Sunday 26 October 2025

Psalm 84

Background
Before I entered ordained ministry I was a tax inspector, so this and other stories about tax gatherers and sinners always make me smile.

Today we have a parable, the last in a series over preceding Sundays, few of which appear in the other gospels. Luke seems to have a source not available to the other evangelists. Today’s –the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector – is found only in Luke's Gospel. Not only is the story unique to Luke but it is told in a characteristic Lucan fashion. There’s an introduction stating the purpose of the story, the story itself and then concluding comments generalising from the specifics of the story.

The meaning of the parable seems obvious: the contrast between the Pharisee’s gross public self-satisfaction and the tax collector’s humility before God is starkly drawn. However, we need to be cautious when we think we immediately know what Jesus is teaching in a parable. It’s all too easy to cast the tax collector as the hero and the Pharisee as the villain, each getting what he deserves, with the taxman then thanking God that he’s not like the Pharisee. But the latter is reciting prayers commonly used by Hebrew men and he is trying his best to be the person he believes he is called to be. The tax collector, likely regarded as a corrupt collaborator with the oppressive Roman occupiers, is, by his own admission, anything but heroic. He is religiously and politically in the wrong. The point is that the expected roles and outcomes are reversed by God’s gracious decision, a familiar pattern in the gospels: the strong and the weak, the Jew and the Gentile, the humble and the confidently self-assured, etc. God justifies the ungodly who repent and rely purely on God’s grace.

(I am indebted to Fred Craddock et al, Preaching through the Christian Year (Year C, p.456) for these insights.)

To Ponder:

• Think about some people of whose lifestyle you disapprove. Where are you in Jesus’ story?
• How can we rejoice in being Christian believers without feeling superior or contemptuous of non-believers?

Prayer
Gracious God, whose generosity is beyond my comprehension, help me not to judge others lest I be judged myself. Amen.

Bible notes author: The Revd Alan Bolton
Alan Bolton is a supernumerary presbyter in the High Wycombe Circuit, having sat down in 2018. He preaches regularly round the Circuit. His other occupations are family, music, model railways, walking and reading, with a close interest in politics.