If you Google the term “Pharisees” you find the following: “The Pharisees were a Jewish social movement and school of thought in the Levant during the time of Second Temple Judaism”. That definition is historically true, but spirituality inadequate, for Pharisees were and are not confined to the Levant or to the time of Second Temple Judaism. They can be found almost anywhere, in all places and in all religions. Modern Orthodoxy is home to many of them, for Pharisaism remains a perennial spiritual temptation afflicting the heart of man and especially of the pious.
That is why at the very beginning of the pre-Lenten days in the Orthodox church calendar the Church’s lectionary brings before us at the Sunday Liturgy the parable of the Publican (or tax-collector) and the Pharisee (in Luke 18:9-14). Long familiarity with Christ’s denunciation of the Pharisees can blind us to the fact that for our Lord’s hearers, the Pharisees were the good guys. They were the ones who strove to keep the Torah’s commandments as fully and strictly as possible, and the common man thought that if anyone had a hotline to God, it was the Pharisees. The tax-collectors were, of course, the bad guys: lying, heartless, and corrupt, they defrauded the helpless populace and ground the face of the poor.
In the parable, both a Pharisee and a tax-collector entered the Temple almost side by side. The Pharisee stood (the verb is in the aorist tense so that he didn’t just stand but took his stand—presumably as visibly as possible), looked up to heaven with upraised hands and prayed like this: “God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.”
Fasting twice a week was customary among the pious on Mondays and Thursdays, but it was not required by the Torah. It was entirely voluntary, and therefore commendable. And his tithing was exemplary too, for he didn’t just tithe his crops but everything he had, including probably little things like herbs from a window box (see Matthew 23:23). What a guy! Presumably he had even more good things to say about himself—my guess is about twenty pages worth—but it is as if that was all God could stand to hear and the divine attention gave out.
The tax-collector on the other hand could not even bear to lift up his eyes to heaven. Nor could he lift up his hands in the normal posture of prayer but used his hands to beat his breast. All he could gasp out was “God, be merciful to me, the sinner.” Note: not “a sinner” as usually translated, but “the sinner” as if he were worse than all the other sinners.
Then comes the surprise ending of the parable: the Lord was emphatic (“I tell you”) “this man—the tax-collector—went to his house justified rather than the other”. Note please: this man “rather than the other”. The tax-collector—the one who ripped off widow and orphan, who fattened himself on the suffering of the poor—left the Temple justified, forgiven, and blessed and not the Pharisee.
Why? What did the Pharisee do wrong? He fasted and tithed. Why was his prayer rejected? Because “everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted”. The tax-collector saw himself, was ashamed and repented, humbling himself before God, whereas the Pharisee looked around at others, saw the tax-collector, exalted himself over him and despised him and for his pride God humbled him, rejecting him and his prayer.
The Pharisee’s underlying problem was his heart, for he entered the Temple looking for people worse than himself, searching for swindlers and tax-collectors, anyone over whom he could exalt himself. Though outwardly delighting in the Torah, his real focus was on himself. Judgment, not obedience, was the true stuff of his religion.
Such Pharisees, as said above, are with us still. Their “spirituality” (note the scare-quotes) is rooted in externalism and legalism. It is all about keeping external rules, performing external rituals and judging themselves and others on the basis of them. Like all fundamentalists, they cannot distinguish between things that are crucial, things that are moderately important, and things that are indifferent or relatively unimportant. For them, all things are equally crucial; every hill is the hill to die on.
And Great Lent is their time to flourish, because in Great Lent there are more rules—more times to fast, more regulations about what to eat, more prostrations to make, more services to attend. In other words, more opportunities to look around and find the tax-collector, more opportunities to find people doing things “wrong” and not measuring up. There he is!—a tax-collector standing near me in the Temple. There he is!—an Orthodox eating a ham and cheese sandwich during the Great Fast. What a gift! God, I thank you that I am not like other men—swindlers, unjust, adulterers—or even like this eater of ham and cheese sandwiches!
Perhaps warning signs might be helpful, like the proverbial “warning signs of cancer”, so that the disease of Pharisaism can be detected and uprooted from the heart before it is too late. Here is a partial list of things that I have heard judged and denounced by Pharisees in the four decades of my ministry: using the wrong calendar, serving baptismal Liturgies, serving Vesperal Liturgies, not singing all the stichs for Vespers, not making enough bows when venerating icons, crossing oneself the wrong way, crossing oneself at the wrong time, not crossing oneself at the right time, prostrating at the wrong time, not making enough prostrations, making the sign of the Cross before receiving the Eucharist, kissing the Chalice after receiving the Eucharist, women having bare arms while standing in church, women crossing their legs while sitting in church, women not wearing muted colours in church, men not wearing suits and ties in church, not standing still during the chanting of the Six Psalms of Matins, eating vegetable soup in Lent because the label says it contains dairy…
I could add more (like the Pharisee of the parable, I could fill twenty pages with this stuff), but you get the idea. To the judgmental Pharisaical heart, there is no limit to the number of things one can find that people are doing “wrong”. But here’s the point: the rightness or wrongness of the practices are (let’s capitalize it) NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. The Pharisee erred when he entered the Temple by looking for people doing things wrong; we err when we do the same. Our attention shouldn’t be on others’ supposed sins, but on the Lord. Their sins—real or imagined—are not our concern. It is as St. Paul demanded of those tempted to judge their brothers: “Who are you to judge the servant of another? It is to his own master that he stands or falls”, not to them or us (Romans 14:4). We must leave others to the judgment and mercy of God.
Great Lent is wonderful time, an opportunity to stretch and strive and grow. But it can be a dangerous time too, if we do not avoid the focus of the Pharisee. Let us fast and tithe and pray and prostrate—and keep our focus steadfastly on our Master.
About Fr. Lawrence Farley
Fr. Lawrence serves as Rector Emeritus of St. Herman's Orthodox Church in Langley, BC. He is also author of the Orthodox Bible Companion Series along with a number of other publications.