The Justified Sinner
Julián Carrón - Why God Prefers a Humble Heart to a Perfect Record.
“Jesus told this parable to those who were confident in their own righteousness and despised others.” With this introductory sentence, Jesus refers to an attitude that was quite widespread in his time: the presumption of being righteous and contempt for others. Just remember the reaction of the people when Jesus went to the house of Zacchaeus the tax collector: "Everyone murmured, ‘He has gone to stay with a sinner!’” (Lk 19:7).
To make this clear, the parable compares two ways of conceiving the relationship with God, which emerge, above all, in a privileged moment of that relationship: prayer. ”Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.” The difference between the two is immediately apparent: “The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: 'O God, I thank you that I am not like other men, thieves, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.'... But the tax collector, standing at a distance, would not even dare to raise his eyes to heaven.”
The Pharisee, therefore, “standing,” prayed to thank God. “He said to himself, ‘O God, I thank you that I am not like other men, thieves, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and pay tithes on everything I own.’” The Pharisee thanks God for having been faithful to the law, unlike those who are thieves, adulterers, or unjust. Not only that, but he has also done more than what is required by the law, fasting twice a week instead of once a year on the Day of Atonement. He even paid tithes on all the products he purchased in order to be blameless in the eyes of God.
The Pharisee therefore thanks God because he knows that the fact that he is different, better than others, is due to God. Does he not have many reasons to be thankful? “The tax collector, on the other hand, stood at a distance and did not even dare to raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘O God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’” He is right not to be able to look up to heaven. His profession as a tax collector was well known to everyone: he was a tax collector who took advantage of people by making them pay more than they owed.
The pain that gripped him was not only due to his past life, but also to the lack of hope and salvation for the future. In order to convert, according to the law, he not only had to abandon his life of sin and give up his profession, but also return the money he had extorted, with the addition of a fifth. But how could he know how many people he had cheated and have the money to repay everything?
His situation was truly desperate. And the condition of both seemed very clear. We can therefore imagine the confusion of the listeners when they heard Jesus' words: “I tell you, this man [the tax collector], unlike the other [the Pharisee], went home justified, for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.” This conclusion must have taken the listeners by surprise.
No one expected it. God had shown his favor to the tax collector and not to the Pharisee! But what unworthiness had the Pharisee made himself guilty of? And what had the tax collector done to atone for his guilt? Jesus does not answer directly. He simply says: God judges thus! But, indirectly, he indicates the reason for this divine behavior, which may seem unfair to many.
From other passages in the Gospel, we know that Jesus was well aware of what the Pharisee did not realize: “You Pharisees,” he says (among many other things), “clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of robbery and wickedness” (Mt 23:25). The tax collector, on the other hand, was well aware of his situation and turns to God with these words: “O God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” The only hope he has is to turn to God, because he knows that “a contrite spirit is a sacrifice to God; a contrite and broken heart you, O Lord, will not despise” (Ps 51:19).
This is God, says Jesus: he welcomes the desperate sinner and rejects those who proclaim themselves righteous. He is the God of the desperate, and his mercy toward the contrite of heart is boundless. This is the God whom Jesus proclaims and who now acts through him.
This is the good news announced to the poor. Jesus is so struck by the reaction of those who are scandalized by his attitude toward the sinner that he challenges them all by saying, “Blessed is anyone who is not scandalized by me!” (Lk 7:23), because of his way of addressing sinners. What better news can Jesus bring to us sinners than this announcement: that God is so merciful that he allows us to place all our hope in his mercy?
