parable

Luke 18:9-14

I’ve preached this passage focusing on grace, and that’s a legitimate approach, especially given that this is the text for Reformation Sunday (which, as far as I can tell, few people observe these days). That sermon explained the tax collector is “justified” because he recognizes his sins and can accept God’s grace and forgiveness, which he has done nothing to earn. The Pharisee, on the other hand, believes he has earned his own justification, his own worthiness, and so refuses God’s grace. He is like Jesus’ audience: those who “trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt” (Luke 18:9).

Given our current zeitgeist, what I notice in the passage this time around is not merely that the Pharisee believes he is righteous. He probably is. Pharisees worked hard to do the right things and be the right kind of people. If we lived in ancient Judea, we would have wanted a Pharisee as a next-door neighbor. He’d probably keep his yard neat and pick up after his dog. The tax collector, on the other hand, really has behaved deplorably. He’s collaborated with Rome and enriched himself by exploiting his own people.

But it isn’t the difference between these two men that I notice this year. What I notice is, “but they regard others with contempt.”

We are surrounded by contempt. Contempt is more than disagreement; it’s disgust, rooted in the inability to see the image of God in the other person. Schopenhauer said contempt is belief in the “utter worthlessness of a fellow human being.” Contempt is looking at someone and thinking, “The world would be better without you in it.”

This parable contains a couple of traps. The first trap we might fall into is romanticizing the tax collector. In a recent article in the Christian Century, a young woman describes years of church youth camp during which she felt like a failure as a Christian. She writes, “At youth group and church camp, I learned to perform my own unworthiness. … A sneering voice in my head whispered that I wasn’t good enough for God because I’d never been bad.” She writes that without realizing it, self-abasement had become her religious practice, and it took years to recognize the harm this caused. This kind of “performative unworthiness” becomes just another way to try to earn God’s love, when that love is freely given. Jesus never said, “You must be a broken, miserable sinner to be my follower.” The tax collector is not supposed to be our role model.

The second trap we might stumble into is our own contempt. We might wonder: After all, isn’t the Pharisee deserving of contempt? He begins his prayer by thanking God, but his gratitude immediately devolves into contempt for others. Pretty soon he isn’t really thanking God at all; he’s thanking himself as he looks at the tax collector with disdain.

Clearly, Jesus intends us to understand that contempt isn’t good. It’s not hard to see why: Contempt is not loving our neighbors as ourselves. Contempt is not loving our enemies (Matthew 5:44). But if we make this parable about how terrible the Pharisees were, or even how terrible this one Pharisee is, we’ve missed the point – or fallen victim to it by being contemptuous ourselves. Anytime we draw a line between who’s “in” and who’s “out,” who is righteous and who is not, who is acceptable to God and who is not, this parable asserts you will find God on the other side.

Read this way, the parable is not about self-righteousness and humility any more than it is about a pious Pharisee and desperate tax collector. Rather, this parable is about God: God who alone can judge the human heart; God who determines to justify the ungodly.

In 2025, we live in a what Arthur C. Brooks calls a “culture of contempt.” Brooks writes, “Nothing is about honest disagreement; it is all about your interlocutor’s lack of basic human decency. Thus, no one with whom you disagree is worth engaging at all. The result is contempt.”

As the government shutdown drags on into Week 4, it’s obvious that this culture of contempt is a serious problem in a society and a system of government that require collaboration. Contempt is encouraged by some of our leaders, but it just doesn’t work in a democracy and we do not have to buy into it. We can fight for justice without resorting to contempt. We can be the change we wish to see in the world, and start by swearing off contempt. Trevin Wax writes, “Perhaps the test of faithfulness in a day of moral degradation will be our love for people across chasms of difference. Faithfulness isn’t in showy displays that we hate all the right people.”

And perhaps faithfulness isn’t in showing we’re right and the other person or group is stupid or morally bankrupt, but rather in working toward achieving a shared objective. What objective might we share with those with whom we disagree vehemently? We’d have to speak with each other, without contempt, to find that out.

Resources:
McKenzie Watson-Fore, “Dear Jesus, Am I Broken Enough Yet?” in The Christian Century, July 9, 2025, https://www.christiancentury.org/features/dear-jesus-am-i-broken-enough-yet.
Matt Skinner, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-30-3/commentary-on-luke-189-14-4
David Lose, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-30-3/commentary-on-luke-189-14-2
Arthur C. Brooks, Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt (New York: Broadside Books, 2019)
Trevin Wax, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/silent-sin-kills-love/

Luke 12:13-21

I was disappointed to learn that the old adage, “Money can’t buy happiness,” isn’t actually true. To tell the truth, it never made intuitive sense to me. I knew from personal experience as a struggling student as well as observing parishioners that if you don’t have enough money to cover basic expenses, it causes unhappiness in the form of anxiety. So money definitely buys relief from anxiety, which perhaps is not the same as happiness. Nevertheless, studies now show that real happiness improves as income increases, and continues to rise alongside one’s bank account with no clear upper limit. Still, I wanted the saying to be true. As a person who has chosen a career guaranteed to keep me free from excessive wealth, I wanted it to be true that once basic needs are met, people are equally happy.

The parable in this passage in Luke doesn’t dispute the new research. However, it does suggest that the happiness that comes with wealth isn’t what really matters in the long run. Responding to a request for financial advice from someone in the crowd, Jesus warns against greed, which ancient philosophers believed to be a form of depravity and a lack of self-control. He explains, “One’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions,” and then tells the parable about a rich, apparently happy man. We hear the rich man’s inner monologue: He wonders how to store his overabundance of crops and belongings, and the obvious solution is to build bigger barns. That’s when God shows up, a rare occurrence in a parable, and tells him he’s a fool. He’s going to die that very night, and, as another old saying goes, you can’t take it with you. “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

Jesus doesn’t say the man is wicked. He doesn’t say he’s evil. He says he’s a fool. Given that money can buy happiness, what makes this man a fool? He’s a fool, says Jesus, because he stored up treasures for himself, when he should have been “rich toward God.” But what does “rich toward God” mean?

Maybe the man isn’t “rich toward God” because he only considers his own interests, needs, and desires. The conversation he has with himself is utterly self-focused. Has he grown apathetic to the needs of others because of the insulation that his wealth provides? He seems to have no concern outside his own comfort and contentment. He has no empathy for others; no sense of the needs of his neighbors; no sense of how his blessing could be a blessing to others; no sense of connection to anyone. It is foolish to live locked in your own little world, oblivious to the presence, humanity, and needs of others.

Perhaps he isn’t “rich toward God” because he has made wealth his goal. Has wealth replaced God in his heart? “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Luke 12:34) A 2003 study describes “the money and happiness paradox”: Even though having more money is associated with happiness, seeking more money impairs our happiness. The study found that people with strong financial success goals reported lower satisfaction with family life, friendships, and jobs. It found that “the greater your goal for financial success, the lower your satisfaction with family life, regardless of household income.” This paradox teaches that money boosts happiness when it is a result, but not when it is a primary goal, or as one researcher noted, “It is generally good for your happiness to have money, but toxic to your happiness to want money too much.” When money becomes our God, it jeopardizes our happiness.

Maybe he is not “rich toward God” in the way he seems to assume he alone can take credit for his wealth; that his wealth belongs to him and him alone. Psalm 24 teaches, “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it; the world, and those who live in it.” Our lives and possessions are not our own. They belong to God. We are merely stewards of them for the time God has given us on this earth. Elisabeth Johnson writes, “We rebel against this truth because we want to be in charge of our lives and our stuff.” God’s surprise announcement is a stark reminder that, ultimately, control of our lives is an illusion. Sooner or later we learn that no amount of wealth or property can secure our lives. No amount of wealth can protect us from a genetically inherited disease, for instance, or from a tragic accident. No amount of wealth can keep our relationships healthy and our families from falling apart. In fact, wealth and property can easily drive a wedge between family members, as in the case of the brothers fighting over their inheritance at the beginning of this passage.

Maybe he isn’t “rich toward God” because his focus on his own comfort ignores God’s good Creation. We aren’t told this man achieved his wealth by misusing other people or exploiting the planet, but we know this accounts for much of the extreme wealth in our world today, as well as the historic levels of income inequality we’re witnessing. Jesus follows this parable with Luke’s version of the “lilies of the field,” concluding, “Instead, seek God’s kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well” (Luke 12:31). In God’s kingdom, Jesus’ metaphor for the world governed by God’s love for all of God’s Creation, everyone has enough because people share, people do not hoard, people do not exploit others or the earth so that the earth can sustain all God’s creatures. In other words, people love their neighbors as themselves and it is apparent in the economy.

In our consumer culture, our worthiness is measured by what we own, can afford to buy, and the power that comes from vast sums of money. This makes it a hard sell convincing anyone that the happiness generated by wealth isn’t what really matters. But we only need to look around us to see the tragic consequences of wealth that insulates people from the struggles of the rest of the world and contributes to the destruction of the planet. It is abundantly clear that it is not “rich toward God.” It is, in fact, foolish.

Resources:
Aimee Picchi, “Yes, Money Can Buy Happiness: the More Wealth You Have, the Happier You Get, Research Finds,” July 26, 2024, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/money-buys-happiness-study-finds-rich-are-happier-research/.
Cynthia Briggs Kittredge, “This is a funny story. We laugh. But we’re laughing at ourselves,” July 17, 2019, https://www.christiancentury.org/lectionary/august-4-ordinary-18c-luke-12-13-21
John Jennings, “Does Money Buy Happiness? Actually, Yes,” February 12, 2024, https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnjennings/2024/02/12/money-buys-happiness-after-all/
Elisabeth Johnson, “Commentary Luke 12:13-21,” August 4, 2019, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-18-3/commentary-on-luke-1213-21-4

Solvitur Ambulando

Putting one foot in front of the other on the path of faith

The Pharisee and the Tax Collector

Rich Toward God