PROPER 25, October 28, 2007

The Pharisee and the Tax Collector, The Good Guy and the Bad Guy. It’s a familiar story. One comes riding into town wearing a white hat, and one comes riding into town wearing a black hat. The cowboy analogy dates me, I know; but you know what I mean. Sometimes it’s not even a case of Good Guy versus Bad Guy. Sometimes it’s just Us vs. Them. Sometimes it’s a case of Those Like Us and Those Not Like Us.

Let's be honest. Let's pretend for a moment that we really are doing our job of evangelizing, spreading the Gospel message, looking for new people to populate our pews, to become members of Christ Church. Given the choice between the Pharisee and the Tax Collector, whom would we choose? Whom would we recruit? No contest: we'd go after the Pharisee hands down.

I mean, let's get serious. Look at his credentials. Forget his pedigree. Look at his credentials. He openly admits, and Jesus does not contradict his assertions, that he is not a thief nor a rogue, nor an adulterer. Other translations say that he is not grasping or unjust, not an evildoer, or greedy or dishonest. That's what he is not. Look at what he is. Look at what he does. Look at the positives: he fasts twice a week – which was more than the Law required. He tithes all his income, again, more than the Law required. During a stewardship campaign, like the one we are in, that's wonderful to hear. Why, who would not want this man, and many more like him, to be members of our church? I mean, he’s just like us.

On the other hand, most of us would avoid the tax collector like the plague, tax collectors any time, any place, any year. But this tax collector we would avoid for more reasons than that he was a tax collector. He openly admits he is what the Pharisee is not: a thief and a rogue, grasping and unjust, greedy and dishonest. That's how he makes his living, how he survives. He is a pariah. He is hated by his fellow Jews. He is one of them but he is in bed with the enemy. He collects the hated tax. He makes his living by extorting as much as he can from his compatriots. He is certainly not like us, is he?

Given a choice between the Pharisee and the Publican we would all chose to have the Pharisee as our friend and as one whom we would like to sit next to in church and with whom we would share a cup of coffee and conversation afterwards. The tax collector? Let him go elsewhere, anywhere but here. That attitude may not be a Christian attitude, but it is real. Besides, what is wrong with the Pharisee anyway? Why is he the bad guy in Jesus' parable? And why is the tax collector, if not the good guy, why does he at least come off as a better guy than the Pharisee? Those are honest questions, are they not?

Well, they are. The point of the parable, however, is not about actions as it is about attitudes. Externally, there is no comparison between the two men. If we were to judge by external actions, the Pharisee would come out the winner. No contest. All his external, observable actions were so far superior to those of the tax collector that one would have to be a fool to even think that the better person was the tax collector.

In fact, the tax collector is not nor does Jesus say that he is. Jesus is neither condemning the Pharisee for his good actions nor praising the tax collector for his bad actions. Nor is Jesus comparing the actions of the two. He is comparing their attitudes.

That's where the good guy - bad guy comparison comes in. The Pharisee knew he was good. Nothing wrong with that. It would have been false humility for him to protest otherwise. He was not a thief nor an adulterer, and he practices his religion in an exemplary manner. No quarrel there. The problem was that he took all the credit. He did it. He was rather self-righteous. That was his problem. He had an attitude problem and what he needed was an attitude adjustment.

On the other hand, the tax collector had an action problem. He needed to get his life in order. But at least he recognized that he was a failure, or at least that he was a sinner, and that he needed to get his act, get his actions together. One needed an attitude adjustment. One needed to get his act together. Jesus' point, I think, is that the right attitude is more important than the right action. Self-righteousness is worse than selfishness.

And it is so easy to be self-righteous, is it not? It is so easy to be self-righteous, when, like the Pharisee, we look at our lives and our actions and know that we are pretty good. We may not be as good as the Pharisee in the parable, but we’re pretty good. And when we compare our goodness to someone else, to them, to those sinners, whoever they, whoever those sinners are, why we should be proud to be proud.

Then, in order to protect ourselves, to make us feel good about ourselves, we pointedly condemn those who don’t live up to our standards. We pick on particular people or particular sins. We tell ourselves that we are better than those people. We are better than those sinners. Self-righteousness can so easily rear its ugly head in our lives. It allows us to be like the Pharisee, to condemn those simply because they are unlike us. Over the course of history that condemnation has been based on color of skin, ethnic back ground, sexual orientation, the amount of money one has in the bank, or, like the Pharisee’s condemnation of the tax collector, how one came to accumulate one’s bank account.

The Pharisee thought he was hot stuff, knew he was; and he was. Where he went wrong was in thinking that it was all his own doing. He forgot about the grace of God. That was his downfall or would eventually lead to his downfall.

The tax collector realized that he had been misusing the gifts God had given him, the talents with which he had been blessed. The tax collector had already fallen. He couldn't get any lower. The only way to go was up. He'd hit the bottom of the barrel. All he could do was admit his failings and ask God to forgive him. No, he didn't even ask for forgiveness. All he asked was for God to have mercy.

Anyone who thinks he is better than anyone else is only one small step from becoming worse than that other person. I think that was Jesus' point at the end of the parable. Humiliation and exaltation are opposite sides of the same coin. Again, Jesus is neither condemning the Pharisee for his good actions nor praising the tax collector for his bad actions.

No, Jesus' point is simply a sound warning: bad attitudes, incorrect attitudes, are just as bad – worse even – than bad and incorrect actions. As the Old Testament sage warned us: pride, self-righteousness, does go before the fall – always. The tax collector had already fallen; he had reached the bottom of the barrel. The only place to go was up. He could now change his actions because he had changed his attitude. For the Pharisee the fall was just around the corner unless he changed his attitude.

All he needed to do while standing there in the temple in prayer was turn around and take a look at the tax collector and remember that "there, but for the grace of God, go I." We are no different. Like those old cowboy movies, the difference between us and them, between the good guy and the bad guy may be as simple as the color of the hat we wear. We need to recognize that difference; then take a look in the mirror and discover that the color of the hat we are wearing is probably neither black nor white but rather a distinct shade of gray.