In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Tax collectors must have been something awful. This is the second Sunday in a row Christ gives the example of a Publican/Tax Collector turned righteous, last week with the example of Zacchaeus and now the Parable of the Publican and the Pharisee.

Now, no matter what year it is, or where you are in the world, you will encounter this Gospel reading of the Publican and the Pharisee at this exact moment, each Sunday operating as a personal checkpoint ahead of the Great Fast and Christ’s Passion, Death, & Resurrection. The Church does this because we need these personal checkpoints.

At this point, Christ presents two individuals: at the front of the temple, we have the Pharisee, who is a very esteemed teacher and great example to others in his following of the law. He claims rightly that he has not extorted others, that he has dealt justly, that he has not committed adultery. Fasting twice a week, every week, and tithing (or giving 10%) of what he has. His litany of right-doings, as opposed to wrong-doings, is impressive. Fidelity and faithfulness to the law was considered the measure of fidelity to God Himself, and he is without equal.

In the back of the temple, we have the Publican. He is an extortionist, someone who has spent a great deal of time forcing people’s hard-earned money out of their pockets. He deals unjustly with others, he is thief, he is corrupt and has first-hand experience and knowledge of how truly wicked and evil people can be to one another. Christ gives us these two individuals.

If we knew nothing more, we might guess that the Pharisee fares a better chance at salvation. After all, he has spent so much of his life in the right and shouldn’t that be enough? I’m sure he is even adept at debates on the Faith and has acquired more than enough knowledge for it, putting adversaries to shame. Meanwhile, the Publican has spent his life in the wrong, in works of wickedness and selfishness.

But…only one of them seizes the opportunity to distance himself from the other one, and I don’t mean physical distance. The Pharisee uses his being in the right as an opportunity to distinguish himself from his brother, if he would even call him his brother. The Pharisee prays “I thank you that I am not like other men,…even this tax collector.” And compared to the litany of right actions the Pharisee has given, the Publican says only one humble thing: “God, be merciful to me a sinner.”

The Pharisee stands at the Altar of God Himself, yet he could not be further from our Lord; the Publican stands at the back, and yet he is closer to God than ever before.

In his Book Beginning to Pray, Metropolitan Anthony Bloom comments on this repentant Publican:

“(The Publican) knows that he stands condemned; he knows that in terms of justice there is no hope for him because he is an outsider to the kingdom of God, the kingdom of righteousness or the kingdom of love, because he belongs neither to the realm of righteousness nor to the realm of love. But in the cruel, the violent, the ugly life he leads, he has learned something of which the righteous Pharisee has no idea. He has learned that in a world of competition, in a world of predatory animals, in a world of cruelty and heartlessness, the only hope one can have is an act of mercy, an act of compassion, a completely unexpected act which is rooted neither in duty nor in natural relationships, which will suspend the action of the cruel, violent, heartless world in which we live. All he knows, for instance, from being himself an extortioner, a moneylender, a thief, and so forth, is that there are moments when for no reason, because it is not part of the world's outlook, he will forgive a debt, because suddenly his heart has become mild and vulnerable; that on another occasion he may not get someone put into prison because a face will have reminded him of something or a voice has gone straight to his heart. There is no logic in this. It is not part of the world's outlook nor is it a way in which he normally behaves. It is something that breaks through, which is completely nonsensical, which he cannot resist; and he knows also, probably, how often he himself was saved from final catastrophe by this intrusion of the unexpected and the impossible, mercy, compassion, forgiveness. So he stands at the rear of the church, knowing that all the realm inside the church is a realm of righteousness and divine love to which he does not belong and into which he cannot enter. But he knows from experience also that the impossible does occur and that is why he says ‘Have mercy, break the laws of righteousness, break the laws of religion, come down in mercy to us who have no right to be either forgiven or allowed in.’”

We have to be careful, so careful, that we who claim to practice the Right and Holy Orthodox Christian Faith, that we do not allow ourselves to fall into the delusion of thinking it is enough to be in the right. The Pharisee spent much of his life in the right but chose to wield it as a way to create distance between himself and his brother. Insodoing, he created distance between himself and the Living God, resulting in spiritual death.

If it was enough to be in the right, Christ would not have suffered the Cross. That is what the Pharisee misses. It was not right that Christ should have died on the Cross, and the good thief on the other cross points this out when he says: “This Man has done nothing wrong.” Christ does not ask us to be simply in the right; he asks us to pick up our Cross and to follow Him. Fidelity to Christ, an active, generous, self-sacrificial life in Christ, embracing our Cross, results in spiritual life, life everlasting. Fun fact: there is another being who has almost perfect knowledge of God, who is right far more often than we are, smarter than we are, and even lives forever: the Devil. But he could not fathom or suffer the Cross and it was through the Cross that Christ defeated him. Without the Cross, we risk the same fate. With the Cross, life everlasting.

May God bless us at this personal checkpoint, to be moved to love and self-sacrifice above all else, to be more concerned for our brothers and sisters than ourselves.

May God save us from counting our good deeds more than our sins, which was the spiritual death of the Pharisee.

And may the Holy Spirit inspire us to prayer and, like the publican, to ever pray “God, be merciful to me a sinner!”

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

- Rev. Fr. William Bennett, Pastor