Word for the Week: Which One Am I?
The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people – robbers, evildoers, adulterers – or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’ But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
Luke 18:11-13
So there I was. Preparing for Sunday School. You know the script. Well, I thought I did. It was the Pharisee and the publican (Luke 18:9-14).
Obviously, I identified with the publican, being the kind of person who is humble and honest before God and aware of my sinfulness. I’d never want to be associated with those nasty Pharisees. Then suddenly, there it was. The material said that Pharisees were respected members of the faith community, fine upstanding types. They tithed, they fasted, they kept the rules – in other words, they did the right thing in many God-fearing peoples’ eyes. For the first time, I wondered, ‘Am I the Pharisee in this story?’
I felt bad. I thought of all the times I have been mock-humble, keen to impress others more than God (he’s more forgiving) and pharisaically judgmental of those who didn’t make the grade (read ‘come to prayer meetings; do stuff, hold it all together’). Bad because trying to live as though I can attain righteousness by myself is a vainglorious waste of the freedom Jesus has afforded me. But I also felt good. Good because the gospel offers hope for modern-day Pharisees who realise they are sick and need a doctor.
Saul, later Paul, gave me hope. Humbled by temporary blindness, from a tyrannically zealous top-grade Pharisee to a grateful and gifted whole-life missionary disciple of Jesus, he wrote: ‘If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more.’ He was right. He ticked all the boxes. He would have written self-help books that deflated the general reader. But he went on to say: ‘I consider them [the things he had lost] rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ’ (Philippians 3:8-9).
All too often, we unwittingly encourage pharisaical behaviour, artifice, and unreality in our churches. How can we change? For me, contemplating the grim reality of the filthy rags that we’ve paraded as our finest efforts for God seeds true humility, as we begin to snatch glimpses of how our sinfulness looks to the holy God. Humility before God will deepen our real dependence on him for all that we need to serve him. May it be so.
Julie Hoey
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