“The tax collector stood off at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to heaven but beat his breast and prayed, ‘O God, be merciful to me a sinner.'” (Luke 18.13)
A common exercise that was used for many years to build self-esteem in elementary age students was to have each student make a list of eight qualities that they liked about themselves. Then each quality was written on a paper petal that was used to form a flower. When the petals were arranged in a circle, each child put a photo of him or herself in the center of the flower.
Thinking up nice things to say about yourself was supposed to enhance self-confidence and improve academic achievement. Time has proved the fallacy or foolishness of the exercise. The flower exercise–along with a backpack of other similar self-esteem efforts–only resulted in creating a nation of narcissists, not a group of self-assured persons. Today psychologists argue that the only way to achieve self-esteem is to accomplish something. In other words, if you want to feel good about yourself, then you need to do something good.
The Pharisee in the Galilean Teacher’s story sounds like an early product of the self-esteem movement. As the Rabbi tells the story, this Pharisee comes to the Temple to pray, but instead he uses his time to brag. “O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity–greedy, dishonest, adulterous–or even like this tax collector.” He then points to a man who stands with downcast head some distance away. The Pharisee is pumped full of himself and his so-called prayer is more a celebration of himself than a petition to God. Since he is already perfect–at least in his own eyes–he needs nothing from God, except recognition of his moral superiority to others.
It should come as no surprise to us that the humble Rabbi shifts our attention in the story away from the Pharisee to the tax collector or publican who is anything but proud of himself. This man, unlike the pompous Pharisee, finds little–if anything–to brag about. His prayer is an admission of his failures. All he can say is, “O God, be merciful to me a sinner.” Unlike his counterpart who lists only his accomplishments, this poor man thinks only of his faults. We can assume he finds they are too many to list.
The holy man from Galilee ends his story with an assessment of the character of these two men. “I tell you, the latter went home justified, not the former. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” Like so many of the Rabbi’s other cautionary tales, this story of the proud man and the humble man gives us instruction on what is pleasing to God and what is displeasing to him. It is safe to say from this story that pumped-up pride does not please the Almighty.
If we step away from the story for a moment, we can find a useful analogy in the example of the blowfish. This specimen of fish, also known as a balloonfish, receives its name because of a peculiar defense mechanism that it has. When it feels threatened or in the spotlight of a larger fish, the blowfish can inflate its stomach with air and–because of the elasticity of its skin–it can pump up itself until it looks double its size. So, while it may look big and important, it is really just an insecure little fish. The rest is hot air.
Therein is the sin in the story of the Pharisee and the publican. It is expressed in the hot air of the Pharisee who proclaims, “O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity.” The truth is he is just like everybody else. Regardless of how the Pharisees sees himself, God sees him as he is–a sinner no different from anyone else. Or as the sinful Saul–who knew a thing or two about being knocked off a high horse–would say many years later, “All have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3.23).
The lesson from the Rabbi called Yeshua bar Yossef is the same. He strips away our shallow sense of self-importance and shows us that we all come from the mud and the muck of human matter. God alone is holy and we are not God. Therefore we are not holy. Here honesty and humility about who we are will bring us closer to God than a list of the lies we tell ourselves about our specialness and our singular importance. We are just like the rest of humanity.
Unfortunately, we do not live in an age that promotes humility or meekness. Quite the opposite. Rather than recognizing our shared humanity with its fair share of faults and failures, we choose to see our singularity and our superiority. We don’t even like to sing the verse from the song “Amazing Grace” that would have us admit, “How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.” Or at least the words don’t flow easily from our mouths.
Our age is the hyphenated age of self-assurance and self-absorption, of self-aggrandizement and self-importance, of self-promotion and self-righteousness–all of which, you notice, begin with self. These traits are not the way of life that the humble Rabbi of Nazareth lived or taught. The “s” word in his vocabulary was not “self”, but “service.” It is a word not often heard and less often lived in these times. We have become the Pharisee in the story, not the publican.
I still remember the morning I was sitting at IHOP and could not help but overhear the conversation taking place behind me between a college person and an older woman whom I presume was interviewing the young man for an internship or a job. The young man said–without a shred of self-doubt in his voice–“I’m very good at negotiating. I’m very good at persuading.” Like the Pharisee in the story, he had a long list of his attributes that he was very willing to share with his listener. He was the epitome of our age, an age that likes to put self before service.
As I sat and listened, I wondered what the Galilean Teacher would have thought. I think I know. We’re told today that he shared this story of the two men in the Temple because he had overheard a similar conversation among people “who were convinced of their own righteousness and who despised everyone else.” And we know how that story ended.
— Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 