Loading...Jesus 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. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, "God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.' But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!' I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted." Luke 18:9-14
I was 48 years old when I entered seminary. A life-long Episcopalian, I had lived at a time when we worshipped with Rite One, when, even with a full- time priest, we used Morning Prayer three Sundays a month and had Holy Eucharist only once a month. I lived through the process as the church developed the current Book of Common Prayer, and then, a few years later, the hymnal, which all happened around the same time as the controversial decision of the Church to ordain women to both the deaconate and the priesthood, and then to bishop. Then came the even more controversial decision to allow LGBTQ people to be consecrated as bishops. I had lived through a lot of changes in The Episcopal Church before starting seminary.
I had grown out of many idealistic expectations that clergy were perfect. I was a teen when my beloved priest divorced his wife and married a parishioner, who later became a priest. It was hard, as a teen whose peers were the children of the priest and the parishioner, to understand how a person I looked up to, could be, well, human. I was too young to understand the nuances and complexities of marriage.
I was in my 30’s when the priest of our parish divorced his wife and married the children’s formation minister at our parish. I may have been a couple decades older and understood more about the complexities of married life, but there was still a piece of me that wished the clergy in my life were better role models for the people they were called to serve.
I saw imperfect people in positions of leadership in the church. I saw these individuals as people with authority. And because I had never been on a vestry by this time in my life, I felt that priests had intrinsic power over decisions in the church. I didn’t quite understand, until I experienced it myself, how the hierarchy of leadership in the church functioned. I didn’t know how personalities impacted historical culture or how the diocesan structures played a role in decision-making.
But by the time I entered seminary, I had been both the Junior and Senior Warden at our church. I walked with my priest and the congregation when she announced her next call, and not too long after, she and her husband’s divorce. I had experienced the differences of male and female clergy and began to experience the leadership of gay and lesbian clergy throughout the diocese.
So, when one of my seminary professors in one of the first classes asked each of us to say one word about what ministry might look like, my word was “power.”
There was a collective gasp from this class made up of people from most mainline denominations as well as alternative religious practices. I was the average age—48—of my classmates, a heterosexual, married, mother of two teenagers, coming to seminary to fulfill a decades-old call to ministry. A woman who had experienced a denomination where I saw power play a role in how people experienced the Episcopal Church.
I responded to their gasp by saying that this was not about me desiring power, but that the people in the pews seem to assign power to their clergy. I had given it. I saw it from others. And I needed to learn how to work in a system where people would ascribe power to me as a priest in a parish, whether I wanted that power and all the expectations that come with it or not.
I knew that some church people come to church with high expectations for whomever is in the pulpit or behind the altar. I knew I had expected my clergy to show me what it meant to make, what I felt, was a greater commitment to God and to express it in ways that showed the people they served how to live holy and blameless lives.
I had also learned, after nearly five full decades, that my expectations were unrealistic. Clergy are human. They make mistakes. They make choices that might make their lives better, like divorce and remarriage. They can sometimes use their power to abuse others.
Power can be addictive, and it can be harmful. It can also be used in ways that build people up and help others learn. Power can reflect someone’s education, experience, and authority.
Power can also be something others give to or perceive in a person in a role or position of leadership.
And for people in leadership, it can be hard to live up to the expectations of the people they lead or serve.
When I was studying this gospel, I was reminded of that question in that seminary class and the fact that I had chosen the word “power.” I do believe that when I explained why “that” word, people began to understand just what it was I meant.
Jesus begins this parable by creating a bold statement. While our version of the text is good, we might want to consider the way Eugene Peterson expressed it in his transliteration in The Message: He told his next story to some who were complacently pleased with themselves over their moral performance and looked down their noses at the common people: “Two men went up to the Temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax man.”[1] Thus creating two characters who are praying in completely opposite ways.
The Pharisee begins his prayer, thanking God in what might be construed a backward way. “The Pharisee posed and prayed like this: ‘Oh, God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, crooks, adulterers, or, heaven forbid, like this tax man…”[2] To listen to this leader elevate himself above the likes of thieves, rogues, adulterers or tax collectors, dismissing any possibility that any of these people have any right to be in any relationship with God, because they are not doing it, aren’t living it, like he is, seems uncomfortable to me.
Then, the Pharisee seems to be boasting to God about how good he is. ‘I fast twice a week and tithe on all my income.’ Even though this list is short, these characteristics might provide the start of unattainable and unrealistic expectations that others may place on religious leaders. It’s laughable to me now to consider any single individual capable of such perfection.
Jesus compares the pious, self-righteous prayer of the leader—a prayer, I might argue that may be more about what others expect from their religious leaders than what is the reality of religious leaders—to the prayer of a pariah. The prayer of the despised tax collector.
If you think about a job that likely causes much consternation with the people, the tax collector might top the list. This would be a person, sent out by the Roman government, to manipulate the Israelites, the Jews, into paying more than what belonged to Caesar. They were sent to swindle and coerce people, probably people they knew, out of their scarce resources. They sometimes lined their own pockets, but other times they were expected to steal for the benefit of their superiors, for the people in positions of power.
The tax collector stood in his corner, seemingly praying out of embarrassment about a job he held that caused others harm. He begged for forgiveness. He, it seems, struggled with his conscience, with his heart, with his soul, because he was living a life that appeared to go against his faith.
“Meanwhile the tax man, slumped in the shadows, his face in his hands, not daring to look up, said, ‘God, give mercy. Forgive me, a sinner.’”
Honestly, it could also have been a prayer admitting that he could not keep a kosher house or eat a kosher diet, or that he could not regularly attend temple activities. He was asking for mercy, because he knew he was not living up to some internal or external expectation.
The two men in this story could not have been more opposite. And that’s the point of the parable.
Jesus is using extremes in this parable, as he usually does, to make a point. By comparing the superiority complex of the Pharisee to the humility of the tax collector, Jesus helps us understand that the rest of us must fit someplace in the middle. In the grey area. And that’s perfectly fine.
When we come to God in prayer, we hopefully bring our authentic selves. Sometimes we do compare ourselves to others. Sometimes we beat ourselves up with confessions that imply we might feel unworthy to stand before God in prayer.
Throughout our lives, we may find our behavior to be that of a sinner or that of a saint, but most of the time we are somewhere in between. We are human beings, trying to live in ways that express the love of God to all those we meet. We trust that God understands us.
I appreciate how Richard Swanson put it. He wrote: “Jews understand that God knows that human beings cannot always be fully observant. That was never God’s point in … faithful observance. God knows we need the rest, so God commands it. And also understands our dilemmas.”[3]
God understands our dilemmas. I find that comforting.
Now, that doesn’t mean we should leave it there. Sure, we have dilemmas. We have obstacles. We aren’t capable of perfection. But we can recognize that we have the capacity to change ourselves. We can do some self-reflection to look back on times we have learned something new that helped us grow in the past and how we continue to learn ways to grow into more faithful people.
I think this is the point of the end of this gospel. Jesus makes a bold statement that seems to elevate the tax collector’s humility because this tax collector recognizes what needs attention in his life.
I must admit, Eugene Peterson did a good job in his transliteration of this when he concluded this gospel this way: “Jesus commented, ‘This tax man, not the other, went home made right with God. If you walk around with your nose in the air, you’re going to end up flat on your face, but if you’re content to be simply yourself, you will become more than yourself.”
I truly believe that this parable gives us permission to be imperfect, and to recognize our imperfections in ways that help us self-reflect and make changes that better model Jesus’s way of love. When I think about all the people who were following Jesus back in that day, and I know they were not pious, perfect, or even religious men and women, but were, instead, flawed humans from all walks of life, I have hope that each of us is capable of first, recognizing our own belovedness, flaws and all, and second, that who we are and the ways we walk in this world can change in ways that help us be better reflections of God’s love.
I know that for a good part of my young life I had expectations of people in positions of authority, people who I believed had some level of power, how they needed to be exemplary models of walking like Jesus, of doing things, like we heard from the Pharisee this morning, such as fasting twice a week and tithing ten percent of all he earned. When I recognized my own misinterpretation of what it means to be clergy, I could see the beauty of each of our humanities. I was reminded that even people in positions of power could not be perfect.
I learned that even in their imperfection they were loved by God.
Amen.
[1] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2018%3A9-14&version=NRSVA;MSG
[2] https://cepreaching.org/commentary/2025-10-20/luke-189-14-4/
[3] https://provokingthegospel.wordpress.com/2025/10/21/a-provocation-proper-25-30-luke-189-14-october-26-2025/
