forest hill 
October 26, 2025
Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost
"A Time to Pray"
What if God loves sinners as much as saints? What if our heroes – the ones who do everything right and go the second (or even third!) mile aren’t the only ones to win the prize? What if, in Jesus’ kingdom, even the people we hate are welcome, and beloved?
Would you want to live in a Kingdom like that?
What’s the point of being “good” – with all the sacrifices that might entail – if it doesn’t win you more cookies than the bully down the street with torn jeans?
Are there boundaries to Jesus’ hospitality? Should there be to ours?
The parable we’re wrestling with this week is about a super-conscientious saint (an over-the-top caricature that would have made even the most religious person giggle), and a money-grubbing traitor who’s got rich by collaborating with the occupying army and feathering his own nest. And both of them come asking God for forgiveness and blessing.
Do they deserve it? Do they get it? Should they? Is there enough blessing for both?
How does this story connect to Jesus’ command to love our enemies? I’ve always thought that command sounded pious in the abstract, but incredibly difficult to do in real life. In real life, I’m much more like the saint in this story: contemptuous of my enemies rather than open to giving them the benefit of the doubt.
The traditional way to translate the final verse of the parable is to say that “the tax collector was justified rather than the Pharisee.” You’ll find it that way in most English translations. But I read a really intriguing argument from Amy Jill Levine recently who says that the original Greek is genuinely ambiguous. It could just as legitimately be translated as “the tax collector was justified along side the Pharisee.” Or even, “the tax collector was justified because of the Pharisee.” Does that change your sense of what's going on here?
It’s so frustrating when the scholars argue about the meaning the Greek! None of the rest of us have the tools or the training to know which one is right!
But what if God’s grace is broad enough to embrace both the saint and the sinner in this story? What if each of them gets what they need, when they sincerely approach God’s presence? What if Jesus’ Kingdom is a place where welcome isn’t dependant on whether we go the third or fourth mile (when we’re only expected to go one!); or even whether or not there are holes in our jeans?
Like any good parable, there is no neat answer. This is not a morality tale where right and wrong are obvious, and we saints get to shake our fingers at the “bad guys”. This is murky; uncomfortable; challenging; unsettling. And maybe that’s the point.
Come join us on Sunday as we wrestle with what God’s grace looks like: to super-saints; to super-sinners; and to the rest of us somewhere in the middle.