The Pharisee and the Tax Collector

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Michael Keller: Thank you for having me up here again, for some amazing speakers this conference some only once, and I feel bad for you all because you have to hear me three times. So sometimes the the last shall be first. That’s funny to me true story a few years ago, is actually when I was working with college students. I had been ministering to a non Christian. He was a big time architect. We were getting coffee. And he said, Hey, before we had just real quick, I want you to know something. I’m designing Taylor Swift’s new townhouse. And she’s very specific about where she wants things. And I have to redesign it. And it’s been great. But you know, she’s been on tour. So I’ve been hanging out with her, her mom, and I’ve gotten close with her mom, and her mom is a Christian and wants Taylor to come back to her faith. And, you know, I said to her, I said, Hey, I’m not a Christian, actually. But I’ve been hanging out with my friend, Michael Keller, you know, I have his card, do you want his card? And you can give this to Taylor Swift? And, you know, she can give him a call sometime. And the mom was like, No, you know, she only responds to young people talking to somebody old won’t, won’t do well. And you know, my friend said, no, no, he’s a young pastor works with college students. And he goes, she goes, Oh, this is wonderful. And he goes, so I handed her the card. And she told me that actually, she gave that card to Taylor. And I said, what I said, Really, how long ago and he said, a couple days. And so I started scrolling through my phone for all the missed calls. And then like, for a couple of weeks, anytime a phone call came in, that was not a no number, I’d pick it up and say, Taylor, tell us that, you know, I didn’t do that. But it you know, I wanted to because I really wanted her to call I wanted to, I had I thought about what would it be like to be able to talk to Taylor Swift and to help her and she never called that at least not that I know of. But there is this hunger for glory, for recognition, for feeling special. And I think everybody in this room knows what it’s like to desire that to want that. And we we need to get it. And there’s so many different ways we try there’s there’s culturally positive ways to do that. And there are often culturally negative ways that we do it. And it both ways actually are forms of othering. Because you have to, as we talked about earlier, today, you have to distance yourself from others to get the claim and the validation from others. And so when we live this way, it brings breakdown. So I want to quickly go through the three ways that

to address other and we want you to look at the problem of othering, the first step out of othering. And then the last step out of other and we’re going to look at the problem of othering with this text that was just read this very famous passage from Luke, the first step out of othering. And then the final step out of othering. To close out our conference, I think, a conference talking about the gospel, there’s no better way to end the conference than to talk about the Gospel itself. And we see it right here. So first, the problem of othering. Let’s look at our the first verse in our text. This is verse nine, talks about a parable. And it says that Luke is telling this to a very particular people group, it says to whom it’s for to who is it? Who is it for it’s to some who are confident in their own righteousness? Now hear me ask you a quick question. Does this sound like somebody you know, somebody that you know, that’s confident in their own righteousness? I’d be careful. I was reading the commentary on this text. And the commentary talked about a Sunday school teacher who was teaching some kids about this text. And then he asked little Johnny to pray after the the message and Johnny pray, Dear Lord, thank You that we’re not like the Pharisee in the passage, thank you so much, thereby doing the very same thing that the Pharisee was doing. So if you see it was a test, do you know somebody needs to hear this? Yes. If it’s not you, that you’re thinking about, then you’ve already missed who Jesus is addressing because Jesus is dressing those who are confident in their own righteousness. And this is our problem with other mean. And the problem is, is the minute that we, we tend to think about the other person who needs this when we don’t think about ourselves. And that, by definition is othering that we label other individuals, we give them negative characteristics, we try to differentiate us versus them. I have this regularly, I actually bicycle through New York City. I’m one of the, you know, I know, I think in the Netherlands, there’s more bicycles than people is that right? That’s not the case in New York City. But I, I’ve grown up riding my bike. And I would often have this experience where I’d be riding, they just now recently made bike lanes, they didn’t back in the 90s 80s, and 90s. But they now have green bike lanes, and you’ll be biking in them. But there’ll be some buddy, usually a big truck that will try to turn left as you’re coming down. And they’re not looking at the bikers coming, and often will come into the bike lane without without looking and crossing you to like slam on your brakes, or sometimes worse. And so this happened to me, this happens a lot. And in this particular case, the the truck was turning and I did what every New Yorker should do, which is start screaming at the person. I don’t know if the Dutch do that. But I would say hey, what I’m riding my bike here, are you blind? What are you what’s wrong with you? How can’t you see what’s happening, you’re so wrong. But then within about two minutes, I’m still biking and there’s crosswalks in New York City, lots of red lights and stuff. And bikers don’t pay attention to slides, we just keep going. And I went around a pedestrian, but they felt like I was too close. And so they started screaming at me, saying, What are you doing here? How dare you, you almost hit me. And I’m in my head, I’m going I was not close this, you know, start, you know, hold your horses, you don’t understand? You know, you’re the problem. In other words, I when I when they were the problem, I get to yell at them. But when I’m the problem, they don’t, they’re just misunderstanding me. They don’t, they don’t understand that there’s a reason for me being so close. But I wasn’t You’re never in danger. Don’t worry, what’s happening there. It’s how the human heart works. It’s that we tend to feel like we’re just misunderstood, but they’re evil and wrong. And yet, it’s the exact same thing. If you get your sense of self, if you get your identity of individuality in life through comparison, and everybody does, then what happens is you’re going to say those car people, they’re terrible, they’re always turning. But there’s people who ride cart drive cars, but they don’t ride bikes are always looking those bicyclists, they are so entitled, how they’re they, those people on the left, they’re always trying to take my money, those people on the right there, they don’t care about others, they’re just want the money to themselves. Like we, we completely create these dichotomies and we write off other people, and put ourselves in the position where we’re okay and they’re not. And so look at the Pharisee in our text. What happens to the Pharisee, is he gets up and I know there’s a negative connotation about Pharisees in, in today’s Christian sub culture. But I really want you to try to read this text as if you were first century reader. In the first century, the Pharisees were the good guys. They’re the ones who culture said, wow, look at them, they’re giving their their money. They’re the the people who are generous, and the people who are kind and helping people and doing all the good stuff. So this person was considered a hero and a good person. And what does he do his prayer? Well, it addresses God. If you read it, it actually is all about himself in the Greek. The personal pronouns, I shows up five times, it says, I thank You that I am not like them. I fast and I give a 10th of all I get five times in in just one phrase. And I know the modern world says, Hey, have a happy, healthy sense of self esteem. But where’s the line between being too focused on ourselves and having no room for anybody else? Like what if our emphasis on self is the root of othering? And I believe it is, I think we don’t know how to have a healthy sense of self without making a distinction. And the Pharisees doing the exact same thing, if you think this is just a modern problem, it’s not this is a human problem that has that has existed for eternity. Because why? Because that’s what Jesus is getting here. If you think the problem with the world is out there, then you’ve missed the problem. Because Jesus is trying to say eat When the best people, the Pharisees were the best people, one who was confident in their own righteousness, but you can only be confident in your righteousness if you’re actually are doing some things in the world that the world would say is righteous. And yet he’s Jesus is kind of peeling the layer off to see what’s inside. And what’s inside is a self focus. And I think that’s what’s brilliant about this parable is that everybody is othering. I, this wasn’t in my text, but I’ll give it to you. In high school, I was 16, maybe 15 years old. And I remember, as in New York City, and there was a an elderly individual who was having a hard time crossing the street. And I, you know, I felt pretty good as a as a young boy, noticing a first somebody else in need, and then I helped her cross the street. And that’s a good thing to help somebody cross the street. But the minute I did that, what happened in my heart, I was like, Yeah, I’m the kind of guy who helps people cross streets. And then what was the second thing I did? I looked at everybody else. And I was like, why didn’t you help her across the street? And what was what was happening there, I was focusing and feeling better about myself. And so I took a good thing. Please help people cross streets. If they need help, please do it. But you’re inevitably at some level, we’ll take that good thing and twist it. And you’ll become an individual who will make yourself distinct from the others. And that’s othering, hundreds of years ago, we might have done it through religious wars. Today, we do it in the name of authenticity. Hey, I’m just being me. You do you, I’ll be me. We weaponize our identities against each other. How else do we explain how there is a unfortunate narrative that religious people look down on non religious people? Why is that there? Because it happens. So people go, Well, hey, I believe in God, why can’t you? That’s the That’s what religion tends to do is I follow the rules. Why can’t you? So many people have been turned off from Christianity, because they look at Christians. They see Christians doing that which everybody does it. Christians just do it with their faith. And they get turned away and say there can’t be any truth here. Because they’re no, they’re no different than anyone else. Right. They’re the identity of one group, others, other groups we’re getting more and more fractured. Society is is turning into tribal spaces now. And we’re only finding our own protected spaces with with other people that are just like us. And yet, then those groups start fracturing too.

And we can’t fool ourselves that we’re okay anymore, that we wake up. And we need to see, it’s not just the problem out there. The problem is in here, it’s the everyday operational mode of our heart, the problem of othering, the Pharisee, and all of us Okay, number one, so number two, what do we do? Well, there are two steps that have other no one identify first step is look at the tax collector. That’s what Jesus wants us to do. He looks, he points out the tax collector who, in Roman times, tax collectors tended to be people from the community. So they didn’t tend to put a Roman centurion, somebody from Rome, but it was usually a local person, because they knew who everybody was in the community. And they were given a task to raise a certain amount every month, raise, I don’t know, 500, you know, units of currency, or 1000, or something. And what they would inevitably do is always raise more than that, give them out that the Romans wanted, and then they’d keep the rest for themselves. In other words, it was professional stealing. It was culturally, I guess, imperialistic Lee, but also, institutionally, given professional cheats, and therefore tax collectors were universally hated. Everybody know they were bad people. But something seems to be different with this particular one in verse 13. It says that he stood at a distance, just far away. He couldn’t even look up to heaven. It says he was so embarrassed. He couldn’t mess muster the head movement to even move his face up to who he was praying to. What’s going on? Well, the tax collector knew that he was not in the right. He knew it, which allowed him to be honest. And this is what’s this is what’s so hard. The first step out of othering is the realization that we other it’s that simple. The first step out of it is just knowing that the Pharisee couldn’t see it. But if you can’t admit I am a sin. are in need, not the self hating kind, but the self reflective kind that all good counselors would say that we need to do, then you can’t change. Because the everybody will tell you the first step to change is honesty, you have to be honest with the problem. But if you can’t be honest with the problem, then you can’t change. And the problem here is the acknowledgement that I other and the tax collector knew that in the good person, the Pharisee didn’t. And so before we move on, I guess I want to ask us all how honest have we been with ourselves today? Do we wake up and say, today, I this is still my problem. If we don’t, you lack him, you will lack humility, we will lack curiosity of other people, we will lose empathy, to know how to care for them all everything, that it means to be a Christian to love and serve other people is designated and starts with the daily acknowledgement. That my modus operandi that this the centering of who I am, is to other. And the scary part from this text is that the tax collector knew he was messed up because every day somebody told him he was the sneers the looks, he got he knew it. And the one who was the most cleaned up the one who went to church, the one who looked like the world loved them. They were the ones that had the hardest time to be honest. So looking back at the Pharisee, this Pharisee gave a 10th, not just of things he made, he gave a 10th of everything, which was actually more than what Jewish law required. And so Jesus is saying something very profound. He’s saying, the more good you are, the harder it’s going to be to actually be good. Which kind of breaks your brain if you think about it, the more good you think you are, that the harder it’s going to be, to see your need. The more put together, the worse it is. And this is the My first talk where we see our sanctification as our justification. That’s what this is it seen the things that I do that are good, as the basis by which I know that I’m acceptable. And if you do that, when we do that, that others that creates the problem. It’s not, it’s not it’s antichrist, it’s not of Jesus. So how scary is it that the better off you feel about yourself, the worse you will feel about the better you feel about yourself, and the worse you feel about that political class, or that gender, or that people group over there. That that’s going to make it harder for you to realize your need in the Bible, the reason why the tax collector or the prostitute or the bad persons get the gospel. And the reason why they fought to it. It’s not because they were better people. They were definitely not better people. They just knew that they weren’t. And so the first step is to know your need. And I think it’s something we have to ask daily do we know our need? Are we are we willing to put ourselves in that position? My father, when I when I became a Christian in college, he gave me a very simple way to study the Bible. He says every in every Bible passage, you can come to the text. And there’s something to adore God here. But there’s something to confess that you have what you don’t do here. There’s something to be thankful for. And then out of that, there’s something that you can ask supplication from God from, but every word in the Bible you can do that with, there’s something I’m forgetting. There’s something I’m being given. There’s something that I can adore. There’s something to be thankful for. And I don’t know if how much we the confession part that we actually do have we taken that first step, because we can’t even address it address the problem if we don’t. So that’s number one. That’s the first step. Now, last step, last point. The first step is good. But only seeing yourself as a as a sinner. That keeps you in a state of shame. So interestingly, I actually think of this parable, I actually think it’s a cliffhanger here. I actually haven’t seen any commentary talk about that. But I actually think, as good as this tax collector statement is, it’s incomplete. Because what does he do? He asked for mercy, right? The Greek word for mercy that he uses, it’s not the normal one, he uses a Greek word that is usually translated, atoning sacrifice. And I think that’s where we have to remember the context for this text, the context is in the temple. So this man must have been smelling all the smoke from the sacrifices so he must have been keenly aware of that. There is something out there 24/7 In the temple 24 hours a day, seven days a week they were burning sacrifices Because to be a corporate acknowledgement of the need of brokenness that culture had, that’s what they had. And so he must have known that the death of a valuable animal was to illustrate the costliness of his othering. But I’m also I also believe, even though he, he’s asking for mercy, I don’t think he knows if he’s gonna give it be given it. So I think the first step is acknowledging that you are in need. And I think the second step at the first part is to ask, and he does ask, but he didn’t know he was gonna get it. It’s an incomplete one. So the final step out of othering is the very last verse in our text. The last verse, it’s Jesus says, He went home justified before God, very simple statement, he went home justified and that those terms don’t really move us because the word justification is a law word. It’s a distinction word. It’s a you know who’s in and who’s out. And that doesn’t really move our hearts these days. But we still have to ask why. Why does he get in and the Pharisee out? And I think the only difference that that Jesus gives us in the text, it’s not because he’s morally better. It’s not because he’s better looking. It’s not because he’s nicer. The only difference that I see in the text is one person asks, and the other person doesn’t, that you get justified to the degree that you ask for mercy. asking for mercy leads to Mercy, and mercy leads to joy. And we get the joy when we get the love and acceptance of God. And we get that by seeing who the true sacrifice truly was. Which means the the need for the sacrifice was bad enough to have to deserve the Son of God to die for us. But it’s the it’s when Jesus dies on the cross. And we say to ourselves, that’s me he’s dying for, right? Jesus shows up on the cross and says, I have to die for you. You need me to die for you. That’s my job. That’s what I’m here to do. When we ask for mercy, you’re not asking God to take it easy on me, what you’re asking is the application of the penalty paid by Jesus. I would like that to be directed to me, I’d like the payment to be made for me. When

I had my first child, she was in a pram, a bassinet. And the only way I could get her to go to sleep was to take her outside and move I think just the movement, and she would cry. And so the only way she could fall asleep is if I took her out in the in the carriage. And she started she started getting fussy. So I was looking for I always do the check like wallet, phone keys. I called Michael’s Trinity, who wears the wallet, phone keys, and I couldn’t find my wallet. And I left it actually upstairs in my apartment building we had a area on the on the top floor where you could study and I was studying at there earlier, I think I left my wallet up there. So I bring my daughter in her baby pram, all at the top floor. But the wait for the elevator took so long, she’s now fully crying. And I’m I’m young, I’m not like I’m not mature like I am today. I was very young. And I was worried that if I went out of the elevator, it take too long for to come for the elevator to come back. So I left the baby pram so that the doors of the elevator couldn’t close. But I left it just enough. So if it did close, it would just push the stroller back into the elevator. And I was like, I’m just gonna run in and get my wallet and run back. And so I did I ran in, found my wallet picked it up and I saw a beautiful Hawk, a giant beautiful bird. Outside the window. It was like right there. It was like five or 10 feet. So I did what anybody would do. I broke out my phone and started taking some pictures because it was it was a beautiful Hawk I wanted you know with the wingspan and everything else. And after a couple times of taking the picture, I go and I ran back to the elevator and the carriage was gone. And I of course said to myself, I said oh it’s okay you know there’s there’s it’s gonna be alright. But what happened? Why did I do what I do there? The reason why I did that was the experience of the Hawk pushed out all my other affections at that time. moments, it pushed out my the thought of my duty of being a father, that, and I bring that story up, because the only way for us to stop looking at the wrong affection stop other in other people is to get a profound affection on our life. To put death out, we need an explosive power of new affection that Hawk, the beauty of it, the immense power of it, moved into my imaginations and took over all my senses in that moment. We need that as Jesus Christ in our life. Justification is the moment in your life when Christ becomes the hawk, the highest affection. Maybe you’ve never even done that. Maybe you’ve evolved in thought of Jesus in this intellectual way. But it has to become the controlling sense by which you see all of reality through. And I think we can do that today. But God’s love become so vivid to our imaginations, that it not only changes our goals, but also our needs in the way we even see life. It has to become the overarching prison that we see everything else through, or else we’re going to other other people to see, Jesus’s blessing is more important than anybody else’s blessing. What would happen if you did, if you saw Jesus, His blessing is more important than you’re not going to need other people’s blessing as much? So a lot of you are still thinking, Mike, you’re really terrible. Father, I can’t believe you did that. And that’s fine. But you need to ask yourself, is the person of Jesus the capturing thought in your heart right now? Is it the? Is it the beauty that pushes out all the beauties? Is it the identity that gives you more identity than any other identity? Is it the power, the transforming power that you desire more than any other power? Is it the happiness and joy that it can be that it will be your joy and happiness versus any other happiness out there? See, the Gospel says, We are the problem. And yet at the same time, the solution is your loved, you are beloved, and why because there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And when we allow our spell ourselves to have the space to regret and lament our need, and yet at the same time, never ever, ever forget that we get to go home with mercy. The tax collector asked for it, but you’ve been given it. Because we’re on this side of the cross. Will you join each other on this quest, you don’t get to have love from others. Sorry, you don’t get you don’t have to get love from others. You don’t have to have others love from others, because you’ve already been given it. I want to end this way. Writer, Brandon Manning put it differently. He says it when you define yourself radically, as one beloved by God, this is the true self, every other identity is an illusion. I love that quote. Because it means if this is your identity first, then all other identities can’t threaten you, and live in this world long enough. And people will take away your identity, people will say I can’t believe you’re a Christian that nullifies your identity. But it doesn’t ultimately know a fight because the love from them is not as important as the love from him. And that’s a life changing love. If someone doesn’t acknowledge your identity, that’s still can’t that can’t take away what God has given you. Do you see how stable This is? This stability is more stable than anything else. You don’t have to other other people to get their love, or have their love or get your own love because you have a joy and a wonder and amazement that far outstrips it. A few summers ago, I was with a friend who ministers with Muslims. And he said that he actually recently baptized a man who had just become a Christian. And at this person’s baptism, the man the the main reason that he was there, this is what he said. He said, The reason I’m a Christian right now is I used to go to mosque. And I would laugh and joke and I was told to be quiet. But when I came to your church, I was told that I don’t laugh and joke enough. And now he gets the smile of Jesus. Now he gets the fact that he can be playful that my God delights in me and I get to delight in him. That’s what he gets to say now. My God delights in me and therefore I get to delight in him. Friends, is the same for us. Please don’t leave here and say oh, who Well, I’m so glad that I get Christianity now properly. That just makes you a Pharisee please don’t do that. If you do that you’ve learned nothing. No we are about joy because the only only when we delight in him or other and really and see when you’re really full of joy you’re not even thinking about how they’re thinking about you. And that that allows you then to enter into the that relationship a new very differently. Start today restart today, a God who delights in you is a god, you can delight in, since he sought our happiness now, we can seek other people’s happiness. For those who want to know what happened to my daughter. Well, eventually I ran downstairs and there was the pram there was the stroller and it was empty. And I went to the front desk and there was the doorman, the current shares holding my baby like this. And he saw me coming in with his face scowl like, what happened? And I’d like to be able to say that I was honest, but I wasn’t. I said, Oh, I was I was trying to tie my shoe and the door was closed. Why? Why did I lie? Because I still had the explosive power of the Hawk in me, I did not have the explosive power of Jesus’s love. Because if I did, I would have been much more comfortable to say it’s okay, if I don’t have your praise and your love right now, if you look down on me, because I know he still loves me, despite the fact that I abandoned my daughter. I think that’s the love that we should desire. And I just love that it’s been given to you. And it’s the love that will be transforming to you. I didn’t have the love of God so impressed on my heart and mind that is offered to us that no one despite my failings, that I’m still loved knowing that he delights in me even when I don’t delight in him. In that moment, I actually now want to delight in him, I do delight in him. That’s the power right there. Since he saw your happiness, now you the way to be happy is to seek the happiness of others. That’s the end of othering. And so the end of this talk is this. Have you made this your truth? Have you asked and more importantly, have you received?

Do you start in prayer, approaching asking for mercy, knowing that you need it, and then knowing that it’s been given to you because it has, that’s the good news of the gospel. That’s why we’re here today. That’s what will be here tomorrow. And that’s what we get to live out every day with excitement and delight and joy. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for the love of your thank you for your love found in the death and resurrection of your son. The resurrection is the proof that this kingdom is going to come and that we are going to be remade and renewed and we won’t always be so trivial that we blow up at people who cut us off on our bikes or people who are forgetful of our kids. And yet, that shame will be crushing us. If we think it’s up to us. I pray that your power moves into our hearts and we will be justified that word we need to translate that word justified as the right standing that we get is so much more than just a piece of paper or a proclamation. It’s a love relationship and a changed perspective in heart and world. I pray that we would be in awe and wonder of that. And if we did Father that gratitude and love would would be a transforming power out in this world in new and profound ways. Pray all the things in your name. Amen.