesus is already teaching on the church steps in sight of an arrogant and self-righteous man who is praying near enough so Jesus can hear his words. Tony rolls up in his huge and expensive SUV, with some guns hidden in the tire well, some illegal booze and cigarettes in the cargo compartment, and a call coming in on his cell phone from one of his call-girl friends. The SUV screeches to a halt, Tony jumps out of the car, throws himself on the ground and cries out, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” It would be a very appropriate line for Tony!

It is my intention today to put before you more questions than answers. Here is a question to take to the coffee hour or dinner and discuss with friends or family: If Tony was there instead of the Tax Collector, and all else in the scene remained the same, would Jesus have said of Tony, “I tell you this man, Tony, rather than the other, went home justified before God?” I challenge you to answer that question without any and, ifs, buts or if onlys. I am not going to launch into a discourse about the ands ifs and buts here. That is your job in conversation with others at another time. I am putting out the questions today. You find the answers.

There is a reason why we are ending up here with lots of ands if and buts. It is because we are assuming that this parable is all about human behavior and attitudes.

We are just like the Pharisee. We think it is all about us. Humans who think that it is all about us end up confused, with lots of ands, ifs and buts, and going nowhere.

There is another less ego centric way to read the parables. Jesus’ parables are not all about human beings or human behavior or attitude. His parables are not little morality plays or pithy truisms akin to Ben Franklins one liners of wisdom found in Poor Richards Almanac. The central character in all of Jesus Parables is God. This is more obvious in some parables that others. Reading the story of the Prodigal son, one doesn’t have to be a nuclear physicist to figure out that the father is God. The good shepherd can also be God. Even the persistent widow who bothers the judge until the judge finally gives in can stand for God who is persistent in patience and endurance as God pursues God’s people through leaders, events in history, the prophets, the scriptures and the work of the spirit.

Let us look again at today’s story, keeping in mind that the parable is more about God than it is about the two men who happened to be praying one day at the temple and ending up in Jesus’ cast of characters.

From God’s point of view there is hardly any difference between the two men the tax collector and the Pharisee - perhaps none at all. Differences are the invention of the human mind and heart. We are the ones who create all sort of divisions, chopping up the human family into little pieces, each thinking they are better than all the others. The two men both stand in need of God’s forgiveness grace and love. They both are at a great distance from God. The justification is there for both of them although one doesn’t get it. But the justification is there for it comes from God, is a part of God and as God is ever-present it is always there.

This is a hard thing for us to understand although it is a central message in this parable and in many others. The all embracing love of God for everyone is hard for those who think they are sole owners of God’s love.

Recently the writer of the show Sopranos was in an interview. His remarks were interesting if not disturbing. The series has ended. Millions were kept in suspense as to how the last show would end. It ended with the question unanswered as to whether or not Tony is dead of alive. He has just disappeared. The writer reported how he received hundreds of angry emails from viewers. They were angry because they wanted Tony dead. No ands ifs or buts about it. For them the writer should have written in a death scene for Tony for the show to have ended in a pleasing way.

We are a people who have forgotten that the justification (which is basically God’s forgiveness – it would be hard to have one without the other) that was present in the temple for both men at prayer is present all around for all of us for everyone and all the time. We don’t want it to be present for some but it is from God and what comes from God is not all about what we want.

Often groups who end up on the fringes of Christianity, burned as heretics in former times ridiculed today for their odd dress and customs, provide the places in the Christian family where the message of God’s light shines the brightest. They are the ones who make their decisions with an awareness of the constant ever-present love and forgiveness of God. On this Reformation Sunday, I remember a couple of those groups who are important members of the reformed family. First, the Amish. A year or so ago we heard the horrible stories of a group of Amish Students and teachers being shot and killed by a crazed person in their schoolhouse. Many people and many Christians find it unbelievable that the Amish community immediately started ministering to the wounds of the shooter’s family even as they ministered to the pain and loss in their own family. The world might really change when more people stop saying that they find what the Amish did unbelievable and that they can’t imagine doing it themselves.

We pray for peace. The Mennonites today work for peace and do their work empowered by a wondrous sense of the surrounding all-embracing, ever-present love of God. A few weeks ago, the president of Iran, Mahmound Ahmadinejad, was in New York. This man manages to come across with all the social graces of Tony Soprano. He has lots of help from our government and media in promoting that projection. He was a guest speaker at Columbia U. where his host, the university president, introduced him as a petty and cruel leader and went on with a longer assault of insult. The university president be-smudged his office with his remarks and hardly presented himself as a host in the sense of the word as it is defined by the hospitality of Jesus. At the UN, when it was his time to speak, the United States delegation got up and left.

These events were in the news and broadcast widely. He had another meeting that wasn’t in the news at all on the national media. He also spent a couple hours in a civil and respectful conversation even about difficult issues like his publized views on the holocaust with some church leaders. The meeting was arranged and hosted by the Mennonite Central Council. At the meeting were representatives from the mainline Protestant churches, the Catholic church, evangelical churches and Quakers.* When I look at that visit for a sign of hope for a new world and peace on earth, the only place I can find it is in that meeting of church leaders and the president of Iran. We can not have peace without dialogue and civil conversation. To be workers for peace we have to live with a constant awareness of the ever-present God - today even as God was present in the temple long ago where two men prayed.

Return to Sermon Archive Page