Hungry

Luke 18:9-14 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector

9 He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ 13 But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ 14 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.”

I used to run a community kitchen called The Table, where twice a week we’d invite anyone and everyone, and we really mean the anyone part, to come to our free dinner. We usually get somewhere between seventy and a hundred folks who come in from the cold, or the heat, or the rain, to grab a cup of percolated coffee with “whitener”, as they call it, and wait for a meal, served by gracious volunteers who have no idea what they’ve gotten themselves in to. We get shut-ins and homeless folks. Drunks and NA regulars and folks addicted to their pain pills. We get mechanics and train riders and retired steel workers complaining that the government stole their pension. 

We get obsessive compulsives, multiple personalities, conspiracy theorists and ex-marines with PTSD. We get atheists, and agnostics, Bible-thumping born-again Christians, and old-school Catholics who are still shocked that the mass is no longer said in Latin — let alone the thought that I am female, and, a pastor. 

Well, one night, after we’ve passed out the food and folks are happily diving in to their mashed potatoes and green beans, I see a woman sitting at a table with nothing in front of her. No coffee, no green beans, no salisbury steak. 

“Aren’t you hungry?” I ask her. 

“Oh, no,” she responds. “I have food in my refrigerator at home.” 

“But, it’s dinner time, and we have dinner here,” I say. “Don’t you want to eat?” 

“Oh, I just couldn’t. I don’t want to take food away from someone else,” she says. 

“That’s super kind,” I tell her, “But we have plenty enough for everyone. C’mon. We’re all here because we’re hungry for something. Some of us are hungry for food, some are hungry to serve, some of us just need to see a friendly face once in awhile, but we’re all here because we’re hungry for something.” 

And with that and a little more cajoling, she eventually smiled and accepted the plate of food, and then ate it like a voracious teenager and came up for more. 

See, we’re all hungry for something. We all need something. The question is, can we recognize it? The question is, can we see the hunger in ourselves? Can we come to realize that we’re not all that different from each other because we’re all sitting in the dark, hungering, aching to be fed? 

Our parable today starts with a Pharisee who is very happy to be exactly where he is. He fits right in in the Temple.  After all, he is so right. He has nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to confess.  He has even gone above and beyond the requirements of Torah.  This guy is an overachiever.  He gets an A+ in faith. An A+ in worship.  An A+ in being a follower of the law.  With his 4.0 GPA, this guy is the Valedictorian of the School of Faith.  

And maybe he has earned the right to gloat about it just a little bit.  He’s worked hard.  He’s earned his grades after all, and now he’s ready to receive the accolades and scholarships and letters of recommendation that come along with it.  

And here’s the thing.  We, in our contemporary interpretations of Christian Faith, often beat up on the Pharisees.  They are always the counter-example, the ones that Jesus condemns, and so, we easily place them in the “other” column, so unlike ourselves. We say, “Thank God we are not like these poor Pharisees!” “Thank God that we’re so much better than they. We aren’t the hypocrites who say one thing and do another!  We aren’t the ones who are closed-minded and achievement-oriented or people who abuse their power!”

Except.  Except. The Pharisees were the ones who were trying to open up the Jewish faith so that all could participate in Torah law.  From our post-Reformation perspective, we see the Law as a burden, but for most Jews, the Law was a gift from God, and it was the Pharisees who enabled the common people to keep those laws.  Compared to the Sadducees and the Essenes, they were the inclusive ones. They came up with the oral Torah — developing new interpretations for old laws so as to make the Torah more acceptable, more relevant, and more inclusive. They’re the ones running the Tables and stocking the food pantry shelves. They’re the ones with mission and outreach and connection on their minds. They tithe and donate and volunteer and bake and potluck and out-Presbyterian all of us.

But over and over again, Jesus criticizes the Pharisees.  Not for the actions themselves, but for how the Pharisees view themselves because of their actions.  Jesus criticizes the Pharisees because of their self-righteous insistence on building up walls, on making themselves so very separate from everyone else, for not being inclusive enough. The Pharisees have been inclusive only insofar as to say, “hey, you, join me up here, on this pedestal that I’ve erected for myself.”

The root of the word Pharisee comes from the Hebrew word, “parash” which means to “make distinct,” to “separate oneself.” The Pharisee’s very identity comes from being different from, walled up, divided from, all the Others. 

And don’t we do this all the time?  Whether we are conservative or liberal or somewhere in between, we tend to hang out with only like-minded people, separating ourselves from those who are different from us, those who, from our perspective, have it so “wrong.” 

So here is this supposedly inclusive member of the Jewish community who is building walls around himself.  He is building walls of separation - separating himself from that poor sap over there - and - by extension - from everyone else.

His prayer is one of wall-building.

“Thank God I’m not like the others” = he builds a wall

“I tithe!” = a wall

“I fast!” = another wall

“I not only follow my superior interpretation of the Torah to the letter, but I go beyond it - fasting and tithing more than is called for” = and another wall is erected.

He has built a veritable fortress around himself. A fortress of “rightness.”  And no one is getting in.

“Thank God I’m not like those people,” he thinks.

Those people who have screwed up their lives.  Those people who have made poor choices.  Those people who are judgmental, or flailing around, or are swindlers, or who have too much credit card debt or who watch the wrong news channel and have those terrible political views.

He has built walls between himself and others, between himself and The Other.  And he throws the tax collector under the bus just to prove how very “other” he is. He needs this tax collector to be the sinner so that, in comparison, he is the one who has it right, who has it all together. For the Pharisee, the tax collector embodies the very essence of otherness.

Heaven forbid that the Pharisee see any similarities between himself and this corrupt, sinful tax collector.  His walls would come crumbling down.  And then, without his precious walls, without his protection from The Other, who would he be?  Just another sad sap, coming in front of God with all the shame and fear and honesty of a corrupt tax collector.

I don’t think this is simply a parable about how it’s good to go before God wearing hair shirts and whacking ourselves in the face with psalters and declaring how very wretched we are.  Because the truth is, neither the Pharisee nor the Tax Collector has the truth of who they really are.

They’re both in trouble if they stay where they are.  The tax collector is just as stuck as the Pharisee, both imprisoned in their closets by the view they have of themselves.  But the difference is, this poor sap of a tax collector knows that he’s got problems.  He knows he’s stuck in his closet of darkness, and knowing you’re stuck is the first step towards getting unstuck, the first step towards outgrowing that constricting space and stepping out into the light.

This tax collector knows that he’s hungry for something.
The Pharisee is denying his own hunger.

But God, being God, gives them both what they ask for.
The Pharisee gets a nice dose of self-righteousness. He asks nothing and gets nothing from God. 

The tax collector, asking for mercy and peace, gets forgiveness and redemption.

What makes the tax collector righteous in the sight of God?  It’s the opposite of the Pharisee’s self reliance.  He knows he’s not enough.  He knows he needs God - and he needs others. His prayer is one of confessing, and thereby tearing down those walls that separate himself from God - the Ultimate Other - and from others.

The tax collector is asking for redemption, for forgiveness.  He is asking to be re-born. Maybe even to go from “rightness” to “righteousness.” 

God makes him righteous - which, more accurately, or more clearly, means to be made upright.

The tax collector knows he’s been walking around with a bent back, hunched over and staring at the ground, limping a little.  

And it is the tax collector who has been made upright. Jesus tells us that he is the one who leaves the temple walking a little straighter, a little lighter, his gait a little smoother.  He is the one transformed and made new.

God wants to transform us.  To make us new. Not clean. Not right. Not smart. Or rich. Or all-together or valedictorians.  New.  

Not new like polished silver or new-car-smell or house in the new subdivision new.  

New like a newborn baby.  New like Levi, when they threw him on my chest, just seconds old.  Covered in blood and birth and squinting at the brightness of the light all around him.  New and able to stretch out his arms and shout with full lungs.  New and suddenly calm when he felt his mother’s breath and heard his mother’s voice. 

New because a whole world has been opened up that we never knew existed before.  New because we don’t want to be trapped in the dark closets of our own minds and narrow perspectives and walls and walls of expectation and perfection and demands.

We are the Pharisees, and at the same time, we are also the tax collectors.  We are called to die to our pharisaical sides and to our tax collecting sides. That death looks a lot like houses being torn down, the walls and the foundations that we have built for ourselves to separate us from each other crumbling to the ground, leaving us vulnerable, squinting into the sun, covered in the messy evidence of our rebirth.  

But also with the freedom to move around a little more, the room to grow and change, and the openness to connect with the Pharisees and tax collectors and conservatives and Democrats and Republicans and radio personalities that we never ever thought we could connect with. 

Oof.  That is so. Hard.

But that’s resurrection.  That’s being re-born.  It leaves us a little filthy, with the dirt from the grave still stuck under our fingernails and our eyes squinting at the shock of light that comes from stepping out of the grave and past the walls of separation that we have built for ourselves. That’s tearing down walls and dissolving those things that separate us from each other and from God.  

We’re all hungry for something. We are all hungry. That’s the great unifier. The great wall-destroyer. We are all hungry. Some are hungry for actual food, some are hungry for community, some need shelter and love and a new pair of shoes. Some of us are hungry to serve. Some of us are hungry to give. But we all have a need. None of us has it all right or all together or all perfect. 

The difference between the Pharisee and the tax collector is actually quite small. The only difference between the two is that the tax collector knows that he’s hungry. He knows he’s in need. He knows that, to use Calvin’s phrase, he’s “totally depraved.” And he knows to whom he needs to go to get fed. That’s it. That’s the only difference, really. 

The Pharisee wants to put up all these walls of difference between himself and the tax collector, but in doing that he’s just walled himself in, he’s shut himself in the dark closet of his own self-righteousness, and there he will stay, alone, until he realizes his own hunger and puts a chink in those walls and lets a little bit of the light in. 

Once we see that we’re hungry, the way to community and acceptance and love and redemption and righteousness is lit up for us. Once we realize we’re hungry, we know where to turn to get fed. Once we know where the light is coming from, we can step in to it.

Stay hungry, stay thirsty, stay open, and the walls will come falling down, and we will see ourselves in the other. There is so much light. We just have to let it in.

May we squint at all the light that God is sending into our world.

Thanks be to God.