Occupation by licking the boots of the Nazis, and you get the feel of how Jews felt about tax men in the first century. They didn't make sarcastic jokes about tax men, they lynched them. They spat on them when they passed and cursed the ground they walked on. Yet God heard the tax man's prayer—the very person they would never have listened to, let alone helped, in a thousand years.
On the other hand, the man who went home unheard, Jesus tells us, was a Pharisee. Once again, as modern readers we so easily miss the outrage of such a suggestion. For if we know from childhood that Samaritans are proverbially good, then even more do we know from childhood that Pharisees are proverbially bad. As soon as Jesus identifies this man as a Pharisee, we conclude that he's going to be the villain of the piece. All kinds of negative and damning associations flow into our minds at the mere mention of the word 'Pharisee'.
Once again, that would not have been the reaction of Jesus' original hearers. For the Pharisee was the churchman, the Bible student; fundamentalist in his view of Scripture, scrupulous in his observance of God's law, a patriot, a philanthropist, a model of holiness, an enthusiastic supporter of Mary Whitehouse, 'Keep Sunday Special' and the Moral Majority.
This is one parable the shock factor of which we just can't afford to miss. Jesus has got something vital to teach us here about the whole nature of religion, of prayer, of guilt, of righteousness; and we dare not allow our twentieth-century images of tax men and Pharisees to blunt the force of his warnings.
So try hard with me to get under the surface of this parable into the shoes of Jesus' original hearers, and benefit from it.
First, let's ask a question. What was so wrong with the Pharisee's prayer and right about the tax man's prayer, that God's assessment of them should be so radically different from our expectations? I don't think the answer
101
