The Pharisee and the Tax Collector
A Sermon for 26 October 2025, 8am and 9.30am
Jeremiah 14:7-10,19-22
2 Tim 4:6-8,16-18
Luke 18:9-14
The audience that first heard Jesus tell this parable was probably aghast by the message delivered. That’s not because they didn’t agree with Jesus about the importance of humility when it comes to being right with God, but because, for them, tax collectors were real ratbags who exploited their own people for financial gain. First-century, Jewish tax-collectors in Roman Palestine were strongly incentivised to do so, because they contracted with the Romans (the occupying power as most Jews were concerned) to supply an agreed amount of tax from their compatriots each year, with the right to pocket anything over and above this. This was a clever fiscal system as far as the Romans were concerned, but it was very morally compromising for the Jews who took up their offer.
We don’t tend to think of tax-collectors in this way today. We may not be altogether happy with being taxed – as such – but our fiscal system is well regulated and transparent enough that we tend to think of people who work in the tax system as people of good moral character – perhaps a bit boring, but in no way devious or exploitative. Consequently, if we read this parable without an awareness of the historical context we might think that the only significant thing that separates the Pharisee and the Tax Collector in the parable is humility – a quality that the tax-collector has in spades (has a lot of) and the Pharisee has perishingly little of. By reading it that way we would spare ourselves the scandalous observation that the original audience would have made, namely, that humility doesn’t only put ‘good’ people in a right relationship with God, but it does the same for ‘bad’ people – ratbags, as I’ve said – and conversely, arrogance (the opposite of humility) prevents even the virtuous from experiencing a real, saving relationship with God.
This real, saving relationship with God is described by Jesus in the Gospel passage as ‘justification’. The idea of justification has been important in Christian thought from very early on. It was a significant theme in St Paul’s letters, in the works of St Augustine of Hippo in the fifth century, and it featured prominently in the debate between Protestant and Roman Catholic churches in the sixteenth century.
In the context of Christian theology, justification, refers to a person’s ‘being made right,’ made worthy, to stand before God, who alone is Holy, perfect and good. But it wasn’t Christians who started the conversation on justification. Thought on this matter had been going on for millennia in Hebrew and later Jewish circles. We were relative latecomers to the discussion so there is a lot of value, I think, in understanding how talk of justification had developed up to Jesus’ day, so as to be aware of where our Lord was in continuity with past strands of thought, and where his thoughts diverged. This little exercise (and it will be little, I promise) is quite important because it puts the lie to the notion that there is a stark contrast between Jewish and Christian approaches to justification, and highlights that there is a great deal of overlap on this matter as well as differences in emphasis.
The OT presents more than one approach to achieving justification. The sacrificial system was one of these; by offering the life of something valuable to God (animal or plant), the sins that had once been a barrier between the one making the offering and God were understood to be wiped away or covered over. We struggle a bit these days to see how the spilling of an innocent animal’s blood might take away moral blemishes in another party, but when we are talking about the OT sacrificial system we are talking about a very different religious and social context in which the animals and plants sacrificed to God served to physically support the religious nation (feeding the priesthood) – being a sort of a tax, or contribution to the common good we might say, as well as a devotion to God.
The OT also sets out the idea that a person’s justification depends on their faithfulness to the Covenant established between Yahweh and his people, namely, that he would be their God in return for their obedience to his commandments. There are the well-known Ten Commandments, but there are a great number of other ordinances beside these in the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch – over 600 actually. A faithful, first-century Jew would have done their best to observe all these commandments, but it is likely that for many, scrupulous observance was difficult, if not impossible, because of their occupation, or their financial circumstances which demanded they spend most of their time trying to eke out a living rather than pouring over scriptures and the implications they might have for faithful everyday living. There were people who did do that – a group referred to in the NT as the Pharisees. By and large, they don’t come across too well in the New Testament (today’s Gospel is a case in point), but I suspect the individual motivations of Pharisees differed markedly from one person to the next. A number of them were deeply interested in Jesus, intrigued enough to invite him into their houses (Luke 7:36; 11:37) to dine with them, and one of them – Nicodemus, the Pharisee who came to see Jesus ‘by night’ early on in his ministry (John 3:1-21), supplied the myrrh and aloes with which Jesus’ body was anointed for burial (John 19:39) – about 45kg of it.
A third way in which the OT indicates that a person is made right before God involves neither sacrifice nor strict observance of the law in the first instance, but instead a fundamental change within one’s person – a change of heart. This change of heart amounts to the recognition at a deep personal level of one’s utter dependence on God, of one’s smallness and brokenness. It is about contrition and humility.
Psalm 34:18 “The LORD is near to the broken-hearted, and saves the crushed in spirit.”
Psalm 51:17 “The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
Isa 57:15 “For thus says the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with those who are contrite and humble in spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite.
So here we have three approaches that the OT takes regarding justification; sacrifice, faithful living (following God’s commandments), and humility.
Each of those elements of justification are present in Jesus’ teaching. He doesn’t condemn the offering of sacrifice (Matt 5:24); when he heals people for instance, he frequently tells them to go and see the priest and do what is customary (Matt 8:4); and when it comes to paying taxes to the Temple, he is happy to oblige (Matt 17:24-27). What is more, he is, at times, even more rigorous than many of the Pharisees when it comes to honouring God’s commandments (his teaching on money and divorce for instance), but he places a great deal of stress on the need to be humble if we are to be right with God (Matt 11:29, ‘Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls;’ and Luke 14:11- choosing the lower position at table), ‘ For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted,’ – words repeated at the end of this morning’s Gospel.
Let’s get back to the parable: the Pharisee probably is, as he imagines himself to be, a faithful ‘son of the commandments.’ Though it is unlikely that he is faithful in every point of the law, he probably infringes the commandments to a far lesser degree than the tax collector, who (as I mentioned), in the context of first century Roman Palestine, made his living ripping off other Jews.
Any justificatory points the Pharisee gains for his good behaviour are lost due to his arrogance – to his failure to see that his goodness pales into insignificance compared to the goodness of God.
The problem with the Pharisee is that he is measuring his behaviour relative to the tax collector; he would do much better to focus on how he measures up to God’s perfection.
On that cosmic scale, the Pharisee is effectively in no better position to feel smug about his virtue than the tax collector who makes no pretence to being righteous in an earthly sense. The tax-collector admits he is ‘guilty as charged’ and, paradoxically, walks away from his encounter with God, justified, made right.
If the Pharisee were to scrutinize himself a bit more, and come to a felt awareness that he is far less good than he could be, he too would have God smiling on him.
None of this is to say that we ought to give up on trying to behave well (Christ calls us to be holy – Matt 5:48), but it is to say that our development in holiness – walking closer with God – depends (i) on us being very honest with ourselves about our short-comings and (ii) taking them to God, and like the tax-collector, asking God to have mercy on us so that we might be the daughters and sons of God that God has called us to be.
The old Prayer Book makes this truth abundantly clear. Just think of the Prayer of Humble Access prayed in the Communion Service, before reception of Communion: ‘We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy.’ This is not a compulsory part of the service anymore, having been relegated to an optional prayer in only one of the Eucharistic services in the 1989 NZ Prayer Book. I think it is fair to say that the 1989 Prayer Book (A New Zealand Prayer Book / He Karakia Mihinare O Aotearoa) is more upbeat in its presentation of human nature and/or emphasises to a greater extent the willingness of God to search out and find the lost, than its predecessor. And for the most part, I don’t think that is a bad thing at all. But we need to keep in mind that one of the key ways – perhaps the primary way – in which God makes inroads and advances in our lives is when the pretence that masks the broken pieces of our lives is set aside and we are revealed to ourselves as we really are. That’s a hell of a self-revelation sometimes. It reveals nothing more, however, to God than God already knew (which is everything about us and everything else), but it leads us to do one vital thing, which is to cry out to God for help. The response that that truly contrite plea receives is always positive (because God’s purpose, as the old prayer book says is ‘always to have mercy’); even for tax collectors, even for pharisees and priests. God have mercy on us all.
Tony Surman