He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector [Luke 18:9-10, a portion of the the Gospel lesson appointed for this upcoming Sunday, the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, RCL, Year C (Luke 18:9-14)].
We’ve likely heard the parable contained in this week’s Gospel lesson many times. In fact, we’ve maybe heard it too many times. In it, the Pharisee and the tax collector go up to the Temple to pray, and we know—before Jesus even finishes the story—how it’s going to end. The self-righteous religious man will be humbled, and the humble sinner will be exalted.
I think that such familiarity creates a trap. As we listen to the Pharisee’s prayer—“God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector” [Luke 18:11]—we find ourselves thinking, “Well, thank God I’m not like that Pharisee.” And there it is: we’ve congratulated ourselves for our humility even as we’ve fallen into the very posture the parable condemns. The Pharisee thanks God he’s not like the tax collector; we thank God we’re not like the Pharisee. Same prayer, different target. I know I’ve done this.
But we may be asking the wrong question. What if this parable isn’t primarily about whether we’re like the Pharisee or like the tax collector? What if, instead, it’s about God? What if its purpose is to reveal something about the terms on which blessing comes to us?
The Pharisee’s Prayer: Taking What He Wants
It’s easy to make the Pharisee a villain. It’s a mistake. Everything he says in his prayer is true. He doesn’t steal. He doesn’t commit adultery. He’s not unjust. He fasts twice a week—more than the law requires. He gives a tenth of all his income. By the standards that even Jesus and Luke use elsewhere in the Gospel, the Pharisee is righteous. When Jesus tells the Parable of the Lost Sheep, he speaks of “ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance” [Luke 15:7]. The Pharisee would be one of them.
Moreover, his piety isn’t performance art. He’s studied the Torah. He knows the traditions. He takes his faith seriously—perhaps more seriously than most of us do. He shows up at the Temple to pray. He’s disciplined in ways we might admire if we’re honest with ourselves.
So what’s the problem?
Listen to the posture of his prayer: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people.” The prayer is addressed to God, but it’s really about himself. He’s brought his résumé to the Temple. He’s presenting his case. He’s itemizing his achievements as though God were a judge reviewing evidence, and he expects a favorable verdict based on the record.
Notice what he’s doing: he’s taking his righteousness. He’s securing his standing. He’s negotiating his position before God based on what he’s accomplished. His blessing, in his mind, is something he’s earned through diligence, discipline, and moral superiority. He trusts in himself.
The question his prayer raises is this: Can blessing be earned through performance? Can we establish our relationship with God by bringing Him our goodness, our obedience, our comparative righteousness? Can we take what we want from God if we’ve done enough to deserve it?
The Tax Collector’s Prayer: Asking for What He Needs
Unlike the Pharisee, the tax collector stands far off—not in the favored courts near the altar, but back in the shadows where outsiders linger. He won’t even lift his eyes to heaven. He beats his breast, a gesture of genuine anguish. And his prayer is five words in the Greek: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”
That’s it. No résumé. No list of mitigating circumstances. No comparison with others who are worse. No promises to reform or pledges to make restitution—just a desperate plea for mercy.
We don’t know if the tax collector plans to quit his job tomorrow. We don’t know if he’s going to repay those he’s cheated. For all we know, he’ll walk out of the Temple and go right back to collecting taxes for Rome, skimming off the top, collaborating with the occupation. The parable is silent about his future conduct. This silence matters. Jesus isn’t saying that a changed life doesn’t matter—elsewhere in Luke, he insists that it does. Zacchaeus, after all, pledges restitution and redistribution of his wealth [Luke 19:8]. But in this parable, Jesus is making a different point: our standing before God doesn’t depend on what we do afterward. Grace comes first. It comes to us before we’ve cleaned up our act, before we’ve made our amends, before we’ve proven our sincerity through changed behavior.
What we do know is this: the tax collector brings nothing. No achievements to display, no goodness to claim, no standing to assert. He simply throws himself on God’s mercy. He’s desperate. He knows he has no case to make, no leverage to use, no merit to claim. All he has is need.
And thus, the difference: in Jesus’ parable, the Pharisee is taking what he thinks he deserves. The tax collector is asking for what he knows he needs. One comes to the Temple with his hands full of his own righteousness. The other comes with his hands empty, reaching for something he cannot provide for himself.
One is negotiating. The other is begging.
What God Does
I think that it’s at this point that the parable becomes truly unsettling. Referring to the tax collector, Jesus says, “I tell you, this man went down to his home justified, rather than the other” [Luke 18:14].
The tax collector—the one with nothing to offer, the one who brought no righteousness, no reform, no restitution—goes home justified. The Pharisee—the one who brought everything, whose life was a catalog of genuine piety and moral discipline—goes home unjustified.
It’s interesting—and important—that Jesus uses the passive voice here: the tax collector “was justified.” He hasn’t accomplished anything. Instead, it’s something that was done to him. It’s a verdict pronounced, a status conferred, a gift given. He didn’t earn it. He couldn’t have. He had nothing to earn it with.
And the Pharisee? His righteousness is real, but it doesn’t save him. Not because God despises his fasting or scorns his tithing, but because he’s trusting in himself. He thinks he can set the terms of his relationship with God. He thinks blessing is something you secure through achievement.
But God doesn’t operate on those terms.
God justifies the unjustifiable. God gives blessing not as wages earned but as mercy poured out. God doesn’t need our righteousness as a condition for relationship. God doesn’t wait for us to get ourselves together before extending grace.
The Pharisee’s problem isn’t that he’s done too much good. His problem is that he thinks his goodness gives him leverage with God. He thinks he can take his place at the table because he’s earned the seat.
But blessing doesn’t work that way. It never has. Blessing comes not to those who think they can secure it through their strength, but to those who know they can only receive it through God’s mercy.
The Question That Hangs
So where does that leave us?
Some of us spend enormous energy trying to figure out where we stand. Are we righteous enough? Have we prayed enough, served enough, sacrificed enough? Or perhaps we’ve swung the other way: Are we humble enough? Broken enough? Appropriately aware of our sinfulness?
We keep trying to take our standing before God—either through our goodness or, paradoxically, through our repentance. We present our case: “Look at what I’ve done,” or even, “Look at how aware I am of what I haven’t done.” Either way, we’re still performing. We’re still trying to secure the verdict ourselves. We’re still bringing our résumé to the Temple, even if it’s a résumé of recognized failures rather than recognized achievements.
This is where that opening trap becomes most insidious. We think we’ve escaped the Pharisee’s error by congratulating ourselves on our humility. But manufactured humility is just another form of spiritual performance, another way of trying to take our standing before God rather than asking for it. The question isn’t whether we can correctly identify which character we resemble. The question is whether we’re willing to stop performing altogether.
What if blessing only comes when we stop trying to secure it and simply ask for it? What if all our attempts to establish our righteousness—or even our humility—are just different versions of the Pharisee’s prayer?
The tax collector doesn’t try to manage God’s opinion of him. He doesn’t calculate what posture might be most effective. He doesn’t craft his prayer to achieve maximum impact. He just stands there in his need and says, “Be merciful to me.”
And God justifies him.
Not because his prayer was better crafted. Not because his humility was more authentic. Not because he’d finally gotten low enough for God to reach him. God justifies him because that’s what God does when we finally stop trying to set the terms and simply ask for what we need.
What does it mean that God justifies not the ones who bring everything, but the ones who bring nothing but need? What does it mean that we can’t negotiate our way into blessing, can’t earn our way into grace, can’t secure our standing through either our righteousness or our repentance?
I think it means that all we can do—all we’ve ever been able to do—is stand at a distance and say, “Be merciful to me.” And discover that mercy has been waiting for us all along.
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