Vindication and Reconciliation
Vindication and Reconciliation
Vindication was what the widow in last week’s parable was looking for. When we heard her nagging the disrespecting judge last week, “give me justice against my opponent,” the Greek word translated “justice” actually means “vindication” or even “revenge.”
In today’s Gospel reading, which comes right after last week’s reading from Luke’s Gospel, we are in a different court, this time with a member of the Pharisee party and a tax collector. The one and only Temple in Jerusalem was a court, where the one God of Israel dwelt and who judged God’s chosen people on the basis of the covenant God had made with them after liberating the Israelites from slavery in Egypt.
The Temple was the court in which the Jewish people confessed their transgressions and made bloody sacrifices that they hoped would persuade God to “justify” them again. The Pharisee belonged to a party in Judaism that stressed total obedience to the Law of Moses. A tax collector working with the pagan Romans in their imperial system of oppression wouldn’t be considered “just” by human standards.
Yet here they both are, standing in the court of God’s house seeking the justice of God, to be “justified,” a different Greek word from the one used to describe the vindication that the widow was seeking. In their own way, both Pharisee and tax collector are seeking to be justified by God, though the tax collector asks only for “mercy.” The Pharisee assumed he was already justified before he walked into this court. And given his obedience to the “do nots” of the law, and his generous tithes, he might have had reason to feel justified, if he hadn’t pointed a finger at the tax collector. Like the widow, he was really seeking vindication.
And yet we hear that it was the tax collector, not the Pharisee, who went back into the world “justified” by God, not necessarily vindicated, but justified, in right relationship with God. How? The Law of Israel is not based on abstract theories of justice. The Law of Israel is first and foremost a covenant between the people and their God, not a contract which either side can annul at any time for any reason, but a covenant in which God marries himself to these people for all time. A covenant is a binding relationship which God will not sever, though God’s people might try really hard.
To be justified is to be reconciled to this God; it is to be fully restored to a right relationship with this God. By unveiling himself to God’s justice and mercy, the tax collector stayed in relationship to a God whose justice he had violated, and would most likely continue when he walked out of the Temple, since it could be assumed that he had no other way of supporting his family.
The Son of God makes it clear that he has the authority to declare someone reconciled to God, even when that person may not seem deserving of this reconciliation on the surface. For God — Father, Son, Spirit — seems able to see the inner human, with all their mixed motives, that none of us can see. And if that is Good News for us, then it is Good News for everybody.
The 20th Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 25, Year C, October 26th, 2025
The Rev. David Kendrick