Proper 26C, 30 October 2022. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz
Habakkuk 1:1-2:4. Write the vision; make it plain so that a runner can see it.”
2 Thessalonians 1:1-4,11-12. The love of everyone of you for one another is increasing.
Luke 19:1-10. The Son of Man came to seek out and save the lost.
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.
The short and powerful book of Habakkuk the Prophet begins with a title: The oracle that the prophet saw. The Hebrew word for oracle can also be understood as burden: the burden that Habakkuk saw. What Habakkuk saw clearly was indeed a great burden: violence everywhere, and God 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 their 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 entirely predictable consequence of greed, 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, especially by those who call themselves People of the Book: Jews, Muslims, and Christians. The image of God as the divine warrior-king [1] found in our New Testament must always be preached against by Christians. We must assert again and again that ancient (and contemporary) ideas of a punishing 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 Christ’s hands and hearts in the world. We need to write the vision of shalom, of well-being with our lives, so everyone can see it.
Both Habakkuk and the second letter to the Thessalonians urge faith and patience in the midst of uncertainty and strife, fidelity and forbearance in the middle of the mess. 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. Biblical 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 (that is, 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?
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 collector appears in ancient lists of jobs that no good or righteous Jew could hold.
One of the great things you might recall 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. 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 chief dirty-worker in Jericho. He took good things from the Jewish people, impoverished 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. Short stature was a mark of a lesser person in ancient Rome. So Zacchaeus climbed a sycamore tree. Why name the kind of tree? Well, I’ll tell you: it’s a tree that bears an inferior kind of fruit consumed by poor people. Zacchaeus was climbing on the food of the poor to improve his own position. The sycamore symbolizes strength, protection, and eternity for those who are most vulnerable. In Jericho today, there is a sycamore fig, which has been 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. “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.
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! 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. 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 what you stole as restorative, reparative justice. In that moment, 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 Greek 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. Evidenced by his offer to make up for what he had done and left undone, he had come clean. He repented of the evil he had done, and the evil done on his behalf, to use the words of our Confession of Sin. 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, race, gender, class, citizenship, ability, or whatever. 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 is sullied by chance or 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 it, not the parts that are already clean, 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, which makes the other parts of us grumble. What part of you makes the other parts of you grumble?
What part of you just might 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, whatever it is that keeps you from acting like you are thoroughly made by Love for love. 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. So adorn yourselves, dear souls; deck yourselves with gladness by turning away from the dark pit of separation from right-relationship (which is what sin is). Turn toward charity and love, where God is. This stewardship season, let’s recommit ourselves to the just redistribution of all our resources and show, yet again, what it looks like to be a parish where love lives.
- Judith E. Sanderson, “Habakkuk,” The Women’s Bible Commentary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1992), pp. 222-224.