Commentary on Luke 18:9-14

Parable and prayer interlace in this passage, much as in last week’s lectionary. So also do the concerns about the shape of God’s reign and what faithfulness looks like as we lean into the advent of the transformation of a world still haunted by death and its forces. Moreover, Luke here provides a sharp comparison in the parable’s protagonists as well as their prayers.

But first, the exegetically vital interpretive frame. So often, the Gospel writers provide us a hermeneutical key for Jesus’ parables. That is, when Jesus tells these little but powerful stories, he typically does so within a particular context that should shape how we proclaim the parables.

In this case, Jesus “told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt” (verse 9). Before turning to the parable, the preacher may want to dwell here a bit. To whom is Luke’s Jesus referring? The temptation is to map the description in verse 9 entirely to the Pharisee in the parable. But notice that the “some” in verse 9 are not named. They cannot be isolated to any one group of people. The Pharisee is but an illustration, as is the tax collector.

Who counts as “righteous” in Luke’s narrative? Righteousness is a trait worth emulating quite often for Luke. Elizabeth and Zechariah are righteous (1:6). So also Simeon (2:25) and the council member Joseph, who provides a tomb for the crucified Jesus (23:50). Jesus himself is called righteous by the centurion (23:47, typically translated as “innocent”). Moreover, Jesus promises blessing when we feed those who “cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous” (14:14). 

At the same time, the righteous sometimes fall short of the adjective in striking ways. In 5:32, Jesus opts “to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance.” In the famous parables of chapter 15, it is the repentant sinner who is worthy of celebration, not the “ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance” (15:7). And in 20:20, the same Greek adjective describes the “spies who pretended to be honest” so that Jesus might be caught in his words.

Such are the tensions Luke navigates when describing the righteous. The righteous are both imitable and an object lesson in going awry. Perhaps, then, it is two other actions and attitudes that separate the folks being addressed by this parable. First is self-trust. The second is the contempt of others. Both are linked. To trust yourself in this way is to believe that being right supersedes curiosity about others, love for those who move through the world in a different way than you do. After all, to see your neighbor in contempt presupposes their fundamental error and your righteousness. 

As resentment, grievance, and contempt invade our political and social lives, this is a parable worth pondering afresh, and it is one worth reading widely, not narrowly. In the end, this is not a story about a Pharisee and a tax collector so much as a story about the deeply human drive to be right above all else, and the way such a drive leads us to look at our neighbor askance, causing us to lose who we are called to be in the process.

Thus, the parable here is illustrative, not precisely descriptive. It does not dwell on the character of Pharisees or tax collectors writ large. These two characters instead represent the surprise of the parable. After all, the Pharisee names a number of characteristics we should all value: He prays. He does not steal or cause unrest or commit adultery or become a cog in imperial rule. He fasts. He tithes. These are all behaviors Luke’s Jesus would celebrate. 

The comparison he makes is where he goes astray: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people … even like this tax collector” betrays that this imagined Pharisee’s righteousness rests on trust in himself rather than interdependence with others. His righteousness is a possession, solely to be clasped.

The contrast is sharp. The tax collector sets himself apart. His head is bowed. He pleads for mercy rather than trading in contempt. He calls himself a sinner rather than setting himself apart from others. For all we know, this tax collector is exactly right. What if, in the narrative world of the parable, he is the worst of the tax collectors, preying upon his neighbors and enriching himself while others suffer in fear of Rome’s might? When he goes home justified (verse 14), it is not perhaps because he has done well but because he recognizes the depth of his errors, the pain he has caused others, the wayward path he has trod.

This is the surprise of the parable. We are supposed to initially see the Pharisee as the hero and the tax collector as the villain, only to be puzzled by Jesus’ flipping of the script. Our preaching may then grant an opportunity to scramble our assumptions about righteousness. Whom do we expect to live in ways we should want to emulate? What if their purported righteousness is actually a flaw? Whom do we gaze at with contempt? What if their sinfulness is the ground of God’s extravagant mercy?

In the end, the parable probably imagines that we would be better off in a world where more of us prayed, fasted, tithed. And yet, when such actions engender contempt, resentment, and grievance about those who cannot or will not be righteous in the same way, then we have our way. We have misunderstood the shape of salvation. We have even come to hold contempt for God.