Gratitude & Petition
Saturday of the Third Week of Lent
Luke 18:9-14
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/031426.cfm
Today’s gospel is about introspection and examination of conscience. In a lot of Jesus’s teachings, the gospel writers call out who Jesus’s audience is. Jesus’s audience helps the reader understand the context and the intent of Jesus’s teaching. In today’s gospel, Luke calls out that the parable Jesus is sharing is for people who are convinced of their own righteousness and despise others. We all think we know of people who are like this, but Jesus’s parable isn’t focused on judging others though.
Jesus picks the examples of two people that within Jesus’s culture were polar opposites. Pharisees were seen as holy and as a religious authority and tax collectors were seen as sinners and people who financially ripped off their neighbor and supported the occupying empire. Both groups can be seen as benefiting from worldly power dynamics in their own way, but in the Jewish tradition, it was good to be a Pharisee and not a tax collector. The culture presumes the goodness of the Pharisee and the evil of the tax collector. In the parable, Jesus does call out some external observations. The Pharisee takes his position in the temple and the tax collector stood off at a distance, wouldn’t even look to heaven, and beat his breast.
The story also shows some internal observations of both characters as well by showing insights into their prayers. The prayer of the Pharisee is graciously boastful. His prayer expresses gratitude for not being like the rest of humanity and praises how he follows religious practice and discipline. The tax collector, on the other hand, beats his breast and prays for mercy for being a sinner.
In this parable, Luke actually uses some people who were regularly in Jesus’s audience as characters, the Pharisee and the tax collector. In not calling out more specifics regarding Jesus’s audience, the author is showing how this parable can be universally applied. We all have the potential of being the Pharisee and being the tax collector. Life circumstances may drive us to be either one. When we’re down on our luck, we may be more prone to pray like the tax collector, and when things are going really well, our prayer may be more like the Pharisee. Depending on what’s happening in our life, we may look externally or internally. The Pharisee, in his societal success, looked outside of himself in his prayer by comparing himself to others, whereas the tax collector looked humbly inward.
God desires for the playing field to be leveled. If we exalt ourselves, we will be humbled, and if we humble ourselves, we will be exalted. As the tax collector went home justified in Jesus’s parable, Jesus is calling us to follow that example; we are to be humble and let God be the one to exalt us. The gospel of Jesus is not a prosperity gospel. In fact, Jesus shows how it’s harder to be a follower when one prospers. That’s the challenge. We desire for earthly success and prosperity, but that desire and the prosperity itself has a high chance of being our demise. God wants more than material for us, God wants the depth and substance underneath it.
May our hearts grow to be more humble regardless of circumstances.
