Proper 26C
November 3, 2019

O God of mercy, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

This morning we are celebrating the Feasts of All Saints’ Day, which was Friday, and All Souls’ Day, which was yesterday, with our music. However, we are observing the 24th Sunday after Pentecost with our readings, because I just couldn’t skip over the readings from Habakkuk and second Thessalonians, or the story of Zacchaeus from the Gospel of Luke.

The short and powerful book of Habakkuk the prophet begins with a title: the oracle, the pronouncement that the prophet saw. It can also be translated as the burden that Habakkuk saw. What Habakkuk saw clearly was indeed a great burden: violence everywhere and a God who seemed not to see the degradation of justice and the utter devastation of well-being, of shalom. Habakkuk had two complaints, which could be ripped from our own headlines: 1) God has done nothing to stop the violence so far and 2) it’s about to get worse. In this book, the voice of God is heard, but it’s not particularly good news. Essentially, God’s response is that the violence is due to the greed of the people and the failure to recognize the voice of the Holy One Who pleads for loving, pleads for people to respect themselves and others. Habakkuk understands the violence as the Holy One’s punishing response. I understand violence as an eternally predictable consequence to greed and arrogance and fear, which breaks the heart of the Divine. To the question of how can God let this suffering and devastation happen, I ask, how can people let this suffering and devastation happen? 

I think for those of us who work to create new models of relationships that eschew violence and dominating power, we must always speak out against the prevalence of violence in the name of the Holy One. The image of God as the divine warrior-king [1] found in both our old and new testaments must always be preached against. Some argue that violent scripture texts should never be read in church, but it seems to me that if we don’t hear or learn about the bad stuff, if we just skip over those verses, we cede the interpretation of those passages of scriptures to others and we lose the sense of urgency to offer alternatives to violence, which are also based in the Holy Scripture of the First and the Second Testaments. We must assert again and again that ancient (and contemporary) ideas of a violent warrior-king God do not have the last word. The last word must always be about the fidelity and kindness, compassion and tenderness of the Holy One. The biblical idea of mutual affection, of mutual regard between God and the people of God, which abounds in both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Testament, must be asserted again and again. That is one of our jobs as God’s hands and hearts in the world.

Both Habakkuk and the second letter to the Thessalonians urge faith and patience in the midst of uncertainty and strife. As I often say, Biblical faith is not about giving intellectual assent to implausible ideas presented as facts. Rather, faith is steadfast fidelity to the Spirit of the Divine, the Spirit of Love, at work in the world, even when it’s difficult or even impossible to discern. It’s heart work and hard work. Faith is fidelity to the commitment to treat every human being with dignity, even and especially when they (or we) don’t necessarily behave in a manner worthy of respect. Biblical patience never means doing nothing or waiting quietly. Biblical patience means suffering with (compassion) and having mercy not only with our words, but in our actions (or, not only with our lips but in our lives). This is our work. If this is what is required (and it is), then who can be saved? That is the essential question that the Gospel of Luke is answering for us this morning in the story of Jesus’ encounter with Zacchaeus. Who can be saved? (Yes.)

Luke’s answer is, even a guy like Zacchaeus. Luke tells the story of Jesus passing through Jericho. According to historians and archaeologists, Jericho in Jesus’ time was an agricultural/ commercial center, a customs center, a garden city with royal estates of Herod and probably functioned as a winter resort for Jerusalem’s elite. Think Palm Beach. So a chief tax collector would have been a busy man in Jericho. And his work paid off – he was a wealthy man. But tax collecting was notoriously dirty business. Tax collectors were often named in lists of bad guys – like robbers and murderers. They took advantage of people who were vulnerable – a clear violation of Torah. Tax collectors appear in ancient lists of jobs that no good Jew could hold.

One of the great things about this story is that the name Zacchaeus means “clean” or “pure” or “righteous.” It’s a nice touch – kind of funny. It’s like a story of a sex worker whose name was Chastity. Or a mafia hit-man whose name is Christian. Someone named Clean was doing dirty work and getting filthy rich. And he wasn’t just doing his own dirty work, he was supervising others’ dirty work. A man named Clean was the boss of dirty work: the head dirty-worker in Jericho. He took good things from the Jewish people, impoverishing them, and gave the good things to Rome, but not without making himself rich in the process. 

Zacchaeus must have heard that Jesus was in town. Zacchaeus wanted to see who Jesus was, but he couldn’t see because he was too short (a mark of a lesser person in ancient Rome) [2] , so Zacchaeus climbed a sycamore tree. Why name the kind of tree? So many reasons! It’s a kind of tree that bears an inferior kind of fruit consumed by poor people – Zacchaeus was climbing on the food of the poor to improve his position. This is the kind of tree that symbolizes strength, protection, and eternity for those who are most vulnerable. In Jericho today, there is a sycamore fig determined to be about 2,000 years old. That’s an eternity. This is the kind of tree that is frequently used in the Bible to symbolize fruitfulness in the context of repentance and in light of salvation.” [3] Bear fruit that poor people can eat! There’s a great wordplay here: “sukomorea” (the name of the fig tree) shares a lexical root with “sukophantes” which means defrauder or extortioner, also the root of our word sycophant, one who flatters a powerful person for personal gain. Zacchaeus was one. I don’t need to give contemporary examples.

What Zacchaeus may not have thought about was that as soon as he could see Jesus better, Jesus would also be able to see him better! And Jesus did see him. And not only did Jesus look up and see him, Jesus said, “Zacchaeus, come down right now. I must stay at your house today.” Zacchaeus gladly did as he was told. The Greek word is “rejoicing.” He was wild with excitement. But even through the excitement, I imagine he noticed the others grumbling about Jesus being the guest of a sinner. The dramatic tension of this story has peaked.

Zacchaeus stood up and said, “Look, Lord! Right here, right now, I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount!” He knew that was the biblical mandate. According to the Torah, you’re not just required to repay the amount stolen. If you steal something, you owe four times whatever you stole as restorative justice. Right there, right then, Zacchaeus came clean. He became his name – he became who he was made to be. It’s an amazing thing – and even Jesus was amazed because he responded that salvation: deliverance, recovery, restoration to community had come to Zacchaeus’ economy (which is also the word for household) because Zacchaeus had become again who and Whose he was meant to be in the realm of God. A son of Abraham, Zacchaeus had gotten lost and now was found. He had come clean, evidenced by his offer to make up for what he had done and left undone. He repented of the evil he had done, and the evil done on his behalf, to use the words of our confession of sin. And since, according to Luke, Jesus’ entire mission was to seek out and save those who are lost, Jesus must have thought to himself, “I found one!” 

Zacchaeus became the patron saint of all who find ourselves having benefitted directly or indirectly from injustice, by virtue of our work or our race or gender or class or citizenship or ability or…. You might have guessed where I’m headed next. I’m pretty sure that each of us has a part somewhere inside us like Zacchaeus — some part that wants to see who this guy Jesus is. Some part that is willing to do something kind of foolish like climb a tree or to come to church on a Sunday morning to get a better look (or listen). And I’m pretty sure that each of us has a part – or parts of ourselves that are sullied – by chance, by choice – by bad luck or bad decisions — usually a combination. What would it be like to imagine that Jesus wants to come to that part today, to see that part today? Not the parts that are already clean and shiny and humming along. Jesus wants to come to the part of you (of us), to see the part that we are not so proud of – that make the other parts of us grumble. What is that part of you that makes the other parts of you grumble?

What part of you might just be moved to come clean by Jesus’ concern for outcasts? I’m pretty sure that the Holy One longs for all of us to come clean. Whatever sullies you, put it down, let it go, give it away, pay it back (four times), get it off you, stop – whatever it is – whatever dirt keeps you from fully knowing what a beloved child of God you are and whatever it is that keeps others from seeing what a beloved child of God you are and acting that way. Today is the day. Today is the time of deliverance and redemption. Today salvation can come to this house because we are all children of Abraham. Today, as we mark All Saints and All Souls, suddenly all our ancestors are with us and behind us, called into this place. They are urging us to be still and listen. They remind us that we are the result of the love of hundreds and thousands. So let’s recommit ourselves to the just redistribution of all our resources and come all the way home.

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