the pharisee and the tax collector

A Pilgrimage to the Cross

Walking through Lent with Jesus

Thursday 31st March

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

    “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

    “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

                                             Luke 18: 9-14

Does this parable sound a bit like a caricature of a hypocrite- we read it thinking ‘Obviously I’m not like that Pharisee’…..

Or we read accounts of other people and other places, such as the events in Japan, and our sadness is tinged with a self-righteousness shock-‘How could people behave like that?’

As we think about sin, failure, morals…. perhaps we have to start with ourselves, and echo the prayer of the tax collector:

God, have mercy on me, a sinner