Archbishop of Sydney

30th Sunday in Ordinary Time

St. Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney
Sirach 35:12-14, 16-19; 2 Tim 4:6-8, 16-18; Lk 18:9-14

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
28/10/2007

The parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector is one of the Lord’s best known parables, ranking with the parable of the prodigal son.  In my youth it was often described as the parable of the Pharisee and the publican, to the detriment of our hotelkeepers.  Without doubt the title of tax collector is more accurate, although the role of the tax collector today, still somewhat unpopular, is very different from the Jewish situation two thousand years ago.

Tax collectors then had a bad public reputation.  The tax collection was privatised and they retained what they collected above their quota for the non-Jewish King Herod and the Roman overlords.  It was also felt that they could be bribed and dealt unjustly with the poor.  There does not seem to be any suggestion that the tax collector of the parable was a just man or even that he was a Robin Hood type of tax collector, who robbed the rich to help the poor.

Luke provides the key to the parable with his opening explanatory sentence about the listeners who prided themselves on their virtue and despised everyone else.

The commentators insists that this story would have been deeply shocking to Our Lord’s hearers, especially the religiously observant, because it seems to praise a public sinner and does criticise an observant Jew who scrupulously performs his duties, avoiding adultery, greed and is just in his business dealings.  He also pays his tithes i.e. one tenth of his income to the Jewish religious authorities.

I suspect the situation was a little more complicated than this as human nature does not warm to the proud and the religiously pretentious, although the reversal of the politically correct roles for the two main protagonists would have been provoking.

It says something about the atmosphere of faith in which I grew up and something more about the way Christ’s teachings have penetrated our popular culture that I have never found the parable in any way shocking or disconcerting.  In the small Catholic world in which I grew up just after the Second World War none of us approved of religious show-offs, especially if we were not particularly pious ourselves (although a clear majority of my school mates worshipped each week) and we also objected to those who looked down on others for any reason at all.  You might say there was more than a little of the Pharisee in us as we cheerfully and roundly condemned anyone we thought of as pharisaical!  Ours was a society which prized honesty and was wary of dissemblers.

What exactly was Christ’s message when he told this parable?

As a preliminary clarification we can rule out the suggestion that God was somehow unjust to the Pharisee or disliked him for no good reason.  We similarly reject the suggestion that God was praising or approving the wrong doing of the tax collector.

The tax collector was humbling himself by honestly conceding that he was a sinner and asking God for mercy.  He is not despairing because he asks for God’s mercy, probably quoting the opening words of Psalm 51, which goes on to proclaim that God will not despise “a broken and a contrite heart”.

On the other hand the Pharisee is exaggerating his goodness, concentrating solely on his good behaviour, studiously ignoring his own faults and concentrating on the faults and weaknesses of others.  He condemns the general mass of people and the tax collector, whose heart is unknown to him.  Here we should remember Our Lord’s other statements about the blind Pharisee, who neglects the more important matters of the law, justice, mercy and faith and about the hypocrite who sees the splinter in another’s eye and cannot see the plank of wood in his own!

The Pharisee is proud, loves himself, does not have much need for God, and has no manifest sympathy or love for his fellow human beings.

The parable chimes in nicely with St. Paul’s teaching about the insufficiency of simply observing the precepts of the Law, of doing this in a heartless, loveless way.  His religious practice is one sided and complacent.

The example of the Pharisee is not a warning for other people but a warning for each one of us.  Deep in the heart of each one of us there can be a dose of the Pharisee, which chooses our ground carefully so that we can exalt our own performance or endowments or situation and look down on others.

We are always called to be honest, to be sympathetic and loving and to realise that we need God’s love and forgiveness.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.