Zaccheus Nov 4, 2008

Habakkuk 1:1-4
Luke 19:1-10
The difficulty with reading the Bible is that this is NOT a Novel that you can read from beginning to end, like other books. While someone in the Middle Ages ascribed Chapters and Verses, and in an earlier time they determined the order of books, little of this makes sense in our time. And TOO OFTEN we read a verse here, a parable there, without seeing the larger context. The Prophet Habakkuk laments that taking each circumstance alone, living each day, all we see is VIOLENCE and HATRED, we wonder why we are meant to see human strife and people fighting with one another, without hope. Where is salvation? If God is God why is life not good? God tells Habakkuk to climb up a watchtower and wait, seeing not only what is close, but witnessing what is larger, then writing it down to carry to others to share with the whole world. And finally the vision comes: the soul of the unrighteous will fail, the rightous live by faith.
Like life itself, we are to read each day's experience living in faith, and occasionally to stop to reflect, to witness a larger perspective, a more grand realization, to see bigger, than we ever anticipated.

Suddenly to open your eyes to the fact that we have been married for 3 or 25 or 35 or 50 years; that this child of ours, we thought was a pretty nice kid has changed the world, changed us!
To open our eyes to the realization that while trying to keep up, while living each day, we have truly been blessed.
The individual circumstances of life have not gone as we wanted them too, but God used them and God used us, and our lives have had meaning, we are free of Cancer, we are still together, our son or daughter came home from war from harsh experiences or from seeing the whole world and still wants to come home to us.

The last several weeks we have been reading through the Gospel of Luke. After the Christmas stories, THE GOSPEL OF LUKE began When John the Baptist was Arrested Jesus Came Preaching that all the world should REPENT and BELIEVE.
More recently Jesus described two men who went up to the Temple to Pray, One who prayed “Thank God I am not like other people” and the other who beat his breast and tore his shirt wanting to pray and not daring to open his mouth. And we recognize that very few would ever say those words, But what we do offer is “Hey, forgive us the stuff everybody asks to have forgiven, the things we forget, that don't really matter.” Rather than any os us ever confronting, “GOD, I have sinned. Betraying myself, betraying all those I love, betraying YOU. I cannot make it up, I cannot fix what I broke, as much as I try, and still I ask, I beg, forgive me.”

Luke described, Jesus was often challenged and ridiculed for befriending and for forgiving, and eating with Tax Collectors and Prostitutes and those kind of people.

Then, that a rich young ruler came to Jesus wanting eternal life, and Jesus said three things:
A. Give what you have to the poor and follow me.
B. It's easier for a camel to enter the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter heaven.
C. With humanity everything is always impossible, but with God all things are possible.

We hear these as three separate stories, of the two men who prayed, of Jesus and the Sinners, of the Camel through the Eye of a Needle. But then Luke, draws a line beneath and underscores all this as if larger in the context of a Faith Story, by telling of Zachaeus.

To hear this story, we need to appreciate that culture, not a culture that watches Reality Television where people routinely do absurd things, but a time and place in the world where DIGNITY MATTERED. Where a Man who was any kind of a Man would do anything rather than appear ruffled. A Public Official, a Gentleman, never ever RAN, never admitted WEAKNESS or HUMILITY, where his whole identity, HIS CONSTRUCT OF REALITY was bound up in his Control.

Zachaeus was not only an Oppressive Official of the Roman Empire, he was a TAX COLLECTOR, worse, He was the Chief Tax Collector. If Money and Power corrupt, this was the Most Corrupt of all, the kind of man no one looked up to, and everyone hated for what he represented. There was NO MAN here, only a tiny little insignificant corrupt evil power that everyone wants to avoid.

Zachaeus had heard about Jesus.
He had heard Jesus pardoned sins.
Zachaeus had taxed people for what they had, for what they did and owned and wanted, Zachaeus was known to enter people's homes handling their personal belongings to decide what to tax them, and often was believed to tax people extra so as to increase his profits.
Yet, JESUS FORGAVE people not only what they had, but their sins and debts.
Where Zachaeus was all alone in the world, without a single friend. Jesus even was a friend to Tax Collectors. Imagine Zachaeus overhearing whispers that Jesus was passing through the Village. There is talk of when he enters Jerusalem people will even climb Palm trees to cut the branches to make a carpet for him to walk on and children, little cildren will sing Hosanna.

Zachaeus would have tried to leave his desk to go out to the street to see around people, but was too small to see over them. No one would acknowledge knowing him, giving him room, they would shunned him and blocked him out. While the text does not menion it, I have to believe that that day, it was dark, cloudy and pouring rain, the people were covering themselves with whatever they could find, making even a greater barrier to see through, and the street was full of puddles and mud.And Zachaeus, the Official Chief Tax Collector of the Roman Empire would have run on up ahead, slipping, falling, sliding in mud, his robes flapping around him, and he climbed up in a huge Sycamore tree (You recall that the PROPHET AMOS had described being a herdsman and dresser of Sycamore trees, that Old Testament Prophet caring for the poor and abused of society). It is one of those poignant moments when you know just how ridiculous you appear and hope no one else sees you.

I recall years ago, when the Cliniton's first visited Skaneateles, people were wanting to get a photo, to greet them. The opening Day of State Fair when they had come to CNY, a long line of black limosines came down Jordan Road, flashing lights on the first car and flags flying on each of the others. People came running out of their shops to line the streets and wave, taking photos, only then to realize it was the Funeral Home and a very different kind of processional.

As Jesus and the crowds came up the street to where Zachaeus hung in the branches, I imagine the rain stopped and a ray of sunlight pierced the clouds shining right upon the dripping wet, tree climbing Chief Tax Collector Zachaeus, showing everyone how foolish he could be. But where everyone else may have been laughing and pointing him out, Jesus stopped. Where everyone else had always ignored him, Jesus looked up at Zachaeus and called him by name. Where in the past, Zachaeus had invaded others' homes at night to take, Jesus announced to Zachaeus and to everyone else, Jesus was going to Zachaeus' House for that day's meal. And Zachaeus came down, and invited Jesus in. At that moment Zachaeus repented. He knew he could never atone for all the wrongs he had done, done to society, to every single person, to himself and to his dignity, how he had even wounded God. So in that moment, he decided to give half of everything he had to the poor, and beyond that, if he has cheated anyone anything, and he knows he has, he will repay them 400%.

On that day, as Jesus called Zachaeus by name, as they shared a meal together, and Zachaeus repented, a rich ruler gave what he had to the poor, and with the guidance of Jesus, with God, even that which seemed impossible, a rich man no one liked was received into the Kingdom of God.