October 23, 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Jeremiah 14:7-10, 19-22; Luke 18:9-14

"Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart,” writes James Baldwin, “for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.” Such people clothe themselves in religion while creating hell for others. They see everything but their truest selves. Being born again means stripping away the things that create distance between God and us and between us and others—but this can cause anxiety and pain. It’s easier to do as we’re so often taught: to hide our vulnerabilities and practice spiritual dishonesty about our shortcomings.

Jesus instructs a crowd of people intoxicated by their own sense of righteousness that they are blind to themselves. They “trusted in themselves,” but they cannot actually see themselves. They can finger the flaws in others without ever truly approaching their own. In his story of a Pharisee’s self-righteousness and a tax collector’s soul hunger, Jesus disrupts the spiritual elitism of the religious.

In the story, Jesus praises a man whose job makes him an enemy of Israel. He shifts the moral authority from the good religious folk to a man ostensibly with a past, one who gives no indication of tendering his resignation as an agent of the Roman Empire. The original audience expects the story to affirm the Pharisee, the religious insider whose life illustrates scriptural literacy and moral impunity. It doesn’t.