Luke 18:9-14, from Proper 25 (30)
At what point would the breast-beating tax collector’s anguished confession in Luke 18:9-14 start going stale for you?
Because it eventually would, you know. It would for me, too. Imagine the two of us sitting in the temple the following Sabbath and watching the scene repeat itself.
There’s the Pharisee again, still piously fasting and tithing, still bragging about it. And there’s the tax collector again, too, still hanging his head in shame, still pleading for mercy.
And still a tax collector. That is, still a swindler, still a traitor, still a liar and a thief. It might even be that some of the coins jangling in his pockets as he thumps his chest belonged to you and me before he stole them from us in the market only yesterday. And they would go on jangling in his pockets as he made his way home afterward, fully justified by nothing more than having asked for God’s mercy.
How many repeats of this scene, Sabbath after Sabbath, would it take for us to start imagining that the Pharisee, despite the rudeness of his propensity to say so, truly is the better man? How long would it take us to think that we were better people, too – better, at least, than this chronically lousy tax collector who is all about regret but not even a teeny bit about reform?
See, whether we realize it or not, we assume that doing good plays a role somewhere in this little drama. Maybe it’s a small part. Maybe it’s concealed backstage, with the lighting cables, the fly system, and the street clothes the actors will put back on after the show. It has to be involved somehow, though, right? Surely God doesn’t just hand out forgiveness to anyone who asks for it, regardless of whether they make an effort to shape up.
But the parable undeniably shows God doing exactly that. As much as we’d like an epilogue along the lines of, “And the tax collector devoted himself to clean living ever after,” there isn’t one. In case we might assert that Luke merely forgot to add it, Luke introduces the story by informing us that Jesus told it specifically to “some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else.”
Of course, plenty of other passages in scripture exhort Christians to live moral lives. Some of them are quotes from Jesus himself. I’m not suggesting we ignore or diminish any of them. I’m suggesting instead, as I think this parable does, that living a moral life has nothing to do with whether we go down to our houses justified, like the smarmy tax collector, or unjustified, like the sanctimonious Pharisee.
Righteousness, the parable says, as Paul would later say, and as Martin Luther would say even later, comes by faith alone.
So what, them is the point of following the rules? Why not just beat your breast in the temple every Sabbath and live as you please the other six days of every week? I think Robert Capon explains it well, in his characteristically vivid way:
“The reason for not going out and sinning all you like is the same as the reason for not going out and putting your nose in a slicing machine: it’s dumb, stupid, and no fun. Some individual sins may have pleasure still attached to them because of the residual goodness of the realities they are abusing: Adultery can indeed be pleasant, and tying one on can amuse. But betrayal, jealousy, love grown cold, and the gray dawn of the morning after are nobody’s idea of a good time.”
So now perhaps you think I’m making a pointlessly fine distinction. If, in the end, we must both have faith and do good, fretting about the unique reason for doing each may seem like fretting about the unique reason for each half of a pair of scissors.
The Pharisee in the parable suggests otherwise, though. If the tax collector has only the faith half of the scissors, the Pharisee has only the good behavior part. But while the tax collector goes home justified before God, the Pharisee doesn’t. The difference, as far as I can tell, is that while faith tends to lead to good behavior, the opposite is less often true. Success at tithing or fasting or getting oneself to church regularly or some other outward sign of piety tends to inspire more faith in oneself than faith in God’s grace. Being a “good person” is fine, until you start believing your own propaganda.
People can, and should, do good things. Especially if they’re going to call themselves children of God. But there are no good people. That’s what the persistently penitent publican understands, and that’s why he goes home justified.
