Saturday, November 26, 2016
Pentecost 24 - Proper 26C - October 30, 2016
Sermon for The Twenty-fourth
Sunday After Pentecost
Year C, Proper 26 ~ October
30, 2016
Holy Trinity & St. Anskar
He was trying to see who Jesus was,
but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in
stature.
+In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided
Trinity
Operating on the ancient theory that almost no detail in holy
Scripture is insignificant let’s look at some details in today’s Gospel:
1. the
significance of Jericho,
2. the
significance of Zacchaeus’s name,
3. the fact
that he was short,
4. Jesus’s
call to him.
A quick look at Wikipedia
reveals that Jericho was a pretty rich city, owing to the lucrative balsam
trade, and tax-collectors would’ve been quite rich indeed. Jericho was also the nearest town to the winter residence of Herod the Great. Below sea level,
near the place where the Jordan enters the Dead Sea, it is always warm, and in
the summer dreadfully hot. The proximity of the Royal Palace would also be good
for business. Finally, modern archaeology awards Jericho the title of the
oldest continuously-inhabited town on earth. There are signs of unbroken
settlement going back to the seventh millennium B.C. So, Jericho could be taken to
represent all of human civilization. There are also archaeological signs of the
destruction of the city walls at about the time of Joshua! So Jericho could
also be taken as a symbol for human obduracy, futile resistance to the will of
God.
Zacchaeus means pure. In some Christian traditions, he
is taken as a figure for those who, though defiled, are made pure by the grace
of God. They do take some initiative themselves, as Zacchaeus did by climbing
the Sycamore tree, apparently out of curiosity and because he was short and he
knew that he would not see anything unless he climbed. In a way, like
Zacchaeus, we are all of diminutive stature, spiritually speaking, and we must
take some initiative to climb up higher if we would see God. So, Zacchaeus
wanted to see Jesus. He didn’t know
Who Jesus was, and the Gospel said he wanted to. He had no idea of what his
seeing would entail. Neither do we. But it proved to be costly to Zacchaeus. He
wanted to “see who Jesus was.” He did, and it changed his life. If we spiritual
midgets “see who Jesus is,” it changes ours too.
For Jesus called him by name and invited Himself to dinner
and, presumably, overnight accommodation. Jesus already knew who he was: that
he was rich, and that he was much-despised because of the source of his wealth:
collaboration with the Romans in collecting taxes. People grumbled because
Jesus favored him, and not them, with an overnight visit.
Elsewhere in the Gospels, Jesus says that it is easier for a camel
to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
Not impossible, but very difficult. What IS impossible is for less-rich persons
to enter the Kingdom, as long as they delight in the spiritual difficulties of
the rich. There is a certain spiritual luxury in that delight — a kind of
wallowing in imaginary spiritual riches — a delight that is one of the seven
deadly sins, right up there with avarice: envy. It is related to our feelings
of relief that we are not like the Pharisee of last week’s Gospel. That sense
of relief is actually envy. Contrary to popular usage, envy is not the desire
to have what another has, but the desire to deprive the other of it and to take
pleasure in the other’s downfall. Delight in the misfortune of another is envy,
including delight in the spiritual delusion of the Pharisee. Dejection or anger
at the good fortune of another is also envy, exemplified by the
grumbling residents of Jericho at the good fortune of Zacchaeus. We who delight
in the words of Isaiah about God’s disgust at the ritual offerings of the rich
need to be real careful here! Because envy is just as bad as avarice – the
inordinate love of riches.
So we have to consider the camel and the needle’s eye
alongside Zacchaeus in the Sycamore. He was rich. Not only was he rich, he had
become so, apparently, by dishonesty and collaboration with the foreign occupation.
As long as he stayed as he was, he was sunk. But something caused him to want
to see Jesus, and since he was short,
he climbed the tree. Whatever motivated him to do that also motivated him to
volunteer to pay any ill-gotten gains back fourfold and to give half of the
rest to the poor. In other words, he was willing to do what he could to purify himself, and to make himself fit
to be Jesus’s host. Even after he gave up half of his wealth, he would probably
still be pretty rich, but that promise was enough for Jesus to observe that salvation has come to this house.
This incident comes right after the Parable of the Publican
and the Pharisee, which we heard last week. It continues the gospel’s
insistence that those who judge by appearances are in for unpleasant surprises.
As God says in Isaiah, My thoughts are
not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways. The crowd who condemned
Zacchaeus judged him to be a sinner. And it sounds like he was. But contact
with Jesus changed his mind — caused him
to repent. Notice that Jesus didn’t tell him he had to give back his
riches, he volunteered that as soon as Jesus asked him for hospitality. The
rich who learn how to use their riches well are not condemned, but those who
condemn them are on thin ice. Envy is as bad as avarice.
What brought Zacchaeus to repentance, to the desire to serve
God by offering hospitality? According to today’s Collect, it was grace. The
grace that “goes before” any righteous action of our own. “It is only by your
gift that your faithful people offer you true and laudable service.” Jesus
called Zacchaeus by name, just as He
calls each of us by name at our baptism. And by this Divine grace, Zacchaeus
was changed, purified so that he could live out the significance of his name
and offer God true and laudable service.
AMEN
MARANATHA
COME LORD JESUS
