OH DEAR

Most of us know the story of the Pharisee and the publican in Luke 18. Well, up to a point. We know that there was this self-righteous hypocrite extremely pleased with himself and sure that God felt the same way about him; and then there was this poor sod who just felt like hell and hoped God would have mercy on him. Now, let's look at this a little more closely. 

The Pharisee was a Pharisee: the word comes from Hebrew perushim, meaning those who are set apart or sanctified; they were the adversaries of the Sadducees, who were classy if Scriptural, while the Pharisees were more democratic but believed that there was also an oral Law and that salvation depended on observance and moral purity. 

However, when you read the story carefully and if you are also in the habit of reading the Psalms, a different angle starts to show. For what is the Pharisee doing? He is doing what we not only are all told to do at all times but in our better moments want to do: he is giving thanks. His prayer is a prayer of thanksgiving. And what is more, it's not just a thanksgiving of the kind 'Gee, Lord, thanks for not making me a shit like Joey there'. It's a serious, lawful, indeed laudable thanksgiving. Let's look at the text.

Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican.

The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.

Now look at this passage from Psalm 18:20-24:

The Lord rewarded me according to my righteousness; according to the cleanness of my hands hath he recompensed me.

For I have kept the ways of the Lord, and have not wickedly departed from my God.

For all his judgments were before me, and I did not put away his statutes from me.

I was also upright before him, and I kept myself from mine iniquity.

Therefore hath the Lord recompensed me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands in his eyesight.

The Pharisee, in other words, is giving thanks in perfect accordance with the Psalmist. His one error, of course, is his mention of 'this publican': that gets it a little close to the bone. Still, it would have been forgiven him by his fellow 'sanctified ones'; and we know that the Psalmist has it in for the ungodly and the wicked at all times, in no uncertain terms. Moreover, the 'publican' is a known collaborator, a stooge of the pagan oppressors: someone to be socially and religiously avoided like the plague. 

So what does this mean for us, in the fifth week of Lent? Suppose you were giving up X, Y and Z for Lent. And by now, in Passiontide, you are led to look back, and you say to yourself 'Hey, so far so good, I've managed it this year: yea!' It could of course refer to something bigger than giving up Scotch or chocolate: any training you have set yourself for this year's Lent. And, unlike previous years, it's working. Now you know that it would be both wrong and, worse, foolish to pat yourself on the back. So what do you do? You give thanks to God for helping you to make it work. And Boom! Ouch! there you run bang into our friend the Pharisee. 

Ok, now, let us avoid our first reaction, i.e. 'Well dammit, I give up. Whatever I do, it's never enough, I'm supposed to feel guilty all the time, what kind of a religion is this anyway?' No. Not. Look at it differently. The Pharisee is not exactly sacrificing a bull, but within the later dispensation he is doing that same thing: he is acting according to God's rules, as laid down by Moses and updated by the Proper Authorities. But he has forgotten two other Psalms, 50 and 51:

I will take no bullock out of thy house, nor he goats out of thy folds. For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof. Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats? . . . For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.

No bullocks; no rules; no laws. What Jesus means by the story is that what matters is the heart. And however well our Lent has gone, we are still a bunch of messed-up collaborators with the enemy, and we know it. 'Deus propitius esto mihi peccatori'. Amen.