FINDINGS II


Proper 26 - C - October 31, 2010

Luke 19: 1-10


 
Harry T. Cook

By Harry T. Cook

10/25/10



Luke 18: 9-14  

Jesus was passing through Jericho. A man was there whose name was Zacchaeus. He was a chief toll collector and quite wealthy. He was wanting very much to see who Jesus was, but from (his position in) the crowd, he could not. He was a short man. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see Jesus, because he was passing in that direction. When Jesus came to that place, he looked up and said to him, "Zacchaeus, hurry and come down because I want to go to your house today." So Zacchaeus hurried down and was happy to welcome him. Those who saw it began to mutter, saying: "Jesus has gone in to find lodging with a sinful man." Zacchaeus just stood there and said to the Lord, "Look, sir, I am giving half of all I own to poor ones, and those I have defrauded I will pay back four times over." Whereupon Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has happened in this house, because Zacchaeus is, too, a son of Abraham. The One Like Us comes to seek and save the lost." (Translated and paraphrased by Harry T. Cook)


 

 

RUBRIC

 

It is well to keep in mind that Luke's overall schema is to depict Jesus on a long and complex journey. That is why, perhaps, the locution "passing through Jericho." There, but not there for long. Always on the move, but never so impatient to get on with it that he could not and would not stop to deal with one human condition or another.


In this passage, it is the human condition not unlike the one referenced in last week's FINDINGS II -- the toll collector who went down to his house justified because of his sincere act of contrition. In this passage, it is also a toll collector -- a chief toll collector, no less -- who is named: Zacchaeus, the Greek version of the Hebrew "zakkai," meaning "innocent" or "upright." He, too, finds approbation. The idea is that if an "architelōnēs -- one who paid the toll leviers upfront and then strong-armed his underlings to collect the tolls and remit to him, no doubt with a hefty surcharge -- can be found worthy of salvation ("sōtāria" -- deliverance, wholeness) anyone can.


 



WORKSHOP


If context is important -- and it is -- the verses immediately preceding the Zacchaeus story serve as a kind of introduction to it. Luke depicts Jesus "approaching" Jericho before he "passes through it." On the approach Jesus encounters a blind man whose situation has reduced him to begging. (Matthew's version has it as two such blind men. In Mark, it is one and he is given a name: Bartimaeus).


Luke's blind beggar wants to see, and finally he saw Jesus. Zacchaeus wants to see "who Jesus was." In Luke's analysis, those would amount to the same thing. The blind man is physically blind. Zacchaeus is blind to the effect of his grungy profession -- its effect upon others and himself. Who Jesus "was" to Zacchaeus was the mirror in which he saw himself, and didn't like what he saw.


I think we're to assume what Luke's story seems to assume, viz. that Jesus had become well enough known that he could draw a crowd. If Jesus was J. D. Crossan's "itinerant sage" advocating an ethic of pacifism and personal justice, then one can imagine how he might have stood out.


The clinker in this story is the question of how Jesus knew Zacchaeus was up that tree. The literalist will say that Jesus could do or see anything because he was/is God. A better spin would be to say that Luke's Jesus was always looking for the person everyone else despised: the leper, the harlot, the blind beggar and surely a major figure in the toll collection business. Jesus looked for "those of low degree" to exalt (1:52). So Luke's Jesus is made to find Zacchaeus and invite himself to the wealthy man's house.


Here is not only a breaching of a social barrier, but its thorough breaking down. The crowd murmured that Jesus had sought lodging in the house of one who had separated himself from God and tradition. The Greek word "katalusai" could help us render the sentence in our own idiom: "Jesus has gone in to hang out with a low-life."


Paul would have liked the outcome of the Jesus-Zacchaeus encounter because it is the kind of uncomplicated crossing of a line from one extreme to the other. One day Zacchaeus was a chief among toll collectors, surely palming overcharges into his own pocket. The next day he is "giving" (not simply "promising to give") half of all he owns to the poor and to restore four times over the money he has in effect stolen.


I think Luke wants us to understand that by making those bold gestures of contrition that Zacchaeus and his house chose to live under the rule of the highest human ethic ("kingdom of God"), and because they did, the lost has been found. He was, after all, a son of Israel no matter how far he had strayed. Lost sheep. Lost coin. Prodigal son.


We never hear another word about Zacchaeus. Luke may want us to imagine that his fictional character would, in an extension of the story, continue to do his job, but do so scrupulously so as to defraud no one. He has been "saved" from a low-life existence by the embrace of one whom he admires and whose teachings he adopted on the spot.




HOMILETIC COMMENTARY


At least two homiletic directions present themselves:


One is to explore how uncomplicated inclusion as a general practice can win people over to the ethic of the one doing the including. You can attempt to teach an ethic, but if you're trying to teach it to one whom you hold at arm's length (or even farther out) your pedagogy is in vain. First embrace the one you aim to attract to your way. If you have established a reputation for the practice of the ethic you advocate, many a Zacchaeus will be found lurking up many a tree, just waiting, perhaps, for you to stop and invite yourself into their lives.


The other, perhaps with a rougher edge, is to focus on the fact that Zacchaeus' wealth would have done nothing to efface his social status as a low-life in the eyes of many of his contemporaries. Bernie Madoff was once filthy rich, but he was really just filthy. Madoff went to prison. Zacchaeus made restitution on the spot. Dare the church call on this nation's filthy rich to examine how they may have gotten that way and offer them opportunity to set things to right?


� Copyright 2010, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.


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