Pentecost 21C (Reformation)
October 30, 2022
Luke 19:1-10
INTRODUCTION
One quirk about the lectionary, the assigned texts for each week, is that on Reformation Day, the last Sunday in October, the texts are always the same every year. Now, they are good texts, don’t get me wrong – scriptures about the freedom we have in Christ, and the promise of forgiveness, and all those wonderful theological themes that Martin Luther proclaimed and wrote about during the Reformation. But after 10 years of the same texts, I admit: sometimes I want something different to preach for Reformation Day! So, another option is to use whatever texts would have been assigned today, had Reformation not usurped them. And this year, that’s what I did, because I couldn’t resist the wonderful story of Zacchaeus, that wee little man who climbed a sycamore tree to see Jesus. (I did maintain just the Romans reading from the Reformation Day set, because I also couldn’t resist that!)
Now, we will still get from these texts the promise of God’s mercy and forgiveness, especially from Isaiah and the Psalm. And Romans will certainly hit home the point that we are not saved by following the law, but rather, by grace through faith.
As for the Zacchaeus story, you will certainly hear grace in it, and freedom, but it might not be quite as obvious. This encounter comes at the end of Jesus’ travel narrative, right before his entry into Jerusalem. Zacchaeus is not the crowd’s favorite person, and yet we will see that people are not always as they seem – and Jesus will show the crowd that Zacchaeus is just as worthy of God’s grace as anyone. Let’s listen!
[READ]
Grace to you and peace from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who is and who was and who is to come. Amen.
As I mentioned last Sunday, this past week my husband Michael deployed to NY City with the NY Guard for two months. He’ll be dealing with the influx of refugees and asylum seekers who are being sent to our state – a mission we both believe in! He left on Tuesday, so we spent the day Monday getting him ready to go. One errand was an oil change. As we sat in the waiting room of a Jiffy Lube, Michael mentioned to someone what he was about to do, and thus began a political conversation with a couple guys, who were both on the opposite end of the political spectrum from Michael! Now, Michael is not only very well-informed on political matters; he is also very good at finding common ground and pointing it out – “we agree on that!” he’ll say. He is also quick to say, “If you can show me a primary source to support that belief, I will gladly reconsider my point of view. In fact, I’ll work with you to set things right.” When he said that, one of the gentlemen said, arms crossed over his chest, “I’m not changing my view.” To which Michael responded, “That attitude is a problem.”
I know this is no secret to any of us – that this unwillingness to budge, even in light of contradictory information – is indeed a problem, one that is wreaking havoc on our democracy and society. But it is also nothing new. We are by nature resistant to change, hesitant to believe something we don’t yet trust, and far more likely to stand our ground even on a belief we know is broken or problematic, simply because it feels safer than the alternative, and keeps us feeling in control. We do this with institutions, with people, and with concepts. Really, it is remarkable that something like the Reformation could happen at all – Martin Luther’s theological views were a threat to Church as it had always been done, and, life-giving as those views were and are, it is no surprise at all that the powers that be were resistant to them. Letting go of a past understanding feels an awful lot like admitting we are wrong (hard for the best of us!). It feels like giving up power (another doozie), and completely changing a way of living and seeing the world (yikes!). None of these are in our human nature: to stand firm in what we believe to be true, even when faced with evidence to the contrary.
I see this playing out in our Gospel reading today as well, in the story of Zacchaeus. The traditional reading of this story says that Zacchaeus was a scoundrel, a big ol’ sinner. After all, tax collectors are often grouped with “notorious sinners” in the Gospels, since they were known to defraud people and take more money than was due, and here Zacchaeus is, the chief tax collector – the chief sinner of them all! Yet he encounters Jesus, repents of his sins, and vows to live differently, and Jesus declares that salvation has come to this house this very day! He came, he says, to seek out the lost, by which we assume he means, people like Zacchaeus.
It’s a satisfying reading all right. But I’m not so sure it is accurate. First of all, Zacchaeus never confesses sin, nor does he ask for mercy. Even his vow to change isn’t quite right. For some reason, the translators of the NRSV put his line in verse 8 in the future tense – “I will give half my possessions to the poor and I will pay back four times anyone I have defrauded” – but in the Greek, these statements are in the present tense. As in, this is already his practice. He’s already doing those things. That grammatical change – changes everything!
So instead, here is what I see in Zacchaeus: I see a man who is so desperate to see Jesus that he is willing to throw his dignity to the wind. He runs ahead of the crowd and climbs a tree, hoping to catch a glimpse. When Jesus sees him, and invites himself over to Zacchaeus’s house, Zacchaeus joyfully receives him. And he describes to Jesus his extraordinary generosity – not pompously like last week’s Pharisee, but as a counter to what the crowd is saying about him. This is all very faithful, even, commendable living!
But trouble comes for Zacchaeus when the crowd begins to grumble. “This guy?” they say. “You wanna eat with this guy? He’s a sinner! He’s chief tax collector! Jesus, you don’t want to be seen with the likes of him.” They have judged Zacchaeus – whose name, incidentally, means “pure” or “innocent.” They’ve already made up their minds about him, based on what external knowledge they have of him. In their defense, perhaps Zacchaeus used to be the way they assume, but he has already begun to turn his life around. Or maybe he's hoping to change the corrupt system of tax collection from the inside. Or maybe he wants to get out of the whole operation, but he just can’t find other work.
Point is, by the time he throws his dignity out the window and climbs a tree in a desperate attempt to see Jesus, Zacchaeus may already be well on the path toward living a redeemed life that is for others. But the crowd has already formed their opinion about him, and they can’t, or don’t want, to budge. For them, tax collectors are all bad, and Zacchaeus is no exception. I can just see that gentleman from the Jiffy Lube among the crowd, arms crossed over his chest, saying, “I won’t change my views.”
And yet, Zacchaeus is trying to write and to live a different story for himself – a story in which God’s mercy and grace have compelled him toward a life of generosity and hospitality, a story in which he knows of God’s power and wants to be close to Jesus, a story in which the thought of being close to Jesus fills him with joy! His is a beautiful story, an inspiration, a delight! But the crowd is so stuck in their ways and assumptions, that they won’t budge.
This is the story of faith – a stubborn people want to stay in their ways, continue in their assumptions and their way of life that does not bring life, and God continually comes to them, striving to bring about redemption and a change of heart, to bring God’s people into newness of life. It was that way for the people of Israel. It was that way in the Middle Ages, when Luther first hammered those 95 Theses on the church door. It is that way now.
And yet, Jesus tells Zacchaeus and the crowd, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham,” – a child of God. “For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost” – to seek out those who will not budge, who are determined to stay put in their views, who have not opened their hearts to the ways that God is always entering into our story and changing us, inspiring us, and redeeming us. Jesus’ statement is as true for us now as it was for the crowd in Jericho. Today, and every day, salvation comes to us, because that is the mission of God. Today, salvation has come to this house, to your house and to mine, to all of us in the places we are, the stories we are living. Today salvation has come to the Church, calling us into a new way, a new life, a new story – one which sees people not for who we think or assume they are, but for the way that God sees them, for the person God is drawing them into being.
Reformation Day: it’s a day when we celebrate that our foundation is Christ, and as a Church built upon that foundation, we are necessarily always anticipating a new thing, a new way, a new life. We are always being saved from our dead-end ways. May God continue to come into our stories to redeem them, and may we always be open for it!
Let us pray… Reforming God, we are often stuck in our ways, closed to the possibility of new life that you relentlessly offer. Come into our story, and open our hearts to see the ways you are redeeming your people, today and every day. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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