Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4, Psalm 119:137-144, 1 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12, Luke 19:1-10
The gospel lesson takes place one day before Palm Sunday. Six days after this Jesus will be dead. But at this point his campaign still looks triumphant, and tomorrow the Messiah will make his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and he should take the throne of David and kick out the Romans and all their collaborators and proclaim the Kingdom of God. But of course he gets crucified instead.
That’s the tragedy, but this morning it’s still comedy. The story of Zacchaeus is comic by design. But our translation gets it wrong. Our translation makes it a conversion story, by having Zacchaeus promise to give half of his possessions to the poor, and promise to pay back fourfold whatever he’s defrauded. But he’s already doing that.
What Zacchaeus actually says is this: “Look, half my possessions, Lord, I am giving to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I am paying them back fourfold.” I am giving, I am paying back. He’s already doing it. It’s not a conversion story, it’s a blessing story.
But then why do the people grumble? It’s not against Zacchaeus that they grumble but against the Messiah, that he’s going to this sinner’s house. Zacchaeus is a sinner no matter how generous he is, because he works for the Romans. His generosity only softens the system but doesn’t change the system. To change the system they want the Messiah to get the Romans out, and their collaborators.
Drain the swamp. Lock him up. The crowd displays the politics of grievance. Grievance can be powerful. You see it with Donald Trump, and with Putin in Russia and Le Pen in France and Orban in Hungary and with Brexit in the UK. But the power of grievance is destructive power. This crowd that praises Jesus on Palm Sunday, in six more days will demand his crucifixion. Their grumbling is a subtle intimation of the coming tragedy right within this morning’s comedy.
It’s classic comedy in the anti-grievance that Jesus recognizes and honors in Zacchaeus—the anti-grievance that while all governments are corrupt and compromised, yet government can still use the money from taxes directly to assist the poor, and even though all governments defraud their people, yet government can still have practices to control its natural corruption with realistic feedback-loops, and make its reparations, and provide restorative justice to people it typically defrauds.
Today salvation has come to this house. What’s salvation here? Economic policies and practices, yes, but more, or why would Jesus have to die. For Zacchaeus, salvation means the person and presence of the Lord Jesus seeking him. For this sinner, this compromised person, salvation is the presence of the Lord Jesus in his life, sitting and eating with him, with his disciples too, no doubt, a community of Jesus. Salvation is Jesus accepting Zacchaeus and blessing him.
So, crowd! Stop your grumbling, stop objectifying people as sinners. The great joke and problem of the Kingdom of God is not who is out, but who’s let in! The Lord Jesus keeps letting the wrong people in. It’s a comedy.
The Lord Jesus does not ask Zacchaeus to quit his job. That is telling, and a message for politics: that our governments are responsible to use some of our taxes directly to assist the poor. Not just for the grumbling middle class, and not just to stimulate the economy yielding better jobs, but what Zacchaeus did, directly to the poor. Also that governments are responsible to correct and make reparations for the inevitable unfairness that economic power generates. What Zacchaeus did. It doesn’t matter which system of government is at work, whether Roman, Jewish, capitalist, socialist, it’s all the same obligation. These are the values of Our Lord’s political economy in the Kingdom of God.
Here’s what it means for all of us spiritually. The Lord Jesus does not call you out from all the corruption of the world, but keeps you in all your situations of ethical ambiguity and compromise, and even in social and economic tragedy. You could act bitter, sarcastic, or cynical, and be tragicomical, like the crowd. But the tragedy of the cross of Jesus Christ rises up again into the comedy of hope, and you shall be joyful. The world is worse than we think, but you shall be joyful in it anyway.
The comedy of the Lord Jesus is a comfort when you face the truth that everything that you do in your Christian life has some fault or flaw within it and always some complicity. Nothing you do is pure. Every good thing that you do has some measure in it of self-interest. And so you repent and you laugh at yourself, and you build into your life some realistic feedback-loops, some intentional actions of selflessness, especially of economic justice. You build into your life some sacrifice, not because God needs your sacrifice, but because you do. Not just to keep you humble, but to keep you tuned in to the grace of God. Life requires sacrifice. New life requires sacrifice. Ask any mother!
One of our feedback-loops is tithing. Speaking of comedy, it’s a bit of a joke how every year on this last Sunday before Consecration Sunday I’m supposed to squeeze the topic of tithing into whatever else my sermon might be about. But Zacchaeus really does apply to tithing. Not in the amount that he gives back—he does more than tithe—but why he does it.
He does it to limit the grip and power of money in his life, to push away from himself the love of money, and to redeem in real terms the corruption of the money within his morally more-than-ambiguous situation.
Why do you give to God? To support the church? Well, that’s good. And you should, when you consider all that it gives you. You’ve heard the examples the last three weeks. But that gets calculated on what the church needs. Those are donations. Donations have their place.
But tithing is subtly different, tithing is calculated not on what the church needs to receive but on what you need to give. For your own spiritual reasons, for your own self-discipline of freeing yourself from loving your money and resisting the power of your money on you. Tithing is your economic feedback-loop.
You start at one percent of your income, and you make the first break with the hold of money on your life. Every year that you can add another percent till you get to ten is how you get more free of the power of money in your life. You tithe as the cost of your freedom—that’s why you do it for yourself; and for God you do it for thanksgiving, your tithing is a sacrifice of thanksgiving.
You need some money in your life because money is power. The taxes of the Romans were used to pay the expenses of keeping them in power. And they used their power for further wealth and aggrandizement and exploitation. It was their right as the conquerors and the purpose of their Pax Romana. It was understood as only right. And into this normal humanity the Lord Jesus introduces a new humanity, to which Zacchaeus belongs.
This new humanity has power but it uses its power for the poor, and not for self-aggrandizement, and not for its own wealth but on behalf of those who have been defrauded and exploited. This new humanity is not pulled out from the corruption of the world but is kept fully in the world, so that its members cannot help but still be sinners, like Zacchaeus, like us, but what makes us holy and justified and qualified for the Kingdom of God is the presence of the Lord Jesus among you in the Holy Spirit. Your entry into this new humanity is just your desire to see Jesus, no matter how short your stature may be. Just climb the tree to catch a glimpse, and salvation comes to you.
Comedy and tragedy are so close, and usually mixed together. You can’t have comedy without loss, and things turned over and upside down, and when you have power you don’t like to lose. And comedy always means a surprise, and when you have power you don’t like surprises. Pride and hubris make for tragedy, and comedy is the antidote to pride.
But the laughter of God at us is not sarcastic and God’s comedy is not a farce. The laughter of God is not a mocking laugh. It’s the laughter of lovers, it’s a romantic comedy, like Falstaff, or like Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s people blessing each other’s silly costumes. “Oh, that’s how you got by!” It’s the positive feedback-loop of embarrassment and embrace.
This comedy of the Lord Jesus is a love story, the great love story. The new humanity learns to practice the greatest power of all, the power of love, that power that comes from the love of God.
Copyright © 2019 by Daniel Meeter, all rights reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment