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 clearly good or bad, right or wrong.
But it isn’t. And we have to see ourselves in both men; see the good and the bad, or evil as Campbell puts it in our quote.
For there is good and bad in both. 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 Publican 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 get it.
The parable is to wake us up to the truth that there is “nothing, nothing, nothing I can do to earn, deserve, be worthy of, or pay off my debt, - it is all grace.”
Grace is not reserved for those who are close to God; grace is for all and those who admit they need it are the first to receive it.
Grace is not about a nice God being nice to nice people. It is about a loving God being gracious to hurting people, no matter who. It’s about receiving what I do not deserve and never can deserve no matter how holy I become.
To live in God’s grace is to never stop praying the prayer of the tax collector 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. And praying that there might be more good then evil in my life!
"You yourself are participating in the evil,
or you are not alive. Whatever you do is
evil for somebody. This is one of the
ironies of the whole creation."
Joseph Campbell
Prayer thought for the week: “Lord, keep me from being so sure of myself that I can’t see my own wrong. Help me to see that I am both ‘saint and sinner’ so that your grace can flow through me to others.”
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