Try to imagine, if you can, that you have never heard the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector that we have in today’s gospel, that you are there with Jesus hearing this story for the very first time. Bear in mind that in your world the Pharisees are considered to be pious to the “nth” degree. They are scrupulous in following the law of Moses as they understand it, as it has been handed down to them in tradition. They set themselves apart (Pharisee means “set apart”) from other Jews in body, mind, and spirit, as we see in the prayer of the one in Jesus’ parable. In your culture, the Pharisees are the good guys, the one in the white hats, the ones your mother holds up as models of good Jewish behavior. While, on the other hand, no Jewish mother would want her son to become a tax collector. In your society, they are on the fringe of society, the lowest of the low, the guys in the black hats because they are in the employ of Rome—the occupying oppressor. No decent person will associate with them.

Now, hear this parable with fresh ears. The one expected to be the bad guy is the hero of the story, the one justified by God for his contrite, humble attitude—while the one we are sure will be the good guy we find is totally self-satisfied in his self-righteousness and is left out in the cold; what a radical upending! That’s what Cynthia Bourgeault in The Wisdom Jesus sees as the role of parables and calls them “ ‘spiritual hand grenades;’ their job is not to confirm but to uproot.”

Our society still hasn’t gotten Jesus’ message of the blessing, the freedom, of humility. We still want to be Number 1, on top of the heap, with the most marbles. As in Jesus day, we still want the best seats in the house( Lk.11:43, Lk.14:7-11, Mk.10:35-40). The parable comes to shock us awake here and now, to shake us out of the spiritual rut in which we have allowed ourselves to become comfortable, maybe even apathetic, to catapult us “into a whole new way of seeing and being.” May it be so for each of us today.