Jesus addressed this parable to those who were convinced of their own righteousness and despised everyone else. “Two people went up to the temple area to pray: one was a Pharisee and the other was a tax collector. The Pharisee took up his position and spoke this prayer to himself . . . But the tax collector stood off at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast and prayed.” (Luke 18.9-11a; 13)
In his one-part memoir and one-part philosophic work Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen, the Texas-born and Hollywood-celebrated writer Larry McMurtry tells of a “salutary lesson” he learned early on in what he described as “the rapid transit of worldly fame.” The experience occurred at Southwest Texas Junior College in Uvalde where he had been invited to give a series of talks over the course of a day.
Noting that Uvalde had once been the home of John Nance Garner, FDR’s vice-president, who was remembered for saying that the vice presidency wasn’t worth a bootful of warm spit, McMurtry said he did his best to provide decent talks for the students who, in his words, “were like baby birds, waiting with their mouths open for any worm I might produce.” Realizing that the college was poor and wanting to give the students their money’s worth, he said he “fed them the fattest worms I could pull up.”
About halfway through the eight-hour session, there was a break that allowed McMurtry to return to his motel, hoping for a short nap. But before he could get any rest, his agent called him to tell him that his book Lonesome Dove had won the Pulitzer Prize. “Though it was nice to hear about the prize, a nap would have been awfully nice too,” McMurtry admitted.
Before he could get out of the motel to return to the college, a reporter and a photographer were waiting for him so that they could get an interview and a picture, postponing his lecture a bit. Years later, reflecting on the incident in his book, he remembered that the night before when he had driven into town he had seen the marquee of the Holiday Inn in which he was staying posting in big letters, “Welcome, Larry McMurtry, Author of Terms of Endearment.”
Acknowledging that such fanfare had never happened to him before and confessing it had made him feel good–”It meant more than the vice presidency meant to John Nance Garner”–he soon learned that “time waits for no author.” As he walked up to meet the press, he again looked up at the marquee and saw that it had already been changed. No longer did it welcome him to town. Now it read: “Lunch Special, Catfish: $3.95.”
In a flash, he said he realized something important. While his agent had been boasting of their shared success, his moment had passed. “It was,” he said, “a lesson to be remembered. The Pulitzer Prize was well and good,” he admitted, “but there was lunch to think of.” It was a lesson McMurtry never forgot, keeping him humble and down-to-earth, even as more successes came his way in future years.
It would have served the Pharisee in the story we hear today to have learned the same lesson. Unfortunately, he had not and, as a result, became stuffed with self-praise and bloated with self-promotion. He failed to understand the “rapid transit of worldly fame,” as McMurtry called it, the fact that our importance, however we measure it, passes quickly, something or somebody else replacing it.
The evangelist Luke provides us with the reason for Rabbi Jesus telling the story, introducing the story to us in this way: “Rabbi Jesus addressed this parable to those who were convinced of their own righteousness and despised everyone else.” The parameters are set in this sentence, providing us with enough information to tell us that we’re about to meet someone who is full of himself.
And, soon enough, we meet him, a Pharisee, one of the religious leaders, a group apparently unabashed in their pride, uninhibited in their self-importance. If the presentation of them in the gospel is anywhere near the truth–and we know where there is smoke there’s a fire–they displayed their status and sanctity with the same pomp and plumage as Tom Turkey in a Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade.
The problem was not that they didn’t follow the rules and regulations to the letter–they often did–but that they looked down on everyone else who failed to meet the same bar, resulting in a holier-than-thou attitude in general and their holding their nose at the riffraff in specific. Like a town crier, they announced their self-importance and their stainless virtue wherever and whenever they walked the streets of Jerusalem.
Of course, the truth–as Rabbi Jesus did not hesitate to point out–was that the Pharisees, while quick to point out their eliteness and holiness, were, in truth, hypocrites, not saints. While showcasing their external performance–Olympians as they saw themselves–their insides were far less gold-medal worthy, sometimes rotten-to-the-core, as the Rabbi was prone to say.
In contrast to the Pharisee, the story provides us with a picture of the publican, known as the tax-collector, a man who was about as low on the social scale as somebody could be without being a mole in the ground. An employee of the emperor, the publican collected the taxes owed Rome, not only taking a fair share from his Jewish neighbors, but fleecing them for more, his salary more often than not coming from the surplus he stole from them.
Considered a traitor and a thief, the tax-collector was a social pariah, even more unpopular than the IRS on April 15th. And, as the story makes clear, the publican has no illusions about himself, quick to admit that he is a sinner, his stance and his statements both indicating his self-awareness. He knows his failings and, unlike the Pharisee, sees no need to mask them or masquerade as someone he isn’t. “O God,” he prays, “be merciful to me, a sinner.”
As we can easily see, his confession is the opposite of what the Pharisee says, the publican’s admission of wrongdoing contrasting sharply with the detailed litany of good deeds that the Pharisee happily provides, shouting to the high heavens that he, unlike “the rest of humanity,” is not a robber, an evildoer, or an adulterer. Instead, as he is quick to point out–lest the Almighty mistake him for somebody else–he fasted twice a week and paid tithes on his income.
And while the publican hides his face in shame and beats his breast in agony, the Pharisee pats himself on the back with such frequency and freedom that it’s a wonder his arm doesn’t fall off his shoulder from the exertion. The contrast between the two is intentional, their behaviors antitheses of each other, forcing us to look, not only at them, but at ourselves, judging ourselves as like one and unlike the other.
The intent of the parable is clear and certain, challenging us to empty ourselves of our snobbery and self-importance, substituting instead a humble and contrite spirit, a phrase often found in the scriptures, connoting the proper posture of a person before the Most High God, who alone is all good and all holy, any good we do only a poor and pale imitation of his total goodness.
That theme is beautifully worked into the parable by way of specific spatial terms knitted into the text like a latch-hook canvas. At the very start, the evangelist says the parable is meant as a warning to those who were “convinced of their own righteousness and despised everyone else.” Here, the word despised is better translated as “looked down” on others, the spatial posture a strong symbol of a person’s interior disposition, considering himself as high and mighty.
As Rabbi Jesus begins his story, he states that two men “went up” to the temple area to pray. Not only is that factually true–the Temple was built on the highest point of the hill where Jerusalem stood—but it also is metaphorically true. We approach the Most High God by “going up” because he is in the heavens above us. Regardless of how holy we may consider ourselves, our zip code is still on the earth.
Then, once in the temple area, the two men take postures that are in stark contrast to each other, the physical placement indicating the differing ways they see themselves. The Pharisee, as Rabbi Jesus describes him, “took up his position,” a loose translation of the Greek phrase that literally means he “stood by himself.” In other words, the Pharisee sets himself apart from “the rest of humanity” in his prayer, in his posture, and with his position.
No surprise, then, that the Pharisee swiftly belittles everyone else, his words soon enough confirming his posture as someone who believes he is better than others, someone who stands apart from those he considers beneath him because of their lack of prestige or position in society. Not only does he see a wide space between him and others morally, he also intentionally puts himself at a physical distance from others.
As we listen to the story, we see that the publican also “stood at a distance,” but his posture is one of shame. And his distance, usually translated as “afar off,” is between himself and the Most High God, seeing himself as unworthy of approaching the all holy, all good Divine One. He clearly sees how far he has fallen from the ways of God. And so his castigation is not of others, as the Pharisee does, but of himself, his self-incriminations directed at his own sinfulness, not at the sins of others.
Through these spatial descriptors, we recognize the radical differences between the two men, both of whom “went up to the temple,” in other words, approached God, but who took very different postures in the presence of the Most High. One–the Pharisee–chooses to see his distance, not as distance from the all holy God, but as distance from all others whom he views as stained with sin like a white tablecloth on the kiddie table at Thanksgiving. The other one–the publican–for his part sees the distance as between himself and the Most High God, that space allowing humility and penitency, neither possible if we see no distance between ourselves and God, as the Pharisee does.
Rabbi Jesus concludes his story with a simple admonition, “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” Or, continuing the spatial metaphor, we could say that if we want to draw close to God, then we will have to draw close to sinners, since, after all, that is the space we all occupy vis-a-vis the Almighty. Paradoxically, then, the greater the distance we see between ourselves and God, the closer we are; and the less distance we see between ourselves and God, the further away we really are.
–Jeremy Myers
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