Thirtieth Sunday of the Year

October 26, 2025

Luke 18: 9-14

In this chapter of Luke’s gospel, we are continuing with parables that are unique to Luke and stop us in our usual way of thinking. Even today we can feel some shock at what this parable holds up for us; but in our time it would be as if some really well-known and respected preacher would say, ‘A pope and a pimp, went into St. Peters’ to pray;’ or perhaps today, we would say ‘an insider trader on Wall Street,’ or, ‘a U.S. government official selling secrets to Al-Quida.’ The parallel Jesus set up between the Pharisee and the tax collector is just that shocking, that is mind blowing to the people who first heard this parable. If last Sunday we talked about persistence in prayer, this Sunday we are talking about attitude in prayer, or maybe better, the reasons why we pray at all.

We do not doubt that the Pharisee does everything he says he does: he fasts twice a week when Jews are required to fast only once a year on the Day of Atonement, and he does so on the two market days when most people will see him; and in fasting, he makes his face white and wears disheveled clothes so that they know it. He pays a tithe on much more that the Law requires a religious Jew to pay; he faithfully goes to the Temple to pray probably three times a day regularly as a clock. So, what is wrong with this picture? The Pharisee is not really going in to pray to God, he is really going in pray with himself. The only true prayer is always offered to God alone; the Pharisee went in to inform God how really good he was. The point is not to say that we should not be pious and devout; the point is to show that prayer is about God not ourselves, and that prayer is for being honest with God about ourselves and not comparing ourselves to what we perceive is the case about another person, a thing only God can see. We do not thank God for not being like some else, we thank him for his merciful forgiveness toward ourselves as we really are.

Now, as we mentioned last week in connection with the unjust judge, the tax collector is no great example of faithful living. He is considered a traitor to his people because he collaborates with the enemy Romans, and charges far more that the tax is supposed to be in order to make money for himself. We would call him an extortionist. And more, because of his collaboration with the Romans, he is ritually impure and cannot take part in the common worship of the Jewish people; in short, he has excommunicated himself. How in the world can this man be held up as one who is justified before God?

So why is the tax collector held up as an example? The tax collector is praying to God, not making himself look good or trying to explain himself. The tax collector is in touch with himself, he knows who he is before God. No proud person can really pray because they themselves get in the way of their prayer. (And if you are thinking of all the proud people you know right now, you have missed the point!) No one who despises his fellow human beings can really pray. In prayer we are not above others, everyone is equal before God. [One of the Jewish scholar wrote that when the Egyptian soldiers were being drowned in the Red Sea, the angels asked God if he wasn’t happy at their destruction. But God cried and said, ‘the Egyptians are my children too.

True prayer means comparing our lives to God, not to others. The tax collector did not ask if he was as good as his fellow humans, but rather if he was as good as God. The tax collector said, “Oh God, be merciful to be, sinner.” In fact he really said literally, “Be merciful to me – THE sinner.’ He did not assume that anyone else at all was a sinner also. Fr. Raymond Brown once quoted Soren Kierkegaard; “Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.” And Fr. Brown added: “If no change occurs as a result of prayer, then one has not really prayed.”

This parable today is addressed to us. We are the religious people of our time. What is our motive to do what we do, to pray as we pray? Do we pray or do good so that we will be seen by others and look good? Do we work in the parish or the local soup kitchen or other ministries so that we will be noticed or that we think we are earning our way to heaven? None of these motives will do us any good. We do them out of love for the Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit, - for God. And, if we do them out of the love of God, we will come to do them out of the love for others also. We will become holy without even knowing it at all. After all, being truly holy in God’s eyes alone, is the only thing we live for.

Fr. John Tran