Luke 18:9-14 (The Message)
9-12 He told his next story to some who were complacently pleased with themselves over their moral performance and looked down their noses at the common people: “Two men went up to the Temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax man. The Pharisee posed and prayed like this: ‘Oh, God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, crooks, adulterers, or, heaven forbid, like this tax man. I fast twice a week and tithe on all my income.’
13 “Meanwhile the tax man, slumped in the shadows, his face in his hands, not daring to look up, said, ‘God, give mercy. Forgive me, a sinner.’”
14 Jesus commented, “This tax man, not the other, went home made right with God. If you walk around with your nose in the air, you’re going to end up flat on your face, but if you’re content to be simply yourself, you will become more than yourself.”
This parable seems to be simple, black or white, right or wrong.
But it isn’t. And we have to see ourselves in both; take the good with the bad.
For there is good and bad in both, and in us.
The pharisee is everything we might wish to be in terms of religious commitment and dedication. But it carries him to self righteousness, the last thing we want to be.
The Tax Collector is everything we don’t want to be in terms of life style yet his prayer of the heart is the best he or we can pray.
Both need God’s grace; neither deserve it; both need it. One appreciates it. The other is too set on his own goodness to see his need of it. Let’s be like the tax collector! For to live in God’s grace is to never stop praying his prayer even as I live with the zeal of the pharisee - knowing that a God of grace will “never let me down, never let me go, nor never let me off.”
"Grace isn’t a gift for getting it
right but for getting it wrong!"
Richard Rohr
Prayer thought for the week: “Lord, help me to be as humble as the tax man and as zealous as the Pharisee in the living out of your love and grace.” Amen
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