Sermon for Proper 26 C
Luke 19:1-10
I have mentioned in the
past about the childhood Bible that I had, its images still figure prominently
on the landscape of my spirit. I can still vividly recall the image of the
chief tax collector Zacchaeus up in the tree, the illumined face of Jesus
up-turned to him.
Today’s Gospel story is
very familiar and it is featured in every children’s bible or comic gospel I’ve
ever seen. I suppose that’s because children like climbing trees.
The way that we usually
read this story is that Jesus invites himself to sit with Zacchaeus and the
mere invitation and meal is enough for Zacchaeus to turn over a new leaf and
give half his possessions to the poor and plan to give back four times what he
may have cheated out of people. This reading makes sense to us because it fits
our normal understanding of how God works in our lives, we confess our evil,
repent, and then are forgiven. Jesus says, "Today salvation has come to
this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek
out and to save the lost." Cause and effect. It makes a whole lot of
sense: Zacchaeus, that short man in both stature and social standing, is a
sinner in need of repentance.
Zacchaeus is a chief tax
collector. As we know the tax collectors worked for the empire and could add a
little to the bill for their own payment. They were especially hated by the
natives probably because the tax collectors themselves were natives. It’s one
thing to be the occupying empire, it is quite another to collaborate with them.
In the first century the people commonly referred to the tax collectors as
sinners, as a group, because for them
the activity of collecting taxes was especially heinous; it was a sin against
God and neighbor to do what they were doing and they became rich from it. Tax
collectors were sinners because their livelihood was enmeshed with their sinful
actions.
The usual reading of this
passage has Jesus, the forgiver, walking into a sinful life in order to redeem
it. I like that reading because it makes sense to me, I have lived that life. I
have found myself to be living out of right relationship with God or my
neighbor, or even myself, I have confessed and I have felt God’s forgiving
love. Haven’t you?
But I don’t think that is
what’s going on in the story. And the reason I don’t think so is, unfortunately,
for grammatical reasons. I’ll get to that in a minute, first let’s look again
at the story.
The passage says that
Zacchaeus is short, but the Greek word there (elikia) could mean short in stature, age or time of life, or even
maturity. So Zacchaeus could just be young, or maybe he’s grown-up, yet
immature! Maybe that’s why this rich, up and coming tax collector, who manages
a bunch of other tax collectors sees nothing at all wrong with climbing a tree:
he’s young at heart and just doesn’t care what people think. When my kids climb
trees they certainly aren’t worried what people will think, they climb trees because
they want to!
Anyway, Zacchaeus accepts
Jesus’ invitation to invite Jesus over for dinner and as soon as they get
inside, once they get through the crowd that is scandalized that Jesus is
eating with such a sinner, Zacchaeus announces that he will give half of his
things to the poor and he will pay back four times as much to anyone he may
have cheated.
Except that’s not what Zacchaeus
says.
I know that what the text
says, but that’s not what it says.
You see, as part of my weekly
discipline, to actually pray with the
scripture, I have to force myself to read slowly, and the best way that I have
found to do that is to read it in Greek, and because my Greek is not nearly as good as it
used to be; I have to look words up. So to read and understand these ten verses
it might take me a half hour of slow, plodding, yet revealing effort.
What I found was that Zacchaeus
doesn’t say that he will give half of his possessions to the poor and that he
will pay back those who he has cheated, instead what he says is that he gives
half of his things to the poor, he pays back anyone he has cheated. It’s
all in the present tense. In fact in the grammatical structure of Greek what
Zacchaeus says is called the iterative-present, he has been doing those things
in the past and he is doing them in the present.
In the version of the
Bible that we almost always use in this church, the New Revised Standard
Version, the translators have decided to place Zacchaeus’ statement to Jesus in
the future tense, he will do these things. The
implication is that because of his encounter with Jesus he will change his
ways. He is having his Ebenezer Scrooge moment, he will change.
The notion of whether Zacchaeus
is doing the good deeds in the
present or will in the future, to me
is crucial. Once I discovered that the Greek used the present tense, I did a
quick online search and found that 6 out of the 24 most used translations of
the Bible in English use the future tense, and the remaining 18 use the present
tense. Zacchaeus says, “Lord I give
half my possessions to the poor, and if I find that I have cheated anyone, I pay them back four times as much.”
Who cares? Why does all
this matter? Why does all this comparison and grammatical rigmarole matter?
It matters because if Zacchaeus
has this encounter with Jesus and then promises amendment of life, well that’s
actually a really good thing. But if we see that Zacchaeus has been giving to
the poor and making right with those he may have accidently cheated all along,
well that’s a whole other kettle of fish. If we hear the past and present
activity of this sinner, this person who the entire community reviles, if we
see that he is in fact more than simply just, that he is living a
salvation-life, well then we have a problem.
You see, when we read
Zacchaeus as promising some future event, then when Jesus’ statement that “Today
salvation has come to this house,” we read that as centered on Jesus only. Now,
that’s not bad, and I’m no heretic, as you may have noticed, I am a huge fan of
Jesus.
But when we read the
Zacchaeus has been just and giving all along, we find that Jesus is in a place
of discovery, he exclaims, perhaps loud enough for those who are outside and
wouldn’t be caught dead with someone like Zacchaeus, “Wow! Salvation has come
to this house! Here is a son of Abraham!”
Indeed the Son of Man came
to seek and save the lost, but Zacchaeus’ lost-ness has more to do with the
fact that his community and the system in which they are forced to live has
made them all take up sides. In Jericho the people could not even conceive of a
situation whereby a chief tax collector could be anything other than a sinner,
a traitor, and a collaborator.
Most of us who know this
story from of old might think of Zacchaeus as a sniveling little miser who
finally got right with God. But the story actually shows this very righteous,
good person who is also very hated by his community. Jesus then is the
bystander in the story who recognizes the wonder that God has been at work even
in the evil system of taxes, military occupation, social stratification, and
judgement. Jesus is there to recognize and declare that salvation is there,
that God seeks people through whatever boundaries a society has set up.
Jesus then is the one who
accepts the invitation to witness to God’s work in the most intractable, divisive
situations. And since that’s what Jesus does, then you can bet that that is
precisely what we are meant to seek: God working in unlikely places.
Now, if only we were, I
don’t know, engaged in a sharply divided political landscape. If only we had an
economic situation that pits us against them, where we judge each other
harshly. If only we had a system in our city whereby we demonize certain groups
with zero sense of history or even common sense.
It’s simple folks: Who is
your enemy? Who is the one that you know is sinful? I’ll give you a sec to
figure that out. Who is sinful, who, in your mind, is clearly working against
the purposes of God? Now, invite yourself over to their house. I can guarantee
that God is up to something in that person’s life, and you will get the joy of
discovering it just as Jesus did.
Jesus knew exactly who and
what Zacchaeus was: a rich, chief tax collector. He had every right to dismiss Zacchaeus
as less-than. But he decided to see what Zacchaeus was all about, and he
discovered that God was already at work.
Are you brave enough to be
like Jesus, to be willing to enter the life of the one our community knows is
oh so very sinful? Are you brave enough to listen for God even in dark corners?
Don’t be surprised by the
way if you find that someone else thinks you’re the sinful one.
You don’t have to actually
go over to their house, but you might. Enter their lives, see what they are
about, above all listen. Look for God, and just as Zacchaeus looked for Jesus
and found him, you too will find God.
Y’all we need this right
now. We need this. Our community is hurting just as much as Jericho was hurting
2000 years ago. The election is not going to fix our problems either, in fact I
think it will make things worse. The only thing that can heal our community is
if there are a great many sinners going out and looking for Jesus, looking for
God at work in each other’s lives.
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