Gospel: Luke 18:9-14 At rights with God
In the parable in today’s Gospel, we are invited to place ourselves in the shoes to two characters who represent extreme ways of being in the world. The Pharisee’s superior attitude immediately jumps out. He knows nothing of the efforts of the man praying behind him. Yet he dismisses him, and with him all humankind, as ‘thieves, rogues, adulterers. As a religious leader, he believes he had the moral high ground because he fasts and pay tithes, the outward shows [signs] of virtue.
The tax collector, on the other hand, simply asks God for help. He is aware of his sinfulness, but open to hope and change. As Jesus interprets the parable for his audience of ‘righteous’ people, he perhaps shocks them by telling them that the tax collector is the one at rights with God. In Luke’s Gospel, expectations are often subverted, as in the closing words of this parable, “For all who exult themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exulted”. This is a key teaching of Jesus repeated several times in Luke’s Gospel (see Lk 1:52; 14:11).
While the characters are contrasted for effect, at different times we embody the characters of each of them. Like the Pharisee, we can rush to judgment, without even realising we are doing so. We make presumptions about people based on their appearance, accent, background or occupation. We place ourselves on the ‘inside’, keeping others on the ‘outside’. When we remember that all people have their struggles, we are a lot kinder. Both of the characters in today’s parable would like to be at rights with God, but they have a different understanding of what that relationship entails. When we come into greater awareness, God’s grace is there.
© Triona Doherty & Jane Mellet, 2021. The Deep End: A Journey with the Sunday Gospels in the Year of Luke. (Dublin: Messenger Publications 2021.
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“Then and now there are those for whom the Good News is that there are insiders and outsiders and that we get to be on the inside. But to others the Good News is that there no longer are outsiders. – Nadia Bolz Weber