Lost

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Ordinary 31C

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), Warsaw VA

Luke 19:1-10

He entered Jericho and was passing through it. ²A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. ³He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. ⁴So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. ⁵When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.” ⁶So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. ⁷All who saw it began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.” ⁸Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” ⁹Then Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. ¹⁰For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.”

This is on of those stories that I can’t remember NOT knowing.  It’s mixed right in there with Adam & Eve, Noah’s Ark, Moses and the parting of the Red Sea, and the Nativity … yes, of course there are other stories from the New Testament that are also on the list, but not all of them come with their own song – with motions – you know, “Zacchaeus was a wee little man and a wee little man was he” … , or as I first learned it: “Zaqueo era un hombre muy chico, muy chico era el, subió por un sicomoro para ver a Jesús, para ver a Jesús, y cuando Jesús lo vio…” well … you get the picture … I love … I treasure the fact that I have that heritage … that history that I carry inside … in some ways, I feel like it connects me to the oral tradition of the Hebrew people that we mention when we study the scriptures.

There is a feeling that carries through from things like this that we learn in childhood, things are comforting, familiar, welcoming.  The thing is, it’s different approaching this passage as an adult, with a critical mind, a questioning spirit, and a slightly skeptical attitude.  It’s not that I truly doubt the events, but I approach it from a different perspective – I want to find out what Luke wants us to pick up from his telling of the story.  After all, he is the only one that included this particular story in his rendering of the Gospel. 

I read an interesting observation on the story that I’d like to share with you, especially with the events coming up this week: 

Some translations of the text do not have Zacchaeus saying "Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything I will pay back four times as much." But instead "Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I give to the poor; and if I have found that I have defrauded anyone of anything, I pay back four times as much."

The Greek could be translated as “will continue to”, so it does make a difference in the tenor of the story, doesn’t it?

The difference is a crucial one.  In the first, Zacchaeus is promising to do something he has never done before.  In the second he is describing something he already does. The first he is a man who has been changed by the acceptance that Jesus has shown him.  The second shows Zacchaeus not so much as a contrite agent of extortion, but rather that he was someone who was living as best he could in a very complex situation.  In fact, it may be that he held this position so that someone less scrupulous could not. 

The difficulty I find with this story is that I honestly don’t know which version to believe.   Both sound equally plausible. I can well imagine Zacchaeus as a rich and selfish bully who has allowed his greed to harden his heart and reap the rewards of his position.  Equally I can see him as a moral and generous man aware of the economic effects of military occupation; aware he is detested but prepared to do a dirty job to ensure the best deal for those from whom taxes were collected.

Jesus may have known of this wealthy man, as someone who was a greedy extorter or as someone who redistributed his wealth.  Or he may have known nothing of him.

This confusion over Zacchaeus feels similar to the confusion that many people feel about our political leaders.  Which ones genuinely care for the plight of the poor as Zacchaeus says he does?  Which ones are corrupt and taking everything they can get as the crowd accuse Zacchaeus of?  In what ways are each of them a more inconvenient mixture of both?

The temptation to vilify or idealise any one person because of their occupation is very real but ultimately oversimplifies and dehumanises. We should examine what they do, principally with money, but the example of Jesus is to continue to pursue a relationship that see past the rumours and the stigma to the person.

Regardless, risk is at the heart of this meeting.  Risk for Jesus – as he approaches Jerusalem, he risks losing some of his supporters.  This champion of the poor and liberator of the Jews has just taken up with someone who they believe exploits the poor and is a traitor to his people. Risk for Zacchaeus as he comes down to the same level as everyone else and aligns himself with Jesus as the most dangerous part of the story is about to begin.

In the company of Jesus, zealots walk with tax collectors, Jew with Gentile, men with woman.  Who do we wish to be separate from? Who do we draw circles round and call “out” of the club?  Who do we not want to be ranked with? Perhaps in one of his final moments pre-Jerusalem, Jesus is demonstrating how wide his circle is.     

How uncomfortable does that make us; the thought that Jesus would associate with folks that we would normally consider to be outside the ‘in’ crowd?  Or is that a factor in our thinking?  Are we troubled by the idea that Jesus would welcome someone with no preconditions?

What is most arresting about Jesus’ meeting with Zacchaeus and its’ outcome is the lack of preconditions that Jesus puts on the meeting.

Traditionally, yes, what I grew up with and what I suspect those of us who DID grow up in church with was the idea that Zacchaeus was greedy and hard-hearted, and his meeting with Jesus changed him.  In our minds we fill in the events … we hear Jesus GIVING him those conditions over supper: stop cheating, stop stealing, stop this and that … yada yada … when in fact, there is no indication in the text that any of that conversation took place before Zacchaeus made his statement about repayment and restitution.  The question of whether he was continuing to do what he had already been doing or was going to begin to do something he’d never done before are set aside, because the idea that an encounter with Jesus would be so transformative as to cause someone to completely redirect their lives to that degree would seem to come naturally if we were used to hearing those dramatic transformation and conversion stories. 

It becomes a little more nuanced, a little harder to caricature, if we consider the possibility that Zacchaeus was already doing something good in the middle of a bad and complicated situation.  That would force us to look elsewhere, to the crowd, specifically, for the point that Jesus was making in his statement about having come to save the “lost”.  If Zacchaeus was doing good in the middle of a bad and complicated situation, then that means that the crowd, the entire population of Jericho, was at fault for having judged him so harshly. 

And that, by extension, makes us, as observers in the scenario, accomplices in that judgment.  That makes US the targets of Jesus’ comments about coming to save the lost. 

But we knew that already, didn’t we? 

It bears noting that, in the preceding passages, Luke has Jesus encountering the rich young ruler who asks him what he must do to have eternal life, to which Jesus’ replies, keep the commandments; don’t commit adultery, don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t bear false witness, honor your father and mother … interesting that he should include lying right in there with the ‘biggies’: adultery, murder and stealing … and the very next passage has Jesus entering Jericho and being assailed by the blind beggar, who asks Jesus to have mercy on him and give him his sight.  In that instance, Jesus heals him with the words,  “receive your sight, your faith has saved you.”

Then we come to the Zacchaeus story.  And there’s this issue with the wording… it is easier, isn’t it, to simply know that Zacchaeus was the bad guy, crooked and hard-hearted, and that purely by the act of inviting himself into Zacchaeus’ home, Jesus began the transformation of his life. 

Except that it might not have been so clear-cut.  Of all the Gospels, Luke seems to be the one that pays most attention to the way words are used and placed and composed.  Luke is the one that does more to show that Jesus was a master at showing the “established righteous” just how unrighteous they truly were.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

So with whom do we identify in this story?  Are we the greedy, hard-hearted chief tax collector of Jericho, or are we the one struggling to make a good in a bad situation, or are we part of the crowd keeping our distance and pointing the finger and shouting ‘sinner’?

Who among us has not felt lost at one time or another, as we wrestle with making sense of the call that Jesus places on our lives?  Makes me wonder if we can ever truly relinquish that title? 

As followers of Christ, it is incumbent on us to never forget where we stand in our relationship to God – we stand not on our merits, but on grace, on love, resting fully in the arms that sustain us.  And those arms take on a physicality that is real – they are the arms of our brothers and sisters in this family.  They are the ones that share the meals, that pick up the phone and call, that open the car door, start the engine, and come and visit, that drive us to appointments, they weave themselves into our lives and into our hearts.

They are Christ’s presence in our life, calling us to him, calling us to go and do likewise.

Let’s pray.