Luke 18, 11-13: The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, “God, I thank thee that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector” … But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.” I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other.
Not everything that Jesus says is calculated to make people feel good about themselves. Quite often, in fact, his sayings can have the opposite effect, can even be rather discouraging. This parable is a case in point. If we ask ourselves which of the figures in the story is us, then I suspect it is likely to be the Pharisee. I speak as a fully paid-up member of the party of the dutiful, those who know what is expected of them and (mostly) do it, who at the end of the day feel rather satisfied with the tasks done, the good achieved, the money sent to Oxfam, the lame dogs helped over stiles. I belong to the Pharisees; and I feel that we deserve a better press. For us triers to be told that we rank below those who haven’t even tried seems unjust. What are we supposed to do? Stop trying?
We stand at the beginning of Lent. We are, by tradition, about to commit ourselves to a period of discipline, in which we try to follow some rule, whether of self-denial or, more positively, doing something that is God’s will for us. Whatever it is, trying is going to be involved. If what we do doesn’t take effort, it probably isn’t worth our while.
One thing that might be said about the Pharisee in the parable is that he would probably have kept a very good Lent. The tax-collector, on the other hand, would probably have been too busy to bother. Yet it is not the disciplined man who obeys God’s law who gets Jesus’ commendation. All this is very puzzling, not to say disheartening.
A look at the story of Jonah might help here. That little book is a beautifully balanced tale, symmetrically organised into two parts. Part one is Jonah’s first call from God and his attempt to escape. He is told to preach in Nineveh and he runs off toward Tarshish, west instead of east. And he gets into trouble: God sends a hurricane, the ship almost sinks, and Jonah is thrown overboard. But then God rescues him, and from inside the great fish he sings a psalm of praise to God for his salvation. Part two begins with his second call from God. This time he obeys and goes to Nineveh and preaches in the streets. But again things go wrong. God lets him down. After he has prophesied the destruction of the city, nothing happens. God decides to let them off. And Jonah gets very angry with God. If he disobeys, things go wrong. If he obeys, he is made to look a fool. What is the point of obeying?
To find an answer we need to notice what is really going on in the story. Remember the sailors who turned against Jonah. They began by praying to their pagan gods, but ended by worshipping Yahweh, the Lord. And the king of Nineveh turns from the evil of his city and offers the Lord a true repentance. God’s work is going on. He is showing mercy to his creatures and saving them. What Jonah does or does not do comes to seem almost irrelevant; certainly he takes himself far too seriously. It is not that he plays no part in these events—if he hadn’t boarded the ship, the sailors would have stayed quite happy with their own gods, and if he hadn’t preached in the city, the king would not have repented. Jonah has his part and that is why God calls him. But the real action, all the time, is God’s action, not his, and Jonah, in a half-conscious way, is irritated by that.
God reminds him of what is really going on at the end of the story, when Jonah is sitting sulking outside the city wall. A plant grows up and shades him from the sun; but then it dies. This trivial thing is, for Jonah, the last straw. Absolutely nothing has gone right for him in this whole episode. His resentment boils over, and he is furious with God. But the fate of the plant is meant to show him who is really in charge. God says to him, “If you worry about a plant that is gone in a day, don’t I have the right to be concerned for a city of 120,000 people?” He is telling Jonah that something much deeper is going on than Jonah’s obeying or disobeying, more important than the success or failure of his prophecy: something that Jonah has overlooked. God is working to save all his people including the sailors, including the citizens of Nineveh. Jonah may play a part in this, but it is not Jonah who is doing it, nor will Jonah be able to stop it.
How does this help with Jesus’ parable? The Pharisee is one of those who obey; he has, genuinely, done the right things. He is telling the truth when he says that he is not an adulterer or an extortioner. He may have had to work hard against temptation not to be those things. But his moral status, in an objective sense, is not the point of the story. He is—and Jesus recognises this—indeed a virtuous man. His problem is that he takes his virtue too seriously, so seriously that he offers it to God as though God has need of it. It is as though divine righteousness depends on the Pharisee keeping the law. But God does not need any of that. God does not need our goodness. We do not add anything to God by being good.
Beneath the Pharisee’s pride lies the belief that it is he who is working God’s work in the world. Those of us who, like me, are members of the church of latter-day Pharisees will recognise this state of mind. At the end of the day, when I have done my duty and ticked all my boxes, I am tempted to believe that I have made the world a better place; that once again people like me have helped to counter the tide of chaos that flows from people like them—the people who don’t do what they ought to do, who go to bed with boxes unticked.
Here we should do what Jesus does and turn to the tax-collector. The point is not that he is wallowing in a sense of sinfulness. That isn’t much use to him or to God. Jesus is not encouraging self-laceration, literal or metaphorical. What distinguishes the tax-collector from the Pharisee is that the tax-collector knows that he has absolutely nothing to give to God. Everything must come the other way: it is God who must give to him. Without raising his eyes to heaven, he asks for mercy.
This is all very affecting, but where does it leave us as moral agents? If God does not need our goodness, why then should we be good? Look again at Jonah. God goes about saving his creation—here, a group of sailors, and there, a city. He does that anyway. But part of that salvation is that the creation should be good. This is what God wishes for the things that he has made, that they should be radiant with his goodness; not because its serves some purpose of his, but because it is his creation and he loves it and redeems it. Our goodness is the fulfilment of that salvation, a fulfilment that is worked by God, not by us. Our goodness does not save the world; rather it shows that the world, already, is being saved.
There is a saying that often gets repeated to the effect that in this world God has no hands but ours, no feet but ours, etc. That is an appropriate reflection when faced with the need to carry a meal round to a bedridden neighbour. But as a general statement it suggests that God is powerless in his world, that he is dependent on us, that he needs what we do to complete his already infinite goodness. But of course God is not dependent on us. He wishes us to be good because good is what he wishes for us; good is God’s being and the salvation of his creation. It is not a means to an end, a way of turning God’s wheels for him. This the tax-collector understood: that as far as good is concerned, we are the receivers, not the givers. Amen.
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