31 October 2010
Luke 19:1-10
Reading Luke, you might think God loves the poor and hates the rich. It starts with the Magnificat, Mary’s song:
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.
“He pulls the mighty down from their thrones and lifts up those of low degree.” In one of Jesus’ parables, a rich man is tormented in hell, and as if to rub salt in his wounds he can look up and see poor Lazarus in heaven. “The hungry he fills with good things and sends the rich away empty,” the way the rich man who lacked only one thing, to sell all he had and give to the poor, went away empty, still hungry for eternal life.
The Gospel truth is that God loves. God loves rich and poor alike, God shows no partiality. God is particularly fond of each one of us. The thing is, we who are rich seldom realize how poor we are. And we who have full stomachs and fuller refrigerators and pantries, sometimes we forget that we cannot live by bread alone, or even by bread stuffed with cheese and pepperoni. There is an emptiness that food cannot fill. So, sometimes, pulling the mighty down from their thrones is salvation for the mighty. Think of today’s gospel as a parable illustrating that truth. Here is a story of a man who sat up high, and was then brought low, and that is how salvation came to Zaccheus.
Neither poverty nor richness is the key to salvation. It isn’t that simple. Salvation comes to Zs’ house because he is looking for it. Yes, he is a rich man, but he doesn’t put his trust in his riches. His material wealth does not anesthetize him to the pain of his spiritual poverty. He senses there is something more and he goes looking for it.
Now I feel the need to wander off into an academic point. I learned something new this week from David Lose, professor of Biblical Preaching at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, who runs a web site called workingpreacher.com. You know I’m a bit of a geek and I get really excited about these things—so please humor me with this excursus. I always trusted that the NRSV translation was trustworthy, but it turns out that at some point doctrine trumped scholarship in the translation of this story, and that decision, to translate a couple of verbs to coincide with doctrine, changed the meaning of the story in what I think is a significant way. Going back to the Greek, Z doesn’t say, “I will give” and “I will pay.” What he said is, “Half my possessions I give to the poor. And if I defraud anyone of anything, I pay back four times as much.” In the present tense. It is not promise of repentance, it is a statement of fact. This is important, and here is why: someone, somewhere down the line decided, that it was important to make this story fit the belief that repentance precedes salvation. Somebody decided to agree with the judgment of the crowds, that this man, Z, was a sinner. But being rich is not in itself a sin, and Z was apparently being a good steward of the wealth he had received, not hording it, but sharing it, and if he realized that he by oversight or faulty paperwork by one of his employees, perhaps, defrauded anyone, he made it right. More than right, he paid the victim back four times as much. This indicates that he was trying to be a righteous man, to live according to the law and the prophets and then some.
Why is this important?
I think it is important to understand why Jesus announced, Today, salvation has come to this house. It was not in response to repentance, or even in response to Z’s declaration of faithful practice.
On the way through Jericho, Jesus looked up and saw a man who was looking for him, a man who was searching. Jesus saw a man who was willing to, in a poetic literary reversal, humble himself by climbing up high. And Jesus lifted him up high by calling him down. Jesus said, I’m coming to your house today. That is salvation. Jesus coming to your house is salvation. Z didn’t do anything to earn it. He was just trying to see.
Seek and you will find.
I close with a few questions for contemplation:
What are we willing to do for a glimpse of God? Where are we seeking salvation?
The church is called to be the body of Christ, who came, and Jesus himself said, to seek out and save the lost. Like the crowd in Jericho, we may have our preconceived notions of who is and is not worthy. But the gospel tells us that God doesn’t see people the way we do. Who are we willing to seek out, to save?
