Luke 18:9–14
Whenever Jesus meets or discusses tax collectors, the result is a paradigm of justice that differs profoundly from our own. Tax collectors are imperial collaborators, extortionists, traitors, thieves, and subjects of general derision in first century Palestine, particularly from the point of view of the Jewish people. And yet, tax collectors receive not the swift retribution many thought they deserved, but a far more transformational place in Jesus’ thought, including in this parable.
Take tax collectors in Luke’s Gospel alone. Tax collectors are among the first to seek baptism from John (3:12-13). Levi is a tax collector who leaves his life behind and becomes one of the Twelve (5:27-31). In conflicts with religious leadership, the tax collectors remained faithful to the mission of God (7:24-30) and they come and listen to Jesus’ parables (15:1). And let us not forget Zacchaeus of children’s song fame: the tax collector who repents so fully that it results in significant reparations to those he has wronged.
Jesus never condemns the tax collectors to retribution but instead invites them to transformation. Jesus (and John the Baptist) are quite clear about the injustice of tax collectors’ activities, which is both explicit in John’s teaching and implicit in the response tax collectors like Zaccheaus have to Jesus’ gospel. This paradigm of transformation and restoration, as opposed to retribution, is fundamental for abolition.
Mariame Kaba and Andrea Ritchie point out in an essay in Essence that our justice system is not set up for this kind of transformation. Discussing justice for Breonna Taylor, they write, “we want far more than what the system that killed Breonna Taylor can offer—because the system that killed her is not set up to provide justice for her family and loved ones.” While we must seek accountability for police wrongdoing, “arrests and prosecutions … have proven to be sources of violence not safety. We cannot claim the system must be dismantled because it is a danger to Black lives and at the same time legitimize it by turning to it for justice.” [1]
Jesus does not turn to systems of retributive punishment to right the wrongs of the tax collectors, including in this parable. Dr. Amy-Jill Levine speculates that the Pharisee’s proclamation is perhaps instrumental in the tax collector’s disposition toward God. “We might rather see the Pharisee as helping the tax collector,” she writes. “Just as the sin of one person impacts the community … so the merits of the righteous can benefit the community. … Jews who first heard this parable … may well have understood the Pharisee’s merit to have impacted the tax collector. This would be the parable’s shock: not only that the agent of Rome is justified but that the Pharisee’s own good works helped in that justification.” [2] We aren’t given the rest of the tax collector’s story, but we are witness to his first act of repentance and transformation.
Jesus wants to see a world where people are transformed, not merely punished. Either that, or Jesus wants to see an end to the material circumstances that may have necessitated something we called a crime in the first place. In both cases, the response is not punitive, it’s restorative. The witness of the tax collectors demand a social vision beyond punishment, which is core to the abolitionist conviction.
[1] From “We Want More Justice for Breonna Taylor than the System that Killed Her Can Deliver” by Mariame Kaba and Andrea J. Ritchie, originally appearing in the July 2020 issue of Essence and reprinted in We Do This ‘Til We Free Us.
[2] See her notes in The Jewish Annotated New Testament on this parable.
Wesley Spears-Newsome (he/him/his)is a writer and Baptist pastor in North Carolina. You can find more of his work at wespearsnewsome.com.