In this world we have stereotypes, like the Pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18:9-14, after the jump). In this imagined stereotyped world the Pharisee is self-righteous, hypocritical, unloving, and conscious that God is on his side. In that world, too, is the tax collector who, knowing his low status in society and his own sins of robbery, realizes his position before God and so confesses his sin. Instead of claiming his own righteousness, he longs for God to establish him as right. He sees himself as a sinner; the Pharisee sees himself as righteous.

But Jesus wants us to imagine the world where the least desirable people, those who are stereotypical sinners, repent and turn to God. A world where the most self-righteous of people are seen for what they are. 

What Jesus wants us to imagine is a world where truth about ourselves is held in the highest honor, where compassion is what matters, and where self-congratulations are abandoned.

To jolt his readers into this kind of world, Jesus uses a Flannery O’Connor-like set of bold images: the righteous man is not, the unrighteous man is. The imagined world of Jesus subverts our images of who is good — the parable is very much along the line of the Beatitudes of Jesus.