Sermons

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The last time this Gospel came up I made a radical suggestion–namely, that though we have always assumed that Zacchaeus was short, and that’s why he climbed the tree to see Jesus, it is entirely possible that Jesus was the short one. It is unclear in the language of the Greek original to whom the pronoun “he” in “because he was small of stature” refers. Being of below average height myself, I like this alternate reading, obviously. It also dovetails nicely with my sermon last week, in which I said that tax collectors in First Century Palestine were thugs who extorted money from the people. It’s easier to imagine a big burly geezer wringing money out of someone than it is to imagine a “wee little man” doing the same.

It doesn’t really matter who the short one was, though, as one needn’t be tall to be intimidating. Nota bene: Bruce Lee, Winston Churchill, and Alexander the Great were all the same height as I am, and Lawrence of Arabia was a couple inches shorter. The point is, like I said last week, that tax collectors were known for the fear they inspired, so Zacchaeus, whatever his height, should be thought of as a rough customer you wouldn’t want to cross, rather than a cute little fellow from a Sunday School song. We don’t get the full impact of the story unless we recognize that Zacchae’us was a frightening, nasty guy in the eyes of the crowd.

“And when they saw it, they all murmured, ‘he has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.’” It’s this sort of person Jesus came to seek and save.

And Zacchae’us, unprovoked, not yet confronted by Jesus, knows what will be coming when the Lord arrives at his house later on. The mere presence of Jesus is enough to bring conviction into the heart of this hardened source of terror and abuse. “If I have defrauded any one of anything,” he says, “I restore it fourfold.” This would have been his obligation under the Mosaic Law, as it is recorded in the twenty-second chapter of Exodus: “If a man shall steal…a sheep, and kill it, or sell it; he shall restore…four sheep for a sheep.” So, here, Zacchae’us is promising to remit his debt according to the law. But his other promise is not simply the fulfillment of an obligation, but a gift of penance and thanksgiving: “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor.” Such grace from such a bully!

There are a number of things we can learn from this: none of us is beyond saving; the proper response to receiving grace is to give graciously- an important thing to remember as we are asked once again to consider our commitment of time, talent, and treasure to Christ’s church; simply opening up to God’s presence will convict us and set us right. But, I think, the most important thing for many of us to learn is that we cannot permit our prejudice to make us deny God’s ability to turn around the lives of those most unlovely to us. That chap you know who’s been in and out of prison; the guy who gets into fisticuffs down at the bar; the drug dealer; the terrorist. God can save them, too. He can turn them into gracious, charitable people, just like he did for that nasty chief tax collector in Jericho. If we don’t hold out hope for “those people”, if we don’t see them as having the potential to be better men and women than us, then we think we can limit the power of God, and that, my friends, is a losing proposition.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

To get the full impact of the parable Jesus tells in this morning’s Gospel, I think we need to step back and examine the preconceptions with which we enter into the story today. “Two men went up into the temple to pray,” Jesus says, “one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.” Even if we hadn’t heard this particular parable a hundred times, we’d know who’s supposed to be the good guy and the bad guy, right? Well, no. If you’ve grown up in the Church you might have a pretty strong sense that Pharisees were Jesus’ enemies, the “bad guys.” They have come to be regarded as a lot of hypocrites.

But, Jesus never denounced the Pharisees as a whole, only individual Pharisees. To his audience, the Pharisees were well-respected religious leaders, and I think they’re due for a bit of rehabilitation in our own day. Yes, they were a bit rigid. But, if nothing else, they were on the whole a faithful group of religious Jews who spent a great deal of energy in their quest to abide by God’s law. At the beginning of the story, Jesus’ audience would have assumed the Pharisee was going to be the good guy.

And then there’s the tax collector. We know that tax collectors were not well-loved by Jesus’ Jewish contemporaries, but I don’t think we know the extent of their unrighteousness. To us, taxes are a necessary evil. None of us likes paying taxes, but it’s for the common good and the men and women who work for the Internal Revenue Service are doing an important job.

Tax collectors in Jesus’ day were not just officious bureaucrats executing a necessary task. They were thugs. You see, the Roman Empire would have told these tax collectors how much they expected from each taxpayer, and then it was up to the individual tax collector to determine by how much he would overcharge each of them. His salary would basically be how much extra money he could collect through extortion. The Empire understood that this was the case, and would encourage the tax collector to wring as much out of his already overtaxed compatriots as he could.

So, Jesus sets his audience up to expect the opposite of what he gives them in the parable. We have a good, faithful person and a thug, and a standard view of justice would hold that the Pharisee—whom we can assume was being honest about fasting and tithing and so forth—would go home from the temple justified, and that the tax collector would get his just deserts. Perhaps the Pharisee was being a bit haughty, but he had earned the right to be proud of his faithful obedience.

Jesus turns the expectation of his audience on its head, and we can assume that they didn’t like what they heard. We wouldn’t if we were in their shoes.

It all gets back to that same old struggle we have in accepting how God works. As much as we might affirm the fact that our salvation is not our own doing, that our justification is a gift from God rather than a reward for our goodness, we never seem to believe it deep down. And, sometimes, our religion can have the opposite effect of what religion ought to have. It can convince us that we are righteous people set up to reap the rewards of our righteousness, rather than sinners in need of saving. It is paradoxical, but it seems that the best among us can have the hardest time being justified. The tax collector knew that he was a sinner, and could say the one prayer that really meant anything besides “look at me, ain’t I grand.” He could say that prayer which needs to be on the tip of our tongues, too: “God, be merciful to me a sinner!” When we can get beyond being impressed with how good we are, we can say that, and we can remember how merciful God has always been to us.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

One of the ways in which my childhood was very different from my wife’s is that I watched a lot of television and she did not. That being the case, she is often shocked (and perhaps irritated, though she is too kind to make that known) when something jogs the memory and I’m able to sing an entire cartoon theme song or advertising jingle that has lain dormant in my subconscious for thirty-plus years. Whether it be the theme song to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Duck Tails or the jingle for Bagel Bites or Mentos (the Freshmaker), I reckon I could have used that mental space for something a bit more salutary, but alas.

Occasionally, though, just a snatch of a song will arise in the mind, and I have to engage in a deep dive on Google to try to remember fully what I’m only partially remembering. This happened earlier this week, when for some reason I remembered part of a little ditty:

Have patience, have patience, don’t be in such a hurry.

When you get impatient, you only start to worry.

And then I couldn’t remember the rest. After some searching, I discovered that the song was sung by an uncanny looking, cartoon creature called Herbert the Snail. I can’t remember ever watching this cartoon, or where I would have heard this (on television or in the schoolyard or whatever). Listening to the rest of the song, though, I noticed it took a turn:

Have patience, have patience, don’t be in such a hurry.

When you get impatient, you only start to worry.

Remember, remember that God is patient too,

And think of all the times when others have to wait for.

I must admit that patience is not my most well-practiced skill, so it would have been better for me to have let this silly little song take up the mental real estate that is currently occupied by, I don’t, the Alka-Seltzer jingle. I am not as patient with others as I ought to be, and I’m certainly not as patient with God as I ought to be. When I want some kind of help from on high, some affirmation of myself or some experience of consolation, I want it fairly quickly. Sometimes, deep down, I convince myself that I could do God’s job more efficiently than He does. Of course, that’s the kind of pride which preceded the fall, and which precedes my own embarrassing falls from time-to-time. I can be pretty patient in my relationships with each of you, I can even force myself to be patient in my relationship with people on the other end of the telephone line at the internet company or pension group helpline. Believe it or not, I’m getting more patient with people in the left turn lane who never want to go “go for it”. All that said, though I’m getting more patient on those fronts, I have trouble being patient in my relationship with God.

I wonder if Jacob had that problem, too, and that’s why God decided to wrestle with him at Penu’el. You’ll remember that up to this point, Jacob had done pretty well at getting what he wanted, even if it meant being a little less than honest. Perhaps, Jacob needed to learn an important lesson which had heretofore been beyond him, namely, that the blessing of God, which once seemed so easily forthcoming due to Jacob’s cleverness would eventually require more persistence. Jacob’s struggle with the Lord at Penu’el would be realized by the nation of which he was the father, which had to fight to remain faithful, whose relationship with God would indeed become an extended struggle, as they strayed and wrestled with the sin that led them astray and, indeed, with the prophets whom God appointed to bring them back. God’s persistence in remaining faithful to Israel demanded that Israel itself show such persistence in maintaining its end of the relationship.

Likewise, the widow in the parable from Luke is meant to stand as an example for believers who must remain persistent in prayer. Just like the children of Israel had to persevere in keeping the law, to wrestle with the powers that would prevent them, so too must the Christian wrestle with the pride and indolence which tears her away from maintaining her relationship with God—a relationship which requires the Christian to pray diligently, to read the scriptures faithfully, and to receive God’s Grace in the Eucharist regularly.

In his Second Epistle to Timothy, the Apostle Paul encourages his young protégé to “be unfailing in patience” to “always be steady [and] endure suffering” for the sake of his ministry. Timothy could have had all of the skills we associate with effective ministry: a clear understanding of and passion for the Gospel, an engaging preaching style, a “thick skin” (a critical trait for a priest to have), but none of that would get the job done if he had not the patience to persevere. Perseverance, Paul knew, was the most important factor for a successful fisher of men.

But persistence is not required only because sloth can creep up on our souls. Persistence is necessary because our expectations can sometimes lead to disappointment: when our prayer seems hollow and God seems not to answer, when our study of Holy Scripture seems to leave us with little inspiration, when the strength and consolation we once drew from the Sacrament seems to have ceased. That is to say, when we’re “just not feeling it”, as if God’s job is to make us feel like we’re always on the right track and we’re always making progress rather than it being our job to plug away during those times when we’re feeling a bit dry and desolate.

St. Teresa of Avila, whose feast day was yesterday, called this phenomenon “aridity”, which means “dried up”. We’ve all probably experienced this at one point or another. It can be discouraging, and it can elicit some unfortunate reactions if we’re not ready for it. It can feel like we’re trudging through the desert rather than being led through green pastures beside still waters.

We can stop praying and reading the bible and receiving the Sacrament altogether. This is like assuming the oasis in the distance must be a mirage, so it’s better to sit down in the desert and die instead of venturing toward the potential life right in front of us. Or, we can blame the Church. This has become a very popular way of avoiding the call to persevere.

The proper response, I think, is to keep praying and reading scripture and receiving the Sacrament. The proper response is to keep at it. You’ll make it to that oasis in the desert eventually. You’ll experience Grace and consolation eventually. Don’t let discouragement get hold and decide to just give up. Keep at it, and in the end the struggle will seem a distant memory compared to the abiding peace we can experience in Christ Jesus, in this world and the next.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.