I Must Stay at Your House Today

What made Zacchaeus so eager to see Jesus? In his world, he was perhaps the least likely person to be eager to see an itinerant rabbi? The evangelist tells us that he was the chief tax collector. That means that he was not only an agent of the hated Roman government in Jericho, the city that was the entry point for goods coming into Israel from the east, but he was no doubt also a supervisor of other tax collectors. Which means that he was able to not only extract from the people the taxes that the Romans demanded, he was able to skim off a portion of what those under him could extort from the merchants and petty farmers who were forced to pay the Roman taxes.

Zacchaeus was obviously good at what he did, since he was not only a supervisor but also rich. And he was also deeply hated by the entire community of pious Jews. He was not welcome in the synagogue, and he was probably also intentionally blocked by the crowds who had come out to welcome Jesus to Jericho.

Since he was s a rich man, in Luke’s account Zacchaeus was also not likely to be someone curious about Jesus. If you read the gospel straight through, you would notice that rich men resist Jesus’ call to acknowledge the nearness of God’s reign and change their lives accordingly. In fact, Jesus begins his preaching in Luke with the sermon on the plain, in which he shouts, “… woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.” Then Jesus tells two stories about rich men. One is about the rich farmer who built bigger barns to house his abundant crop, but as the barns are finished God demands his soul. The other, we just heard a few weeks ago, the story of the rich man who dressed in fine purple clothes and Lazarus, who lay outside his gate, starving and so ill that the dogs licked his wounds. And in the chapter just before this one, we hear of the pious young ruler who is so attached to his wealth that he sadly leaves when Jesus suggests he give his money to the poor. In fact, after the rich young ruler leaves, the disciples ask Jesus, “Then who can be saved?” Perhaps the story of Zacchaeus is the evangelist’s answer to that question. Yet, we might also wonder, is Zacchaeus’s response to Jesus likely to be different from that of rich young ruler?

And, more important, after all this, what does the evangelist suggest about what really made Zacchaeus so eager to see Jesus? What made him race ahead of the crowds that blocked him and do something he probably had not done since he was eight years old, something that was so unseemly and incongruous for a man in his position? Was he moved by mere curiosity? Did he perhaps want to see if he might gain some business advantage from seeing this rabbi? Or maybe, just maybe, something was stirring inside Zacchaeus. Maybe, just maybe, God’s Holy Spirit had already begun to work in Zacchaeus. Maybe, just maybe, God seized the initiative and started a process that would radically transform Zacchaeus.

And us? Why are you here? Just as was the case for Zacchaeus, there is no earthly social or economic reason for you to be here this morning. To be sure, if this were the Middle Ages or Puritan New England, you would be punished or fined for not showing up to church on Sunday. Even as recently as the 1950s in the U.S., there was strong social pressure to participate in some faith community. Now, we have come a full 180 degrees from those earlier eras. Church support and attendance have declined precipitously. The majority of Americans, especially those under thirty, identify themselves as “nones,” i.e., having no religious affiliation, or as “spiritual but not religious.”

So why are you here? Are you just curious? What will the preacher say today? Is coming to church “icing on the cake” of the good life for you? Are you afraid of God’s wrath if you don’t come? Or did something stir within you and push you, pull you, or bring you here?

Or take my own experience with my first week-long silent retreat four years ago. The longest silent retreat I had done before that was for two and half days. What impelled me to sign up for a retreat directed by the Spirituality Network, drive four hours on a Sunday afternoon, and stick it out for a whole week? Maybe, just maybe, God had taken the initiative, stirred something within me, and pushed me, pulled me, sent me to a retreat center in Fremont, Ohio for a week.

So there is Zacchaeus incongruously perched in a tree when he finally gets a glimpse of Jesus. Then the unthinkable happens. The rabbi stops, looks up, and addresses Zacchaeus by name. Even more unthinkable, he tells Zacchaeus to hurry down from the tree, and he invites himself to dinner. Wouldn’t you have liked to be a fly on the wall during that dinner conversation? While the respectable, pious people wondered if this rabbi were ignorant of his host’s way of life, or naïve, or worse, clearly something was happening to Zacchaeus. Once face to face with Jesus, something life-changing was happening to Zacchaeus. We might say that he had a conversion experience, from which he gained a new understanding of who God is, and, more important, a new understanding of how he needed to change his life.

For, as Luke makes abundantly clear throughout his gospel, repentance and faith do not mean belief in a set of statements about God. Repentance and faith do not mean acknowledging that Jesus is God’s anointed one. Rather, repentance and faith always have an ethical dimension. A deep experience of the reality of God must always produce a changed life. Having faith always means being transformed by God to live a life closer to God’s expectations, a life modeled for us by Jesus. So, unlike the rich young ruler, when Zacchaeus experiences the reality of God in his encounter with Jesus, he is led to giving up his previous way of life and offering recompense to those he has wronged, far above what the Law of Moses required. And maybe, as Zacchaeus stood there and said all this to Jesus, maybe his joy was so deep that he was the happiest man that day on the Jericho road. Perhaps he was finally free of his sin and isolation. Perhaps indeed health and wholeness, salvation, had come to his house.

In seeking out Zacchaeus, Jesus demonstrates God’s relentless desire to bring us back into community with Godself and with each other, to be in relationship with us, and enable us to be in relationship with each other, to transform us into the people we were created to be. So why are you here? Did you come seeking the transformation that Zacchaeus experienced? We don’t have to climb a tree to see Jesus. As we come to the altar he calls us by name, invites himself into our lives, strengthens our bond with him, and continues that same transformative process that he initiated in Zacchaeus. Maybe, just maybe, that experience of Jesus’ bond with us enables us to see our lives differently, to know our connection with God, with each other, with all creation. Maybe, just maybe, when Jesus dines with us, he enables us to deepen our commitment to treating all with justice, compassion, and love. Perhaps he enables us to better work to bring nearer the reign of God. Maybe, just maybe, Jesus’ food and drink strengthen us to do the work that only we can do.

And maybe, just maybe, when Jesus calls us out of our hiding places, as he called to Zacchaeus, perhaps he also calls us to examine our use of our God-given resources. As Zacchaeus did, are we called to examine our use of our money? Are we called to share our resources more generously with the rest of God’s people? Are we serving God’s people in ways that use our gifts of time, of memory, reason, and skill? Are we called to change our lives in a way that might astonish those around us?

My sisters and brothers, the truth is that God, through God’s Holy Spirit, relentlessly pursues us. God stirs in us a desire to seek God. When we respond to God’s stirring, when we climb a tree to better see Jesus, when we sit in God’s presence silently listening for God’s voice, when we come to church to be nourished by Word and Sacrament, God delivers on God’s promises. God nourishes us, and enables us to become the loving people we have been created to be. But, watch out! You and everyone around you might be surprised by what happens next!

We Offer Ourselves

Some years ago Pastor Heidi Neumark attended mass at a Roman Catholic parish in one of the poorest parts of Mexico City.1 The mass was outdoors, and the people were sitting on plastic chairs and wooden benches arranged around the altar. At the time of the offertory, as the guitar band played, people came forward carrying small plastic bags filled with something white. Slowly they poured the contents of their bags into coffee cans placed around the altar. Each person poured only a small amount of raw rice into the cans, but soon the cans were filled to the brim. After mass, the priest told Neumark that every day every family set aside at least one spoonful of rice. As the rice collected this way was then brought to the altar, it became a concrete offering to God from the daily life of the families. No one in the families went hungry, and no family went destitute in offering the rice. The collected cans went mostly to people in houses where there had been illness or death. As the rice provided material sustenance, it also tangibly reminded those who were hurting of both God’s love and the care of their fellow parishioners.

Like today’s Scripture readings, Neumark’s story reminds us that those with little are often among the most generous, and that even small gifts can soon add up to very tangible offerings. The widow of Zarephath, in our Hebrew Bible lesson, was down to her last bit of flour and oil. All she needed for a last meal with her son were a few twigs for a cooking fire. Yet when Elijah promised her that, if she gave the cake she was fixing to him instead, God would abundantly provide for her. Miraculously she agreed, and Elijah’s words were fulfilled. The widow in our reading from the Gospel of Mark was down to her last two lepta, the smallest coin of her day. Even without any explicit promises from Jesus or anyone else, she handed them over to the Temple treasury and went on her way.

Do any of these stories raise questions for you? While applauding the Mexican parishioners’ generosity, Neumark wondered whether the rice bags did anything to change the system of poverty and inequality in that Mexico City neighborhood. After hearing the story of the widow at Zarephath, we might wonder why a Gentile woman chose to believe the impossible promise of an Israelite prophet. Was she at the point where she had nothing to lose? After all, she was only one meal away from certain starvation. Perhaps the holy man knew something that she didn’t? The story of the widow and her offering in the Gospel lesson is even more problematic. Although she is often held up as model, the poor widow is not an example of good stewardship. Jesus merely observes her action. He does not praise it or commend it to the disciples. God understands that we have obligations to ourselves, our families, and our community. God does not expect us to cease providing for those dependent on us. The church’s standard of giving has historically been the tithe, 10% of our resources, scarcely more than the Mexican parishioner’s daily spoonful. Actually we might say that the widow in the gospel story is a negative example, in her giving away more than she should to a temple system that encouraged inequality and did nothing to ease her burden.

But perhaps these widows, and even the Mexican parishioners, are models in a different way. Remember that Jesus’ observations about giving at the temple’s gate are part of his last public discourse before his journey to the cross. He has been reminding his disciples and friends that communities of his followers will not perpetuate the inequality of the society around them, but, rather, will be led by those who are willing to be servants of all. He points to the scribes. As wealthy people who parade their status and piety, they are all that leaders of Christian communities should not be. By contrast, the widow’s offering, ill-advised though it may ultimately be – how will she take care of herself after all – symbolizes what Jesus himself is about to do, i.e., offer himself, all of himself, back to God for the benefit of the whole world.

So there is a challenge for us here, although it’s not what we might think it is. We’re not being challenged to give all our money to the church. For some that might be the right course, for example, for those who join monastic communities and take voluntary vows of poverty. For most of us, such a life is not possible. Which doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t honestly examine our use of our resources, perhaps foregoing our indulgence in the latest gadgets and perhaps finding ways to increase our giving to God, charities, and organizations that work for justice and peace. The real challenge is far deeper. The question that the poor widow – and ultimately Jesus himself – ask us is, how do we offer our very lives to God? In many churches, as the offering basket comes to the altar, instead of the people singing the Doxology, as we do here, the priest says, “All things come of thee, O Lord,” to which the people respond, “And of thine have we given thee.” In Rite I of the Great Thanksgiving, we “offer and present” to God “ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice.” How do we do that? How do we place not only our dollars in the offering basket, how do we place our whole lives on the altar along with the basket? All things do come from God, and whatever we give, we are only giving God’s gifts back to God. But what does offering our lives to God really mean?

Let me invite you to ponder that question, and let me suggest some ways to answer it. First of all, offering our lives to God really does involve giving back to God, supporting the church and its ministries as generously as you can. Secondly, offering our lives to God means cultivating a generous and open spirit, seeing all those around us as God’s beloved children and staying alert to opportunities for responding to the needs of those whom we encounter. Do you want to begin cultivating such a spirit? Wherever you are, in this sanctuary, in the parish hall, in Bob Evans or Walmart, look at the people around you one by one and say to yourself, “Christ died for thee.”

Third, offering ourselves to God means considering our ministries. We do a splendid job of feeding people here. However, in the wake of the election, we might begin thinking in terms of broader changes that we need to promote, so that fewer people go hungry. Scripture resounds with declarations of God’s care for the poor and marginalized. Listen again to the psalm we all said a few minutes ago: we hope in God “who gives justice to those who are oppressed and food to those who hunger.... [T]he Lord opens the eyes of the blind; the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down.” We may honestly disagree about policy issues, but can we support micro-lending programs to help people start small businesses, community gardens, increases in funding for supplemental nutrition, basic healthcare for all, and a taxation system that doesn’t unduly burden the poor? Can we educate ourselves and increase our skills, so that we can be more effective ministers in both the secular world and the church? Are there orphanages, schools, churches, hospitals, and relief organizations here or overseas that need our resources? I especially commend to you Episcopal Relief and Development, which, right now, has a matching program for any gift made by year’s end. Are there other charitable organizations close to your heart? Have you made provision for charitable giving in your will? If you are retired, on a limited income, are there local organizations to which you can offer your talents? Can you stay informed on the issues by subscribing to magazines, newsletters, or electronic communications? Can you use your social media networks to spread the word about causes dear to you? More important, can you write letters or communicate electronically with your elected officials on important issues? Regardless of your age or station, can you simplify your life, so that there is room in it for God to get a word in edgewise? Can you find time to let God get that word in?

I invite all of us to ponder how we might offer ourselves for the life of the world. I invite you to offer yourself in service to those for whom God cares. I invite you to offer your life for those for whom Jesus died. I invite you to let your life witness to your promise to follow in Jesus’ footsteps.

1. “Reflections on the Lectionary,” Christian Century (129, 22, Oct. 31, 2012), 21.