Proper 25C’25
26 October 2025
Luke 18.9-14
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church
North Little Rock, Arkansas
The Rev. Carey Stone<+>
“All who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted…God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” Amen -Luke 18.13-14
A priest, a pastor, and rabbi, were at an interfaith breakfast one morning and discovered that they all three had the same problem – their buildings had squirrels in the attic. The priest said, “When we discovered the problem, we hired an exterminator who sealed off the attic and fumigated it, but two weeks later the squirrels were back.”
The pastor said “we decided to buy and set humane traps that would trap but not kill the squirrels. We caught them all, took them 20 miles outside the city and released them. Unfortunately, two weeks later they were back again!”
The rabbi said, “We had exactly the same problem so I called a meeting of the trustees and they all agreed that we should make the squirrels full members of the temple – now we only see them at Hannukah and Passover!”
In today’s gospel, two men, walk into a Jewish temple to pray, one a Pharisee (religious leader), the other a Tax collector, Now, when Jesus references a Pharisee in some of his other parables, they are usually detestable hypocrites, but not so in this parable. In fact, if this Pharisee were to visit St. Luke’s we would immediately begin courting him for membership! Just listen to his credentials: He fasted twice a week when the law only required one day a week. He gave 10% of everything he earned to the temple. He was so glad, proud in fact, of his pious practices and his pristine track record with God: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.’ He wasn’t being hypocritical either, he really put his money where his mouth was. No doubt he would be at the temple anytime the doors were open.
No one could deny that he was a model example of a temple member. He was always seeking ever higher levels of religious perfection by making prayers throughout the day, and probably the first to fill out a pledge card and would give more alms than probably anyone else. It’s no accident that this parable comes around every couple of years during stewardship campaign season.
But something was off. The attention of the parable then shifts to the tax collector. As you know from a couple of recent sermons, tax collectors were despised and seen as traitors to the faith, and allies of the corrupt state. He stands back from the front of the temple and hangs back, he didn’t think himself worthy to even look up to heaven, and beat his chest as an outward and visible sign of his turning his life over to the care of God: ‘God be merciful to me, a sinner.’ Orthodox Christians have taken this and modified it slightly into a formal prayer known simply as the “Jesus Prayer,” ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”
Then Jesus says something that just didn’t sit well with the religious folk of his day and of ours: “I tell you; this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”
Two keys here to help us interpret the parable. The first is the word “justified,” which means to be made right, just as if he had never sinned. This parable isn’t not necessarily about trying harder to be humble. Nothing wrong with that but the point is revealed in the second key: “Jesus told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.” So, if our piety becomes some sort of bargaining chip with God, we will be disappointed. The parable reveals that our piety is not bad in and of itself, but the problem is that it is woefully insufficient when it comes to the plan of our salvation. St. Paul makes this crystal clear in his letter to the Ephesians:
For by grace are you saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves, not of works lest anyone should boast.
This is the truth that the tax collector knew, that he had an inability to save himself by any of his own good works. Religion can sometimes get our cart before the horse; the works should flow out from the relationship of being justified by God through grace and faith alone. Then our works will be a beautiful fruit of our salvation and relationship with God, rather than a means to perform well enough for God to grant it to us. We find the definition of grace in the outline of the faith in the Book of Common Prayer (p.858):
Grace is God’s favor towards us, unearned and undeserved; by grace God forgives our sins, enlightens our minds, stirs our hearts, and strengthens our wills.”
When this grace is given and received then our lives are transformed and we are enabled to fulfill our Christian mission, again from the outline of faith:
“The duty of all Christians is to follow Christ; to come together week by week for corporate worship; and to work, pray, and give for the spread of the kingdom of God.” BCP p.856
Two prayers two very different outcomes:
The Pharisee’s Prayer:
‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.’
The Tax collector’s prayer:
‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ Amen.