Zacchaeus and Me

Luke 19:1-10

[Jesus] entered Jericho and was passing through it. A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way.

When 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.” So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him.

All who saw it began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.” Zacchaeus 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.” Then Jesus said to him, “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.”

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Most of us know the story of Zacchaeus well. I can’t hear his name without the requisite ear-worm … that oldy, but goody Sunday school classic … “Zacchaeus was a wee, little man; a wee little man was he. He climbed up in the sycamore tree, for the Lord he wanted to see...” Of course, there’s so much more to Zacchaeus than what any of us learned in Sunday school.

He is a pint-sized prototype for the lost and looking. Zacchaeus is the “Mini-Me” for every man, woman, and child who ever had a longing to know – or to know more – about Jesus. Zacchaeus sets a precedent for what it means to know Jesus, to be known by Jesus, and to live differently because of Jesus.

See, it’s important that we’re told Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector – and a rich one at that – because chief tax collectors were first century opportunists who contracted with Roman officials to collect money for the government. It is not a compliment – but more of a comment about the limited quality of his character – when the gospel says Zacchaeus was a wealthy chief tax collector. Because Zacchaeus, as a “son of Abraham,” was a Jewish man, taking advantage of his Jewish brothers and sisters, for his own benefit, and in cahoots with the government that was their oppressor.

And he was short. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that, as far as you and I are concerned. But you can’t help but wonder if that, too, wasn’t a dig or a jab, just like all the rest; that he had to climb trees like a child might, in order to get a better view above the crowds.)

Anyway, because of all of that, it’s easy for us – so many generations later and so culturally and historically removed from Jesus that day in Jericho – to think we don’t have much, if anything, in common with Zacchaeus. People in our neighborhood, in or our congregation; people in our circle of friends or family don’t talk about how rich we are, do they? None of us works for the oppressor, do we? We can’t possibly be any more selfish or self-interested than the average bear, can we?

The easy ways we distance ourselves from the likes of Zacchaeus remind me of a question raised by an ethicist named Peter Singer who asks – almost rhetorically – “If you saw a child drowning in a shallow pond, would you wade into that shallow pond to rescue the child, even if you were wearing your favorite, new pair of shoes?” Most people – and I would suspect everyone of us here – would answer that question with a quick and easy “yes,” myself included. We would enter a shallow pond to save the life of a drowning child without a second thought, no matter what shoes we were wearing.

But Peter Singer suggests that, in reality, truth-be-told, we answer that question in the opposite way, daily – every time we spend our money or use our resources in ways that don’t meet the needs of the world around us. In other words, even though we can’t see them in the water, there are children drowning in proverbial ponds all over the world as I stand here before you in my own favorite new pair of shoes (I have a matching pair in blue, just for good measure); the money from which could have saved any number of children, in any number of ways – be it a simple meal, a dose of medicine, a vaccination, or even a pair of shoes to cover and protect their own fragile, freezing feet, in the coming winter.

Which is to say, I might have a thing or two in common with Zacchaeus, after all. And maybe you do, too.

I mean, Zacchaeus had a home. He had plenty to eat and to drink and to spend. He likely had a sense of security, by way of his connections with the Romans and all. And I bet he had a couple of nice pairs of sandals, too. But apparently, all of that still didn’t matter as much – it wasn’t as fulfilling, perhaps – as he’d hoped. He was still looking for something that made him climb a tree, just to see this Jesus who was rolling through town.

And if you look around – and maybe, even, in the mirror – you’ll see the same is true today. The house, the cars, the boats. The clothes, the toys, the stuff. The school, the degree, the 401K. Our culture works really hard to convince us that there is no such thing as too much money or too many things or enough of our favorite stuff.

Can you imagine an amount of money that would be too much for you and yours? How much is enough before you would feel comfortable giving 10% of it away, as Scripture suggests? And is that likely to happen anytime soon? We could always make more, have more, save more. And we do – or we try.

We try and we try and we try. We run and we run and we run. We climb and we climb and we climb. Until we end up like Zacchaeus – up a tree and still searching. Up a tree and out of tricks. Up a tree and farther away from God and Jesus and faith and purpose than we ever were when we first started to climb.

So today, we’re called to look down – like Zacchaeus did – and to see the answer standing at our feet. Jesus shows up and says “hurry and come down. I must stay at your house today.” “Get down from there. Stop. Come with me. Let me come with you. I know a better way.”

Jesus doesn’t chase after Zacchaeus or hunt him down or shake him out of that sycamore tree. Jesus doesn’t zap Zacchaeus with a bolt of lightening or shame him in front of the crowds. Jesus doesn’t do any of the things the crowd thought Jesus should do to punish the sinner they all saw in Zacchaeus. And Jesus doesn’t do any of that to us, either.

Instead, Jesus invites himself over. Jesus shows up and offers forgiveness, he shows acceptance, he gives love and grace and hope to the one person no one else thought was worthy or capable of receiving it – maybe not even Zacchaeus, himself.

And then Jesus says, “Today, salvation has come to this house.” And he doesn’t say that because Zacchaeus finally antes up and promises to give half of his paycheck away or because Zacchaeus commits to pay back – times four – all those people he’d ripped off in the past. We know too much about God’s grace to pretend Zacchaeus paid for the salvation Jesus promised him that day.

No. When Jesus says, “Today salvation has come to this house,” it’s all about Zacchaeus’ identity as “a son of Abraham.” Zacchaeus, too, was a descendant of Abraham and a child of God. Jesus reminded Zacchaeus … sinful, greedy, tax-collecting Zacchaeus – in his fresh, fancy, favorite pair of shoes … that even he was part of God’s plan for creation; the plan to use his blessings to be a blessing for the sake of the world. And that was life-giving news to the little, first century Scrooge.

We are talking a lot about money around here these days (and making no bones about it) – mostly because we need it to build what we believe God is calling us to build in order to grow our little part of the kingdom at Cross of Grace. But all of this talk about money isn’t just about bricks, mortar, square footage and bigger kitchens. It’s about remembering our call as children of Abraham, to divest ourselves of the things that keep us – and the Church – from fulfilling God’s plan for the world. And it’s about God’s call for us as Partners in Mission in this place; a call to share grace and good news and our resources with all people in ways that are unique in this community.

So, as we pray about and make our commitments to this capital campaign – and I hope each of us will pray about and make a commitment to this capital campaign – let them be made with the same amount of surprise, gratitude, generosity, and joy we hear from Zacchaeus this morning. And let’s do it, not because we have to but because we get to and because we are able. And let’s let the same transformation that came to Zacchaeus come to each of us, as a result.

And when that happens – when we let our lives be changed by God’s grace and by our own generosity – I believe we’ll know something new about salvation, “today,” on this side of eternity. And we’ll get a glimpse of God’s heaven right where we live.

Amen

Faith, High Hurdles, and Vatican City

Luke 17:5-10

The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” The Lord replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, “Be uprooted and planted in the sea,” and it would obey you.

Who among you would say to his slave who has just returned from plowing or tending sheep in the field, “Come here at once and take your place at the table?” Would you not rather say, “Prepare supper for me. Put on your apron and serve me something to eat and drink. Later, you may eat and drink.” Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded him? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, “We are worthless slaves. We have done only what we ought to have done.”

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First of all, I like to point out that the bits of Gospel we’re given from the lectionary this morning don’t really go together. They’re sort of disparate non-sequitors – not necessarily meant to connect, one with the other – so I’m not going to do the theological gymnastics it takes to connect those dots.

Instead, because I spent some time in Vatican City this past week, I have “faith” on the brain in some strange, general, big-picture kind of ways, so I want to focus more on the mustard seed bit than the slave and servant stuff this time around. And it’s short and sweet, really.

“Increase our faith,” the apostles begged Jesus, who replies – almost flippantly, it seems – “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”

As Christa and I, along with some college friends, wandered around the Vatican – through its museums, the Sistine Chapel, into St. Peter’s Basilica and the Square outside, and around the city’s perimeter, in Rome, too – I couldn’t help but wonder what the thousands of people who were wandering around with us were up to. Some were surely just there for the sight-seeing of it all, to admire the beautiful artwork, to learn about the history, to experience the tradition of it all, and whatnot.

But there were so many others who clearly took their Vatican visit very seriously – as a pilgrimage of faith – longing, I imagine, like the disciples in this morning’s Gospel, that their faith would increase … grow … deepen … by way of their proximity to and practice of whatever they were up to on their Church’s home turf.

It won’t surprise those of you who know me that I have some pretty mixed feelings about the grandiosity and opulence of it all. All of those statues… all of those shrines… all of those monuments… and all of the money it takes to make all of that happen. It does put our proposed, pending building program into a different, more meaningful sort of perspective for me – in a good way. (Though I am wondering, now, where we might find room for some statues of me and Pastor Cogan.)

But seriously, as I witnessed nuns, bishops, priests, and people of all stripes rush to St. Peter’s Square upon hearing that Pope Leo was making an unexpected appearance … as I watched men and women kneeling and weeping and lighting candles in prayer … as I and others walked through the “Holy Doors” that are only open every 25 years or on very special occasions, in hopes of some special sort of forgiveness of sins … as I and others spent more money in the Vatican gift shop for the same trinkets you could buy from a street vendor … I couldn’t help but wonder if the goal and hope of it all wasn’t something any more or less than a longing for increased faith.

But, is there anything particularly special about that place … those candles, those doors, those statues, all the stuff of that “sacred ground,” that stands to grow, add to, strengthen, and deepen faith, like so many hope that it will?

After asking for our permission to speak freely, openly, honestly with our little group of four – and not knowing that I was a Lutheran Pastor – our wise, wonderful tour guide, Francesca, confessed, in not-so-many-words, that her faith has actually been diminished by all that she’s seen and learned and shared as a student and teacher of that place and its history over the years. The friends we traveled with call themselves “recovering Catholics” for all the ways they’ve been burned by the Church over the years.

And what I fear … what I’ve heard and know from people in my own life … what saddened me in so many ways over the years … is that faith – this unseeable, unpredictable, ambiguous, immeasurably beautiful relationship with God … is something too many try to quantify, label, or prove in ways that are often impossible. And when that can’t or doesn’t happen – or when faith gets convoluted, confused, and co-opted by practices and people, by popes and priests and pastors, too – when we confuse the ways we practice “religion” with the “faith” it’s meant to inspire, we miss the point, the hope, and the fruits of faith in the first place.

I mean, when someone tells us to believe this, or else. To live that way, or else. To practice our faith like this or like that, or else. When faith becomes something we’re encouraged to accomplish or achieve, rather than something we’re invited to receive and to live, it becomes a measuring stick for our worth by our own standards, rather than a celebration of our value in God’s eyes.

I ran track in high school – the high hurdles, actually. One of the things about running hurdles was that we spent a lot of time on technique. As hurdlers, we would get to begin our workouts and practices with the rest of the team. We’d run a couple of laps and get warmed up but then, when the rest of the team went off to run longer distances or to do strength and endurance training, the high hurdlers got to go down to our end of the track for our own separate workout and practice.

For a long time, we were coached by a guy who spent a lot of time having us run drills and practice our technique. He was very particular about technique. How your toes were pointed, how your legs were bent, how your arms were positioned, and how much room there was between your butt and the hurdle as you ran over it meant a lot, according to him. We would spend hours starting out of the blocks and just running over the first two hurdles until our technique was as good as it could be.

I didn’t mind it, I guess. I did what I was told. I learned some things. And a lot of the time, it meant I wasn’t running long distances or doing the harder work of strength training. Deep down though, I also knew there was a reason I wasn’t getting any faster.

Half way through the season one year, our two coaches swapped responsibilities and, when the high hurdlers broke from the rest of the team to practice our technique, our new coach came along to watch. It didn’t take him long to call us all together and to ask us what in the world we were wasting our time on. He started coaching us that technique was all well and good, but that what wins any race is speed. From then on, we didn’t pay us much attention to how our toes were pointed or where our butts were in relation to the hurdles. Instead, we just ran. Complete races over all ten hurdles. Against the clock. Against each other. Building strength and endurance and speed.

And what we noticed before too long was that when we focused as much or more on just running, we got faster and the proper technique either just happened or wasn’t so important in the end, anyway.

And I wonder if that’s something like what Jesus is getting at in this morning’s Gospel.

Much like the disciples, we like to pretend that faith can be measured or quantified or practiced in ways that are right and wrong. Much like the disciples, we want to be sure we’re “doing faith” the right way. And much like the disciples – and my old track coach – we pretend that the right technique is all we need to get it right, to win, and make it to the medal stand.

It’s why religion divides us over politics, I believe. It’s why religion fights over differing opinions. It’s why religion argues about doctrine and dogma and bickers over worship styles and traditions – all in an attempt to master the perfect technique, forgetting all along the goal of the race – the blessings of faith – in the first place.

It’s why Jesus showed up, like a new coach, with a different way of looking at things. “You don’t need more or better faith,” he says. “If you’ve got even just a little bit – as much as the smallest of seeds – you could do amazing things.” In other words, if you know how to run, do that and it’ll be enough.

So, if you’re wondering about how your faith measures up… If you’re looking to perfect your technique or checking to see how well your butt cleared the last high hurdle you faced… If you’re thinking you need to be perfect in order to share in the blessings God has to offer, feel free to stop that. Jesus tells us this morning that we don’t have to be the best or the fastest or the most faithful, even, in any particular way.

I feel just as confident in the forgiveness we shared here this morning, as I did walking through those ancient “Holy Doors” last week. I feel just as sure God hears the prayers we pray in this place, as anything that’s whispered in the Pope’s cathedral. I’m certain this ground is as holy and this space is as sacred as anywhere I walked over the course of the last couple of weeks, because even my flimsy faith promises that the grace of God we receive and share here, is just that … it’s God’s grace … and it can’t be quantified, earned, or kept from anyone for any reason.

This grace is yours, mine, and ours – for the sake of the world – by way of whatever faith we can muster, in Jesus’ name, thanks be to God.

Amen