Trapped Like Mice - Rats

Luke 18:9-14

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. 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."

There are no two ways about it. 

This parable is a trap!

A trap I tell you. 

That starts with T and rhymes with C and . . . 

(time to stop this dumb line of - - - whatever. crap?)

This parable clearly is a trap. 

I think of the line by Bilbo Baggins in The Fellowship of the Ring, which, if I recall correctly, is a part of his farewell speech before he disappears from the Shire:

I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you, half as well as you deserve.

It takes a while for the people to realize that this “toast” might well be an insult.

I wonder at this parable. 

Yes, it is a trap. 

I liked the work that thehardestquestion.org guy did with that aspect of it. . . 

He calls it the Parable Trap, and he asks this as the hardest question

“Is the Pharisee’s self-justification built on the Law or his comparison to others?”

yup.

Many take this text and reflect on humility. 

Capon does a nice job in his sermon, and he says, it is not about humility, rather, the Pharisee making the error of trusting in his own abilities and not trusting in God alone.

yup

All this is so. 

Yet, I have found a couple folks who address what Luke might be suggesting is central - more than others do. And that is the introductory line: Jesus  

told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt:

- And here I thought he told it so we would be more humble. 

I wonder if Luke’s introducing of the parable in this way doesn’t “double down” on the trap thing.

It seems, that in one way or another, it is possible to take a couple different wrong turns in this maze of a text.

For instance, in a pretty well done piece on this text, at goodpreacher.com, Joerg Rieger (I think - its not clear who the author is) starts by saying that “At first sight, the theological meaning of this story seems clear: do not boast about your accomplishments, admit that nobody is perfect and everything will be fine.”

But then, he says, we might ask what it might mean to confess your sin. . . and from there he goes to the connection between righteousness, justification and justice. And then he concludes that “In the end, both Pharisee and tax collector need to develop a more robust understanding of their sinfulness in order join God’s alternative justice.”

yup

But - rather than being moved to take note of the tax collector in his humanness. Rather than being moved to not hold others in contempt, we’ve gone and tried to solve all the problems of world hunger, and begun on the path to alternative forms of energy production.

I digress.

But I think that it may well be easy to follow interpretive paths that cause us to digress. . . cause us to speak of our humility - our righteousness - our justification - and to not address our desire to hold others in contempt. I suspect that Rathbun’s hardest question gets at this some. .  .

Loader - in his Australian way of spelling, says of the Pharisee, that the Pharisee, in his righteousness, and in his differentiating himself over and against the tax collector . . . 

Love of God has become separated from love of neighbour. . .

he goes on to say

The answer is not to pretend the toll collector has done no wrong, but to accept our common humanity & to know that our real value is in loving & accepting ourselves as God loves us & not upping our value by downing others. The toll collector is also a person of worth. We can forget trying to earn credit points w/ God & establishing our worth on a relative scale. When we do so we will have so much more time & space & energy for compassion, both receiving & giving it. ‘Pharisees’ need it - as much as toll collectors.

Roberta Bondi has a nice piece titled: Sin of Scorn says:

 we too live in a world of scorching, escalating, judgmental scorn - our own & others’ - that is grinding us all down to the bone. As Christians, how can we ever escape it? Perhaps we need not so much to quit bragging about our goodness & admit that we are sinners, as to give up the whole question of whether any of us are sinners. (I suspect that if I can acknowledge & learn to thank God when I am able to do something good, I will not have to demonstrate my worth to myself by despising those whose lives look very different from mine.)

"There is no other sin than that of being scornful," one of the desert Abbas used to say. As Dorotheos  [some desert Father] suggests, allowing ourselves to experience gratitude to God for the good we can do may truly provide some healing for our scornful souls.

Let me conclude by saying that it is true I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you, half as well as you deserve.