Fifty-four years ago today, in 1972, the general of Morocco’s military staged a coup against King Hassan II. He was returning from France on his royal Boeing 727 jet when four fighter jets attacked. They shot a number of holes through his plane. Some passengers were hit by bullets. The plane was going to be destroyed for sure. But Hassan, thinking quickly, grabbed the radio and said, “Stop firing! The tyrant is dead!” And the rebel pilots were fooled. They broke off their attack and returned to their base. Hassan’s rule continued until he died of natural causes in 1999.
I suspect that King Hassan didn’t really believe that he was a tyrant. That’s what he called himself on the radio when he said, “The tyrant is dead.” At the same time he knew that boasting about his achievements wasn’t going to save him.
Boasting won’t save us either. But we can’t fool God into leaving us alone and breaking off the attack of his righteous judgment. What we need is God’s mercy. And God has mercy for humble sinners.
Today’s Gospel is from Luke 18 and it’s a well-known parable that sets out a clear and simple contrast. The lesson here isn’t a difficult one to understand. But it’s one that you can only truly apprehend and live by and love, by faith.
First, Luke sets the scene:
9Jesus told this parable to certain people who trusted in themselves (that they were righteous) and looked down on others
Well we know what sorts of people in Jesus’ day that included. It included the priests and scribes and the Pharisees and everyone who sneered at Jesus eating meals with sinners, or who complained when Jesus healed someone on the Sabbath. But even though Jesus was addressing those people he was really speaking this parable for all of us. That’s why the Holy Spirit inspired Luke to write it down.
Jesus said, “Two men went up to the temple courts to pray. One was a Pharisee, and the other was a tax collector.”
It’s a little bit difficult for us to get into the mindset of the Jews of the first century here. We have heard this parable and other accounts like this so many times that when we hear the word Pharisee we immediately picture someone who is an ungodly, arrogant hypocrite. And when we hear about a tax collector we might think, “Oh, those were the humble people who really thirsted for righteousness and were overjoyed to see Jesus, like Jesus’ disciple Matthew, who was a tax collector, or like Zacchaeus.
But those were special cases and that was not the picture the people had at that time. They would have thought that the Pharisees were the people who were closest to God. If God loves anyone it must be the Pharisees, those people who had dedicated their whole lives to studying God’s law and living by it. And if anyone is far from God, it must be the tax collectors, those traitors and cheats.
So these two men couldn’t be more opposite. But they did both come to the temple to pray. How was this going to work out? Jesus said,
The Pharisee stood and prayed about himself like this: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people, robbers, evildoers, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12I fast twice a week. I give a tenth of all my income.’
13“However the tax collector stood at a distance and would not even lift his eyes up to heaven, but was beating his chest and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’
These two very different men also had two very different prayers. In my catechism classes I like to teach four different kinds of prayers using the acronymn ACTS. A is for prayers of adoration. “Glory be to God on high!” C is for prayer of confession, which could include both a confession of faith, “I believe in God the Father almighty,” and confession of our sins. T is for prayers of thanksgiving. And S is for prayers of supplication, those things we ask of God.
The Pharisee here frames his prayer as a prayer of thanksgiving. But if he didn’t say, “God, I thank you,” you wouldn’t even know that he was thanking at all, because his prayer really isn’t really a prayer at all. It’s a boast. He prayed about himself. He compared himself to all the people who were more sinful than him and bragged about how much better he was. And then he bragged about the things he does. And these things were so great that they were even more than what God commanded. God commanded one annual fast. The Pharisees all fasted twice a week, Monday and Thursday. God commanded that his people give a tenth of their harvests from the field and their flocks of animals. The Pharisees gave a tenth of everything, even the smallest herbs they picked from their gardens.
The tax collector’s prayer couldn’t be any more different. He didn’t have any boasts. He knew that he had nothing to boast about. He didn’t pat his own back in pride. He beat his chest in sorrow. He didn’t even list his sins; they were too many to list. But he knew who he was, and he knew what he deserved. The sinner must die.
The tax collector’s prayer was a prayer of confession. It was also a prayer of supplication. Unlike the Pharisee, who thought he already had what he needed, the tax collector actually asked for something. “God, be merciful to me.”
This is what repentance is all about. The Augsburg Confession says “repentance consists of two parts. One part is contrition, that is, terrors striking the conscience through the knowledge of sin. The other part is faith, which is born of the Gospel or the Absolution and believes that for Christ’s sake, sins are forgiven.”
And really, for both of these men, God responded to them according to their prayer. The Pharisee had come to the temple carrying a great big bag full of boasts. And he left exactly the way he came. The tax collector came empty handed, with nothing to offer to God. And he left with exactly what he asked for, the mercy of God. Jesus said,
I tell you, this man went home justified rather than the other, because everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.
This parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector is one that we ought to think about regularly, because we all have a heart that likes to boast about how great we are. We look at other people. We look at our own works. And we think to ourselves, “Yeah, I’m a pretty good person. God, I thank you that I’m not like those people.” I found this paraphrase of the Pharisee’s prayer from Heinrich Mueller “I am, O God, the best of all; if you had me not, you would have no saint in the world; if I died, all piety would die with it.”
Here’s the thing though. The Pharisee did have some outward righteousness. He wasn’t a robber or an evildoer or an adulterer or a tax collector. And in this world that’s a good thing. But before God this Pharisee had one great sin that overshadowed them all, that made him worse than the robbers and evildoers and adulterers and tax collectors. It was the sin of pride and arrogance before God. According to the first commandment we should fear, love, and trust in God above all things. But the Pharisee feared, loved, and trusted in himself.
The Pharisee should have known better. As Christians, you and I do know better. We know that we can’t contribute anything to our salvation. We know that we can’t boast before God. But pride is a sneaky thing. The tyrant of our Old Adam that lives in our heart will do whatever it takes to hang on. We might even boast about how humble we are.
We might go through all the outward motions of piety. We might sob and shed tears over our sins. And then immediately turn around and judge a fellow Christian for being less of a Christian than I am. Am I then the tax collector? Or am I just another Pharisee in a tax collector’s hat?
But God is a merciful God. He desires the salvation of the Pharisee. He desires the salvation of the tax collector. He desires your salvation too. He isn’t fooled by your Old Adam’s cry’s that the tyrant is dead. No, he rolled up his sleeves and took hold of you and in your baptism he drowned that tyrant.
— Pastor Seth Georgson