Who Is Righteous? Relfections on Luke 18:9-14, Pentecost 20, Year C
by John C. Holbert on Tuesday, June 24, 2025
Last week we examined the parable of the unjust judge and the persistent widow, a story said to be about the need for continuous prayer as a sign of faith, but also a delightful tale about two characters who serve as negative (the judge) and positive (the widow) models for those in search of true faith, so that when the Son of man shows up, he will find some of us faithful. Today, once again, we find two characters, both of whom model something for us. Only a careful reading of the story will reveal to us just who those models may be. I noted last week that the judge and the widow were characters in an overtly funny narrative, while the story for today may not be, with a quick reading only, all that humorous. But we may be in for a surprise or two on that score.
Once again, Luke reveals immediately what this parable is about and to whom it is directed. “He told this parable to certain people who trusted in themselves as righteous and scorned others” (or “regarded others with contempt” as NRSV reads)—Luke 18:9). I cannot speak for you, but I already feel the pinch of this story. Surely, I am righteous, or try very hard to be. And surely, I am distinctly more righteous than any number of foul folk who have just popped into my mind! I may not actually “regard them with contempt,” but I come pretty close to that. Donald Trump comes right up; I fear I do regard that cruel and ignorant man, the current occupant of the White House, in deep contempt and can barely listen to his arrogant voice each time it clogs my airwaves. It might be that I need to listen carefully to what Jesus has to say here.
“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and one a tax-collector” (Luke 18:10). Luke sets me up very well here. Given these two figures, one among the most overtly religious and respected in the community, and the other a generally despised agent of the empire, probably wealthy off the backs of everyone in the community, and certainly keeping more than his share of the revenue he earns from taxes of the community, it should be easy to say which is righteous. Not only that, the tax collector can be expected to bilk both the Romans and their subjects, growing fat on this ill-gotten gains at the expense of everyone.
The Pharisee stands and prays “these things to himself” (Luke 18:11). Or at least that is one way to translate the difficult Greek. He may either be praying quietly to himself, or he may be praying to himself rather than to God, or he may be praying referring only to himself, while perhaps having one eye cocked toward the tax-collector. The preposition pros may be read in any one of these three ways. I rather like the third, I suppose, since the picture of the man at prayer with his mind on self and his eye on another, offers a quite humorous picture indeed! The prayer to our modern ears sounds terribly self-righteous, but in fact is not so far removed from several Pharisaic prayers we know. “God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of the people,” he begins. A rather famous Pharisaic prayer begins, “God, I am grateful you did not make me a woman!” Hence, we would do well not to jump to conclusions too quickly about self-righteousness; this prayer may sound rather familiar to many Jewish ears of the time.
“They are thieves, unrighteous, adulterers, even like this tax-collector. I fast twice a week and donate tithes from everything I own.” From what we know about Jewish fasting practice, we may conclude that this Pharisee is boasting about his excessive fasting practice. And he is likewise claiming gifts of his possessions far beyond what any legal requirements demand. It is not exactly a caricature of Jewish prayer, but it represents two claims that exceed dramatically the requirements of appropriate piety, and thus call into serious question whether the Pharisee is in fact seeking righteousness before God or self-aggrandizement before his peers. However, it may be concluded that not every hearer that day in the temple would immediately find the Pharisee “over the top,” but might rather find him a powerful paragon of virtue, albeit a bit too full of himself.
Especially when compared to the other prayer that day, the Pharisee could only be the only one seen as pious. For those in the temple, that tax-collector could pray until he is blue in the face, could pray all day long, and simply never be received into the good grace of God. His life’s work forfeited forever his entrance into the world of the righteous. Of course, he stood far back in the temple, where he belonged, and did not raise his eyes toward heaven. He only could beat his breast and say, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner” (Luke 18:13).
We must not pass too quickly over what Jesus says in response to his own story: “I say to you, this man (the tax-collector) went back down to his house justified rather than the other” (Luke 18:14). One can imagine the rotten fruit flying after that astonishing idea! A tax-collector, justified; a Pharisee, no matter how full of himself, found somehow rejected! It makes no sense! The world simply does not work that way. Nevertheless, when Jesus says “justified,” he uses the Greek dikaioo, that passive verb used regularly in courts of law to indicate that the plaintiff is free to go; here the tax-collector has been justified by God. He is righteous.
The tax-collector makes no claim about himself other than he is a sinner, exactly what the Pharisee announced he was in his prayer. The tax-collector does not look toward the Pharisee, but only toward the floor, unwilling to raise his eyes upward. And he only begs for mercy, but does not claim anything for himself in terms of good deeds. Of course, the humble one is termed righteous, while the self-possessed one is turned away. We would readily and perhaps too easily conclude that. But we must not accept that judgment too readily. Luke’s point is that the world inaugurated by the prophet Jesus is set to turn everything upside down; in this world the expected righteous are not, while the outsider becomes the righteous. Luke in ways too numerous to count drives that point in his narrative again and again. Life with Jesus is nothing like the life we have known or expected.