Jesus asserted the spirituality of imperfection in the parable of the tax collector and the Pharisee (Luke 18:9–14.) Jesus invites us to disengage from a spirituality of meritocracy and instead imbibe the spirituality of lowliness.
The tax collectors are the abhorred extensions of the oppressive Roman Empire, while the Pharisees are the pious religious submitted to the law. Like most of us, the Pharisee thought and prayed, “I’m a good person. I don’t steal; I don’t cheat.” We have shaped our positive, superior self-image on why we are right and why we are good. In contrast, “The tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven. Instead, he beat his breast, saying ‘God be merciful to me, a sinner.’” Jesus concluded with, “I tell you, this sinner, not the Pharisee, returned home justified before God.” (Luke 18:14)
The good news that Jesus professed was that God’s choice is always for the excluded one. God always chooses the rejected son, the barren woman, and the people enslaved in Egypt or exiled in Babylon. It is not a winner’s storyline in the Bible—it is a loser’s script, where, paradoxically, everybody wins.
Philippians 2:5-8 “You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross.”
