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St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church, Owings Mills MD
October 26, 2025
Year C, Proper 25: The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost
Joel 2:23-32
Psalm 65
2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18
Luke 18:9-14
Imperfect People, Imperfect Prayers, Merciful God
In today’s lesson from the Gospel of Luke, we hear a parable about two men praying in the Jerusalem Temple.
One is a Pharisee.
The gospels almost always depict the Pharisees in a negative light, but from other ancient sources we know that the Pharisees were held in high regard, respected for their holiness and goodness.
And the other man in the parable, the other man praying in the Temple, was a tax collector.
Now, since most people don’t enjoy paying taxes, tax collectors, past and present, are usually not the most popular people in town.
But tax collectors in first century Israel we’re particularly despised because they were Jews who were working for the Romans and their allies who occupied and oppressed Israel.
Tax collectors were seen as traitors to their own people.
So, it probably took some courage for this tax collector to enter the Temple, knowing that the people around him were likely to judge him harshly.
And, sure enough, you heard the very judgy prayer of the Pharisee.
Before introducing the parable, Luke tips us off on what he thinks is the parable’s meaning, its purpose:
“Jesus told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.”
We’re not told just who those self-righteous and judgmental people might be, but we know the type, don’t we?
And, who knows, maybe we’ve even been the type!
Anyway, you heard the prayers offered by these two men.
The Pharisee thanks God that he’s not like all these awful sinners, especially that he’s not like this tax collector – and then he rattles off all his good deeds.
And, meanwhile, the tax collector, standing off by himself, eyes downcast, simply prays, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”
Jesus concludes this tale by saying: “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.”
So, the moral of the story seems clear, right?
But…there is another possibility.
The word translated as “rather than” could also be translated as “alongside.”
So, try this on for size:
“I tell you, this man went down to his home justified alongside the other…”
I don’t know if that’s the more correct translation, but I think it points to an important truth:
Both the Pharisee and the tax collector are imperfect.
And their prayers are imperfect, too.
The Pharisee is tooting his own horn and judging the tax collector, which doesn’t seem like the kind of prayer that God desires.
And the tax collector, yes, his prayer is humble but there’s no repentance, is there? There’s no turning away from his wrongdoing.
In fact, after he was done praying in the Temple, the tax collector probably went right back to work, back to working for the oppressors of his own people.
And yet.
And yet, God is loving and merciful to these two imperfect people with their imperfect prayers.
Just as God is loving and merciful to all of us imperfect people with our imperfect prayers.
And since God is loving and merciful to us - most especially through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus – since God is loving and merciful to us - we should be loving and merciful, too.
It’s God’s love and mercy to us that inspires us to do the outreach work that we do here at St. Thomas’:
Feeding the hungry.
Teaching the children.
Welcoming the stranger.
We walk alongside one another, all of us imperfect people with our imperfect prayers, we walk alongside one another, as I like to imagine the Pharisee and the tax collector did as they left the Temple, both of them, all of us, loved by our most merciful God.
Amen.
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