Luke 18:9-14 "When is a Joke not a Joke?"

         Jesus could really tell a good joke!  Not that WE would call them jokes.  No - we call them “parables.”  However, to his poor, peasant, downtrodden audience, his “teachable moments” generally started out as real knee slappers.   You know, like, a priest, a rabbi, and a pastor walked into a bar…..Of course, in this case, it was a Pharisee and a tax collector walked into the Temple…..

         The thing about a good joke, of course, is that it is funny because it is always about someone else.  We as the knee slappers are perennially on the outside looking in. 

         The thing about Jesus’ jokes, however, is that somewhere in their telling, you and I as the knee slappers discover that somehow we really are not on the outside looking in.  Rather we find ourselves smack in the middle of the joke.  We are the ones the joke is really about.  The fingers are pointing our way, and, in the end, the joke – if it really even was a joke to begin with - is on us.

         And so you see, no matter how outlandish and hilarious Jesus’ jokes may have started out, his punch lines were never all that funny and were way too thought-provoking. 

         When is a joke not a joke?  That is what we will be exploring for the next few minutes…a priest, a rabbi, and a pastor walked into a bar….. a Pharisee and a tax collector walked into the Temple…..

         Now, here was a study in contrasts.  Any of Jesus’ listeners could see that. First, there was this Pharisee who walked boldly and ostentatiously into the Temple to pray. 

         “O God,” he intoned just loud enough so that anyone who happened to be in the Temple would surely hear him,

         “O God, I thank you that I am not like other people.  I fast twice – not once but twice a week – and I tithe – not just 2% or 5% but a full 10% - and that’s before taxes – on every cent of my income.  O God, I am truly awesome – and I want you to be sure to know that.”

         Not very humble, for certain, but surely our Pharisee had every right to pray in that manner – because, in many ways, he was awesome.  Though Pharisees as a group have gotten a bad reputation down through the Biblical ages because of what has been written about them in the Gospels, in truth, they were, as Episcopal priest David Smith writes, “quite amazing people…They were pillars of their community. They were the moral and spiritual guardians of their people.  And, OK, they might have been a bit stiff (at times as when they were seen) repeatedly interfering in Jesus’ parties, concerned that He’s eating and/or drinking too much and always partying with the wrong sort of people) but, in their defense, they were people who stood for something!

         They stood for purity. They stood for faithfulness. They stood for strong churches and strong families, and they were people who were willing to do whatever was necessary to see that their community held together!”

         Seriously, what pastor would not want a bunch of pious Pharisees in her congregation?  These folks could be counted on to be the community moral compass and always do the right thing. They represented just about everything the church has built its reputation on  - community pillars, moral guardians – and besides all that, Pharisees tithed.  If all – or even a few of you – were upstanding Pharisees, we would not even be close to running a deficit budget.  So, you see, the Pharisee in our story has a lot going for him.

         Then there was the other guy in the joke.  Along with the Pharisee, a tax collector also walked into the Temple to pray. Unlike the Pharisee, however, who parked himself front and center as close to the Holy of Holies as he was allowed to get, the tax collector slunk off to a deep dark corner of the Temple.  There in the shadows, his face in his hands, he whispered his prayer of anguish:  “God, give mercy. Forgive me, a sinner.”

         Now, though Jesus’ audience might have disliked the Pharisee in the joke, they would have despised the tax collector.  You see, tax collectors lived off other people’s misery.  Pharisees might have been in the pocket of the Roman Emperor, but tax collectors worked for the Empire. 

         Though they were Jews – or because they were Jews – they were considered traitors.  They collaborated with the occupying enemy.  Their job was to collect the required tribute to Rome – even as the Roman authorities averted their eyes both at the manner in which the collecting was done as well as any extra cash that the tax collector might pocket in order to feather his own nest.    

         Pharisees might have been wealthy, but tax collectors were wealthy and dishonest.  They were extortionists and because they handled money and conspired with Rome, they were ritually impure.  In contrast to the Pharisee in our joke, when it came to a good reputation, the tax collector had nothing going for him.

         Though it was not completely black and white because neither the Pharisee nor the tax collector would have really appealed to the peasantry crowd to whom Jesus spoke, it is still pretty easy to figure out who is the good guy and who is the bad guy in the joke, right?

         Thumbs up for the Pharisee, right?  After all, he was the upstanding citizen, the churchgoer, the glue that held the community together, and the keeper of strong family values. 

         So that means thumbs down for the tax collector, right?  After all, he was the betrayer of his faith, the traitor, the extortionist, and the one who conspired with Rome to keep Jesus’ audience all in abject poverty.

         So far, it all seems pretty straightforward.  So – what’s the joke?  What’s the punch line that is going to be not all that funny and way too thought-provoking?  Is it really a joke, or is there a deeper layer that causes what might have started out as a joke to morph into a parable, a teachable moment – as all of Jesus’ jokes seem to do?

         When is a joke not a joke?  When once again the tables are turned on us, and we are drawn artfully into the story as Jesus points out who we really are and, lo and behold, before we know it, the joke is really on us.

         Face it – which one of us does not in even a small way want to be like the Pharisee?  We want to be awesome.  We want to be recognized for the awesome contributions we make to this faith community.  We want people to think that we tithe.  We want people to know that we stand for good strong moral values and deep spirituality.  You go, Pharisee!  But more than that, we want God to know that we are awesome too.  And really, none of us wants to be the loser, the tax collector, the one everybody despises. 

         But then again, when it comes to their actions in the Temple, well, there is a right way and a wrong way to pray, correct?  I mean, in that setting, none of us wants to be like the Pharisee – tooting his own horn too loudly, causing even the most jaded and cynical among us to wince as he continues to puff himself up.  Does this guy not have one ounce of humility?

        When you come right down to it, when it comes to what happened in the Temple that day, we want to be like the tax collector – the one whom we presumed was the loser.  Like him, we want to entreat God quietly with a certain modicum of anguish.  We want to have faith enough to throw ourselves on God’s mercy.

         When is a joke not a joke?  When is this joke not a joke? Right now - at precisely this point because Jesus has set a trap, and quite likely we have fallen right into it.   As UCC pastor Carol Reynolds wrote, “basically, there’s no way out of this parable without taking Jesus’ bait: Finding ourselves playing the Pharisee’s game, judging and striking a self-righteous pose against him. As much as we’d like to believe we’re the earnest tax collector in the story, it’s nearly impossible not to be critical of the Pharisee.  It’s a pretty neat trick Jesus has pulled.”

         When is a joke not a joke? When it is a trap:  when it applies to us, when it tests our values, when it turns our world upside down – and in this case, when it uncovers our deeply held prejudices and when it reveals us all to be, like the Pharisee, judgers.

        You see, the Pharisee was not who we thought he was.  The upstanding citizen, the spiritual guardian, the keeper of moral values – though he was all of these things, he was not the good guy in the parable.

         And the tax collector – the loser, the traitor, the one you could say nothing good about - he ended up as the good guy.  How could that have gotten by us – except that we fell pray to our own prejudices?

         How often have your prejudices led you to draw hasty conclusions about people?  Take a moment sometime and write down a few of ways you determine whether or not you are going to warm up to someone.  What about people who listen to Fox News – or Jon Stewart?  What about people who have tattoos – or multiple piercings?  Bushy beards?  Short skirts that cling?  Turbans?  Dark skin?  On what basis do you judge people?

         You see, the instant we point fingers at the Pharisee for his judging of the tax collector, the robbers, and the thieves he has to put up with, we become like him – and he is the bad guy in the parable. 

         The instant we point fingers at Republicans or Democrats and blame one of them for the inoperability of our Congress right now, we become like the Pharisee, the bad guy in the parable. 

         And the minute we condemn the Pharisee for his pompousness and piety while sitting here in this church, prideful that we came here instead of staying at home and reading the Sunday paper like those other folks do, we become like him, the bad guy in the parable. 

         And the minute we declare that Islam is violent and Christianity is the best and true religion, we become like him, the bad guy in the parable.  And we all do it.  We all have prejudices, and we all succumb to them.  We all judge on another.

         That is certainly one lesson we can glean from the parable, this joke that is not a joke.  In the end, we are not called to judge because the minute we judge, we become like the Pharisee – boosting ourselves at the expense of others, trying to make ourselves look a tad more awesome in the eyes of God.  Let God do the judging in God’s own good time.

         A second lesson is that, though we may not be able to get away from our prejudices, at least we can discover what they are.  At least we can acknowledge their existence and understand when and to what extent they filter our perceptions and create a skewed sense of reality.  Things are not always what they seem.  Surely this parable illustrates that we may be able to learn as much from the tax collectors in our midst as from the Pharisees.  We may be able to learn as much from those we judge to be different from us as from those we are most comfortable because they are like us.

         Finally, we can learn something about prayer in this parable, too, and we can learn it from the tax collector.  It was he who had faith enough to look in the mirror and say to God what he saw:  I am a sinner.  I am in need of forgiveness.  Aren’t we all? 

         And yet, God did not judge.  God did not turn him away.  For the tax collector was justified, we are told.  That is, the tax collector was put into a right relationship with God because of his honesty coupled with his faith.

         So – let me ask one more time:  When is a joke not a joke?  When it touches the very heart of who we are as human beings – sinners in need of forgiveness.  When it affirms that, in spite of our lack of self-reflection when it comes to our prejudices, the tooting of our own horn before God and one another, our inability to curtail our seemingly endless capacity to judge, God still offers us redemption, justification, a second chance at a right relationship with the Holy One.

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church UCC, Raymond, Maine