Luke 18:9-14

Resources

1. Michael Hardin & Jeff Krantz, PreachingPeace.org. This is a passage that cries out for interpretation according to mimetic theory. What the Pharisee is doing is voicing the victimage mechanism that exalts himself at the expense of another. But the key is that the tax collector's is not reciprocal. If we don't notice the lack of reciprocity, then interpreters through the ages have provided it by exalting themselves at the expense of the Pharisee. Hardin & Krantz bring out this aspect of the text in both the "Anthropological Reading" and the "So What?" reflection. As Hardin brings out:

We have heard this parable preached where Catholics are the Pharisee and Baptists are the Publican; we have heard it preached as supercessionism, treating the Pharisee’s spirituality as ‘works-righteousness’, but that of the publican as good Christian humility. To preach the parable this way or any way that scapegoats anyone at any time is to engage the parable, not from Jesus’ point of view, but from the perspective of the satanic mechanism.

This Pharisee has God wrong. God is not about who is better than, smarter than, prettier than, richer than, holier than. God does not discriminate, God does not compare us with one another. The Pharisee was bound by his dedication to the Torah, and that would be a beautiful thing but his hermeneutic suffered. He had God wrong. The God who blesses the religious person is a God who can be manipulated. A God who recognizes the selfish perceptions of our zeal would have to be a god of wrath and violence and justice and judgement. In short, if God is like the Pharisee thinks God is, most of us are in some deep doo-doo, as we fall far short of this one’s righteousness.

...The prayer of the publican is well known, he seeks forgiveness. This is the God who answers, this is the One revealed in the character of Jesus. The publican is not expressing some poor old ‘woe is me’ syndrome; he simply and honestly acknowledges himself for how he acts. He sins, therefore he is a sinner in need of mercy and healing.

...Recalling our comments on the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, we might say that each one gets the god in whom he believes. Alas for the Christian who believes in a violent retributive God.

In chapter 3:21-26, Paul gives his most condensed account of Justification. God's righteousness is shown by His gratuitously putting forward Christ Jesus as an expiation by his blood for our redemption to be received by faith. The Law did not make anyone righteous; it only taught all those who were under it that they were not righteous, and thus revealed negatively the righteousness of God.

The vital point here is that we have only one access to this divine drama in which God makes Himself our victim, and that is what St Paul calls faith. This faith is, as regards the psychological mechanism, exactly the same as that described by Oughourlian insofar as it is a recognition that this particular other -- Christ crucified as divine offering to us -- is the key to our consciousness of good and evil, which has heretofore been based on victimizing or making oneself a victim (both of them methods of hiding one's violence from oneself). The Law, which should have served to teach us that 'all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God' (v.23), frequently serves as a way of our dividing the world into good and bad, of our separating it into those who follow the Law and those who do not. The person who, owing to his observance of the Law, is in a position to judge others as bad (that is, considers himself made righteous by the Law) reveals that the Law does not get to the heart of man. Such a person has his identity, his 'me,' still constituted on the basis of victimizing, of expelling, of separation. Being convinced of the right-ness (and righteousness) of his position, it is very much more difficult for him to receive the dependence on what is other than him of the constitution of his 'me,' and thus have his 'me' transformed, have it healed from its dependence on persecution.

Here it is apparent that Paul's teaching on the Law is identical with Jesus' practice in relation to the 'Pharisees,' his evident predilection for sinners, and such parables as that of the tax collector and the Pharisee in the Temple (Lk 18:10-14). [pp. 22-23 in "Justification..."]