The Kitchen Sink
An occasional piece of paper
October 28, 2007
Vol. 10 no. 39

Everything But...
           Pharisees and publicans are not popular roles to play anymore. A Pharisee is a spiritual phony, and a publican is a tax-collector and when have has that profession ever been popular? On the surface, the Pharisee is supposed to be the heighth of a well-conducted religious life, but he has become one who can no longer tell the forest because of the trees. The publican pretends to no ethical standards for his profession; if he is moral it is because he is a human being.
           This tax-collector, who usually gouged the poor for their last cent collecting Imperial Rome’s due, found himself drawn to being a human being. He recognized that what he had been doing was abusive and cruel, treating defenseless people in an age of powerlessness as his personal ticket to prosperity and luxury. He knew what he had become, and his words, “God, be merciful to me a sinner!” have become the much repeated “Jesus Prayer” of monks around the world, particularly in the East, lest they become publicans or pharisees. Those monks knew the meaning of being Reformed.
           Pharisees were very good people. The term originally meant someone who divided up and discerned things, in this case interpreting a text, The Text, the Torah or Bible. They intended to live according to God’s law without reservation, to commit all their energy and time to learning God’s word, teaching and performing it. There had to be a lot of very good Pharisees, candidates for sainthood, if that category applies.
           Along the way, a lot of serious Pharisees became enmeshed in their hair-splitting of words and laws. Yet many were still able to think about God, about why they interpreted The Text. Time and again, they reformed.