A Spirituality of Imperfection
Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting
Beth Henricks
October 16, 2022
Luke 18:9-14 (NRSV)
9 He 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.”
Friends, I am thinking that many of you have heard this parable that Jesus shared with his disciples, religious Jewish leaders and interested folks in his ministry. On its surface it seems like a very straightforward and direct message. Jesus criticizes the Pharisee for his prayer and his self-righteous attitude that his good acts make him superior to others. The Pharisee’s prayer talks more about his righteous deeds rather than a need for grace and mercy from God. The tax collector is the sinner that recognizes his need for God’s mercy and prays a very different prayer in the Temple. The tax collector asks for grace and goes home from the temple forgiven while the Pharisee and religious man does not receive this from God. I read this message for many years in its simple explanation. I was called to think about how bad the Pharisee is and how good the tax collector is because he asks for God’s forgiveness. And there is much to consider in this parable. We often want to think we are good people because we don’t steal or cheat, lie, and we create our self-image on many of these narratives that tell us we do the right thing, so we are “good people”. It is so troubling in our current culture that we are dividing everyone into tribes, camps, sides and we seem to stick with our tribe and look with disdain at the “other”.
This was certainly true back in Jesus' time. We hear Jesus often speak about the Pharisees. They are portrayed as legalistic, “holier than thou” and superior to the common Jewish folks that looked to these men as scholars of the Jewish and religious laws and practices. It’s important to consider the context of Jesus' time and what was going on with the occupation of their territory by the Roman Empire. We remember that the Pharisees worked to arrest Jesus and turn him over to the government authorities. We might think that the Pharisees were part of the Empire. And certainly, the Pharisees had to be in communication with the Roman Empire and in some type of cooperation, but many of them stood with their Jewish people and tried to hold their culture and faith together during this oppressive Roman regime. They tried to hold onto the Jewish law, the Torah as Rome was trying to tear it apart.
The tax collector on the other hand, is portrayed as a sinner but a bit of a sympathetic character in several of Jesus' parables. However, when we look more closely at a tax collector at that time, these were no straightforward IRS agents. The tax collector was often Jewish and a traitor to the Jewish people as he was in full collaboration and employment of the Roman Empire. The authorities recruited these Jewish men to collect the taxes among their people to keep the Empire functioning. These men embodied the financial goals of the Romans and went to their kinfolk and demanded money. They were well paid by the Empire and were despised by the Jewish people which seems legitimate. It’s always the greed of humans that seems to allow folks to set aside principles, integrity, and their identification with their people to make money.
At face value in this parable, it seems like there are good and bad people here. The Pharisee represents the legalistic, law driven and heartless person while the tax collector is the sinner, the one that recognizes the need for God’s love and grace. And there is truth to this. As religious folk we often think we have the right beliefs, the right path and the right structure and history to be the keeper of the tradition. And the tax collector represents so many folks that live in a place that diminishes others, supports the establishment, and takes money in an unjust way. The tax collectors’ sins are on full display to the people while the Pharisee’s sins seem to occur within his heart and mind. The tax collector recognizes that God gives grace, mercy, and love to all and that our actions do not determine the expansive love of God. The Pharisee struggles to embrace this message of Jesus that will turn their faith and tradition completely upside down. His heart just cannot soften to the idea that God loves everyone no matter what and that we cannot ever earn the love of God. To think it’s freely given goes against all the learning these leaders have trained in and studied and embraced. The tax collector seeks God’s forgiveness for his sins.
There are important lessons in this parable. Religious people need to have humility and embrace God’s love for all humans as God does not divide us into the worthy and unworthy. Unfortunately, we humans seem to want to do this, as we are such an achievement and performance-based society.
As I reflect on the message of this parable, my heart has been stirred this week and I look in the mirror and I see that I often put people in one camp or another. When I look down on the other (and that other is defined by each of us differently based on our background, our life experiences, and our traditions) then I am acting as the Pharisee. If I think I am better or more evolved than the legalistic, tradition bound, holding onto history, and doctrinal faith person, then I am the Pharisee. I am the Pharisee, and I am the tax collector. I can’t think that I am beyond the Pharisee view when I demonize those that believe differently than I do. As columnist and “theologian Dave Barry says: “There are two kinds of people in this world, and I am one of them.”
If I say dear God, I am thankful that I am not like this Pharisee, I am thankful I’m not like this person or believe this, then I become the Pharisee. I want to be the grace filled tax collector because I think Pharisees are legalistic and hypocrites – but then that is when I become the Pharisee.
I cannot ever say as the Pharisee says at the start of this passage that I am thankful that I am not like his list of adulterers, thieves, rogues, or a tax collector. We are all full of humanity, full of imperfections, full of disappointments, bad decisions, and their consequences., adulterers, thieves and rogues. And I think what Jesus is saying is that none of that matters. God extends love to us all within all our humanity, all of our pain and bad decisions and bad intention, embrace of acquisitions, status, success. We can turn to God at any moment and say, I need you, I need God’s grace. I need a resurrection that brings me into the fullness of God’s love.
It seems like we need to ask the question: which of these two people in this parable of Jesus am I? Maybe all of us need to understand that we are both Pharisee and Tax Collector and reflect on when we see ourselves in each of these characters? When I think I have the answers, when I think I am right, when I think I have the reputation, the wisdom, and the right way, I am a Pharisee. When I participate in structures of oppression and the desire for money at all costs, then I am the tax collector. All are in need of God’s grace and love.
Jesus is a non-dual thinker, and he is turning the entire Jewish system upside down. The entire Old Testament is about the law and obeying this law to come into closer relationship with God. This is how the Jewish people believed they would experience God’s favor and our Jesus comes out of this tradition. Jesus is a scholar in the Jewish law as evidenced when it is written that as a child, he was teaching the elders in the Temple at age 12. He knew the law as well as any Pharisee and yet he was preaching a message that turned all of that tradition upside down. That tells us that Jesus was a revolutionary in his faith tradition. And how many times do we reject a person that comes into our church that speaks a message that is uncomfortable and different and something that we want to reject or can’t accept as we hold on to the traditions that we have embraced for years?
Of course, wouldn’t we love to hear more of this story after the encounter in the Temple? As the tax collector prays to God for mercy and is forgiven does he stop being a tax collector? How do we square the understanding and acceptance of personal forgiveness if we don’t also change what we are doing?
Jesus’ teachings are not about a meritocracy which is often how our country determines success. Jesus’ teachings combine the good and the bad, the winners and the losers and rejects the merit system and embraces the idea of faith, love and of turning to God. God’s love is given to all no matter any situation. God identifies with the tax collector because he is an outsider and God is all about outsiders. God has been about outsiders since we first received the Biblical teaching. The Israelites were outsiders for centuries – it is only when they achieved success they turned away from God and relied on the law, and the tradition. But God also identifies with the Pharisee as these religious leaders embraced God and the Yahweh path when all other societies thought they were crazy to depend on one God. These religious leaders had to start out with a powerful message of faith and trust in God. It seems like as time went on that this powerful and life changing message became diluted into a systematic institution with many laws, restrictions and separations among cultures and people.
Our Affirmation class has been looking at the early Quakers and how Quakerism started. The ‘movement’ that George Fox and Margaret Fell helped establish was passionate, infused with a spiritual fire, principled as they were willing to spend time in prison for their beliefs and shared a revolutionary message of equality for all and the love of God available to everyone. A movement is exciting, fresh, appealing and can catch fire with many. But nothing can ever just stay a movement as structure, tradition and hierarchy come into play in order to keep the movement alive. It has to become more institutionalized but then power, money, disagreements happen, and the outsiders become the insiders and our traditions become more important than the revolutionary ideas that Jesus shared. This happens in all Christian denominations , it happens in the Jewish tradition, it happens in all movements. I think this is why Jesus spends so much time in his teaching urging us to come back again and again to the ideas of God’s love for all and to stop thinking in terms of us and them.
The message in the Bible is not a winner’s message but a loser’s script. Why do many Christians always want to go to the winners, the potential strong individuals? Richard Rohr says “didn’t most of us think that it’s all a meritocracy? I certainly did. Many religious people think it’s all a merit badge system – all achievement, accomplishment, performance, and perfection. The good people win, and the bad people lose. Of course, once we cast anything as a win-lose scenario, the irony is that everybody loses. Why can’t people see that competitive games are not the way to go?”
Jesus always embraced the losers from a societal perspective – the women, tax collectors, the poor, the Sanitarians that weren’t quite as good as the religious Jews, those feeling lost and forgotten for whatever reason. And really don’t we all feel like losers during parts of our lives? If we can embrace the losers, the outsiders, those that are different from us, the broken, the forgotten and those feeling lost then we all become winners. That, my friends, is the beloved community that we all want to see come to fruition.
As we enter our time of unprogrammed worship I share a few queries to consider .
When am I a Pharisee and when am I a Tax Collector?
In searching my heart, where do I divide people and think one side is good and the other bad?
Do I embrace God’s love, mercy, and forgiveness for all?
Do I speak my truth in love and care to others even when they believe or behave differently?