Maybe we’ve been reading this story wrong. It is possible, perhaps even preferable, to hear that both men went home justified, alongside one another. Suddenly, the parable is no longer about humility or self-righteousness, about a winner and a loser. It’s about the mercy of God on both.

There is deep wisdom here from our ancestors in the faith. When our way of being in relationship with God isn’t working, as evidenced by all the pain and suffering in our world, and everything comes tumbling down, God’s approach will become stronger, and God will break into our lives in a new and more intimate way. We don’t even have to do anything to make that happen. In fact, resistance is futile, both resistance to the destruction of old ways of life and resistance to God’s advances.