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The Pharisee


Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’
          But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
         I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted (Luke 18:10-14)
 

In another of Jesus’ parables, He tells of two pray-ers, and their prayers. At the time that He told it, those who heard it might have had a different response than we do. Pharisees were the do-gooders, the ones who were supposed to know. They decided what was politically correct. The tax collector, then as now, was the crook, the cheat, and the very politically incorrect traitor to all that was wholesome and good. The people to whom He told the story would have cheered for the Pharisee and jeered at the tax collector. If you try to reverse the roles in your own mind, you miss the power of the teaching.
          If you ask most people to identify the Pharisee of today, they would likely say, “Those hypocrites in Church who think they’re better than everyone else,” and “those Conservative hypocrites who exclude people from society by denying them the same rights that they have.” It’s clear that they thank God that they aren’t like those ignorant, bigoted, hateful, intolerant, judgmental folks. No, they are good people, loving, compassionate, inclusive…just ask them, they’ll tell you. In fact, you don’t even need to ask them, just mention church or the president. No, those who are placed into the Pharisee category deserve to be marginalized, cast out, sterilized, taken far away and allowed to die. They are useless gluttons.
          If you ask them about the tax collector, they’ll probably mention one or another of a supposedly oppressed and hated collective (into which they place everyone to whom they’ve applied the label of that collective.) These people have done nothing wrong except be born into a marginalized group. They’re just trying to live their lives and deserve to be loved just like everyone else.
          But in Jesus’ story, both go into the synagogue, and both say prayers to which most of us can relate. I do thank God that I am not a drug-addict, or a human predator. I thank Him that He has protected me from a number of sins, because there, but for the grace of God, go I. I am a Pharisee, and I know it.
           I’m also very aware of the sins that I do commit. I am a tax collector, too. I know that there is no good that I can do to make up for the bad that I have done. Through my sins, and through God’s Word, I’ve learned about the harm that sin – any sin – does to a person. I don’t wish sin on my worst enemies, not because I think I’m better, but because, having been there, I have compassion, and being where I am, I have hope for better for them.

 

 

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