Preached on November 4, 2007, All Saints Day, at the First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, UCC.
Dedicated to my Uncle Tom Harper, and all the saints who have gone before us; and always to the glory of God.
Luke 19:1-10
A man was starving. In desperation, he stole some food, for which he was arrested, convicted, and jailed. After a failed escape, his sentence was lengthened, and he spent decades in prison doing hard labor. Finally released, he had no money or friends, and no one would hire a convicted criminal. This is the story of Jean Valjean, from Victor Hugo’s novel Les Misérables, and known to many by the musical we call Les Mis. If you know the story, you know that the only person who will take him in for the night is a humble country priest. The priest has converted his rectory into a hospital, and reserves only a small collection of rooms for his own lodging. He has no possessions to speak of, except for the silverware for his table, and two silver candlesticks, inherited from his great-aunt.
Jean Valjean is desperate once more. He doesn’t know any other way of survival. So, he steals the silver from the cupboard and runs off into the night, only to be arrested once again and brought back to the priest so that he can be charged and sent back to prison. But the priest doesn’t press charges. In fact, he tells the officers that the silver in Valjean’s possession was a his gift to him, that in fact Valjean had forgotten to take the two candlesticks, which were also gifts. When the officers have left, the priest says “Jean Valjean, my brother: you belong no longer to evil, but to good.” This act changes Jean Valjean from a thief into a man who will spend his entire life in generosity to those who need his help, even to those who do not deserve it. There is a power in goodness.
In another part of the novel, the priest teaches that “If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.” And the narrator observes: “he had a strange and peculiar way of judging things. I suspect that he acquired it from the Gospel.”[1]
Here’s a story that goes the other way. This is the story of Robert Hanssen, who spent his career in the FBI, specializing in intelligence, but meanwhile he was selling classified documents to the Russians. He was arrested in 2001 and pled guilty to acts of espionage over twenty-two years. His story is interpreted in the recent movie Breach, which shows us a man of great intelligence who works hard in the FBI but is overlooked for accolades and promotion, and is derided and ostracized by his colleagues for his grim demeanor. Although he handles high priority secrets, he is made to feel like a meaningless cog in the bureaucratic machine. He doesn’t sell secrets just for the money. He sells them in order to feel that he means something. He betrays his country and those whose lives depend on him because in a twisted way it proves that he is important. You might say that he lived in darkness.
We don’t know why Zacchaeus turned on his fellow Jews, but that’s what he did. When Israel was ruled by Rome, Zacchaeus collaborated with the Roman empire, collecting Caesar’s taxes from his poor and beleaguered neighbors. Tax collectors of that time would often travel with a team of Roman soldiers. Try telling them you didn’t have the money Rome demanded. And what’s more, his salary was made by what he collected above the Roman tax. The more he got from people, the richer he became. Corruption was built into the system. Tax collector became a synonym for sinner. Read through the gospels and see how often they refer to any group of undesirables as “tax collectors and sinners.”
We don’t know why Zacchaeus chose is path. Maybe it was because he was so short. When he shows up in the gospel, he can’t get a look at Jesus because he can’t see over the people in front of him, and what’s more, they all shove him out the way. He’s short, Luke tells us. Maybe he had a Napoleonic complex. Or maybe we should say that Napoleon had a Zaccheus complex. Maybe his power grab with the Roman guards was a reaction to all the times he had been abused and taken advantage of in his life. I don’t know. I’m not sure it matters.
What does matters is that he is a traitor and a cheat, a sinner, and now he’s up in a tree above the crowd, because that’s the only way he can get a look at the famous rabbi Jesus. But when Jesus walks through this crowd of people, and we can imagine that many of them are very nice, upstanding folks, it’s Zacchaeus that Jesus calls to. It’s Zacchaeus that Jesus wants to spend time with. Perhaps for the first time in his life, Zacchaeus is not laughed at, or reviled, but befriended. And wouldn’t you know that this simple act is the only thing that can change him, and in changing him, makes this village a more just and peaceful place for everyone.
Sometimes I imagine the story going the other way. I imagine that Jesus stopped in the road and said “I want to have a special meal with all of you who have been so faithful all these years and have come here early to get a good spot right on the road to see me. You’re all invited. Well, except you, Zacchaeus. You’re not on my list. But if you get your act together, maybe next time I’ll invite you too.” I wonder about that. But I don’t think that Zacchaeus would have changed at all.
I can’t name to you one time in my life that I became a better person as the result of someone telling me how bad I was. I become better when I am inspired by the light of goodness that I receive by the grace of God. Is that your experience? I think that the church has done much better for God and for the world when we have invited people to “come and see” with no strings attached. “Come and see” was what Jesus said to his first disciples in the gospel of John, and it has always been the best way to spread the gospel. When we have gotten it wrong in the church is when we start to fix the world by pointing out its flaws, become aggressive in our condemnation, and even trying to enact laws to enforce moral behavior. That didn’t work for the Puritans, or the Spanish Inquisition, and it will never work for us.
A church research team called The Barna Group recently completed a survey of young Americans, in which high school and college students were asked about their perceptions of Christians and the Christian church. What they found was the primary perception of this generation is that Christians are hypocritical and judgmental, and they are not interested in the church. I read that, and what I hear is people crying out to us: don’t tell us how awful we are, how badly we are spending our time, how we are hurting ourselves, other people, and the earth itself. Show us instead how we can mean something, how we can make a difference. Show us how we can find a sense of peace deep down that always eludes us. I think that’s a call that we can answer, as the body of Christ.
But here’s the catch. Every time Jesus shared his time and food with sinners, just to be with them and with no strings attached, people started to grumble and criticize from the sideline. Read through the gospel of Luke, and notice how many times Jesus heals someone, or associates with a tax collector, and gets blamed for being ‘soft on sin.’ The complaint is always the same. It’s the complaint of the older brother when the prodigal son comes home. He comes in from the field and sees the party in full swing. When he learns that it’s for his younger brother, who wasted half the family fortune, who broke his parents’ hearts, was gone for years and never even wrote, he refuses to even come inside.
When the father comes out to get him, the son complains that it’s not fair, probably just the same way the crowd felt when Jesus singled Zacchaeus out for some one on one time. “It isn’t fair,” he says. “I’ve been with you faithfully all this time and you’ve never thrown me a happy hour, and now this son of yours returns and it’s like New Year’s Eve! What kind of consequences are those? Don’t you realize that the party, the gifts, and the welcome home are all really just so much permission for people to go out and sin all they want?” To all of which the father says “cut that out.”
We have spent centuries trying to overcome the false theology that God is fair, that God punishes sinners and rewards the righteous. Grace isn’t about being fair; grace is about finding the lost, healing the sick, mending the broken. The priest who gave his silver to Jean Valjean knew it. The father of the prodigal son knew it. Jesus knew it.
I wonder where we find ourselves in this snapshot of Jesus, Zacchaeus, and the crowd gathered around..
Maybe we find ourselves in Jesus. I wonder if we are the ones who have an opportunity to show generosity to someone with no strings attached, but with trust in the power of goodness to transform.
Maybe we find ourselves in the crowd. Maybe we are sick of being unthanked while someone else is smiled upon. I wonder if we are holding so tightly to keeping score and bookkeeping that we can’t appreciate the grace of God for those who don’t measure up.
Maybe we are Zacchaues: closed out by others, driven into darkness. Doing things we don’t want to do. I wonder what might inspire us to come closer to Christ, just to get a better look? I wonder what trees we could climb to put ourselves in touch with the sacred? I wonder how God might call our name, might befriend us with no strings attached, and in so doing, might invite us to a new way of being fully human, more gracious, more loving, and more at peace?
I wonder.
[1] Victor Hugo, Les Misérables, trans. Carles E. Wilbur, Everyman’s Library edition, page 21.
