When Looking Up Becomes Looking In

Proper 26C; Isa. 1:10-18; Luke 19:1-10; St. Paul’s Smithfield, NC 10/30/16

Jim Melnyk: “When Looking Up Becomes Looking In”

I have become convinced that Luke is a master storyteller – someone adept at setting us up to be continually surprised at the teachings of Jesus.  Things are never as they seem at first.  We’re meant to be left scratching our heads.

Last week we had a wonderful set up for understanding how God’s grace works in our lives – “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.”  And even though we moderns seem to have a negatively skewed view of Pharisees, Jesus’ listeners all expect to hear something positive about him, while understandably wanting to have the hammer dropped on the tax collector.  And instead we find how God’s mercy is upon those who put their trust in God rather than themselves. 

And then, in a story we pass by in our Sunday readings, Jesus finds himself being questioned by “a certain ruler.”  The man appears in the gospels of Matthew and Mark as well, though he is not called a ruler in either.  The two things the character in all three gospels has in common are these: in both he is rather wealthy – someone who has many possessions; and in all three the ruler or young man, when asked to sell all his possessions and follow Jesus, walks away sad, because he cannot deal with the idea of giving away those possessions which seemingly have come to possess him instead.

All that has gone on before seems to set up the story we hear today.  We are introduced to Zacchaeus, who like one of last week’s characters is a tax collector.  In fact he’s a chief tax collector.  And like the certain ruler in the story we skip over in Luke’s gospel, he is very rich.  We’re not supposed to like him a whole lot.  If tax collectors are bad, a chief tax collector goes beyond the limit.  And it’s not his wealth that causes Luke’s readers to cringe – rather it’s how he has amassed his wealth that is meant to bother us deeply.  He has made a life of defrauding his fellow citizens.  He has sold himself to Rome.  He has become a part of the domination system that oppresses his neighbor.

And yet once again Jesus catches his listeners, and perhaps us, by surprise.  Those standing by in the story grumble saying “He’s gone to that wretched sinner’s house for lunch!”  Perhaps we, along with the original onlookers, want the hammer to drop on the evil tax collector – but when the hammer does drop, the resultant whack is on our own collective toes, not those of Zacchaeus.  We have to pay closer attention to what’s going on in this rather simple story about a somewhat short tax collector hanging out in a sycamore tree – one whose “short stature” is meant to be figurative as well as literal – one who falls short of God’s calling in all too many ways.

Priest and spiritual director Martin Smith writes, “Sometimes one of our five senses has special prominence in scripture readings. This week the eyes have it. We hear about vision, watching, seeing, and looking. In the story of Jesus and Zacchaeus, we are drawn first into the kind of looking that is full of curiosity but keeps its distance. The height-challenged tax collector wants to catch a glimpse of the notorious Galilean prophet, but the backs of the crowd shut him out. He clambers into a tree and peeps down through the leaves at Jesus, who unexpectedly looks up and catches Zacchaeus, the voyeur, in the act” (Martin Smith, Sojourners Online, Preaching the Word, 10/30/2016).

So the story begins with a timid, inquisitive, looking on by Zacchaeus, who probably hopes he won’t be spotted by the prophet who is passing through town.  No doubt he knows his own degree of brokenness, and it wouldn’t do much for his self-esteem to come under the fiery gaze of someone people are calling “the holy one of God.”   At the same time, I suspect there may be a bit of surprise on the part of Jesus, who undoubtedly does not expect to find a grown man checking him out from the low-hanging branches of a tree. 

“This looking up” by Jesus, Smith posits, “turns into a looking in, as the Lord sees something in the tax collector that perhaps no one has seen before…. Have you ever had someone look at you that way? Jesus’ penetrating look instantly begins to dissolve an inner dam that has been holding back Zacchaeus’ latent joy and his latent generosity. No one else had ever suspected what was in him. Jesus gets himself invited in, and after an hour or two the floodgates have opened, revealing Zacchaeus’ true self” (ibid). Zacchaeus, upon hearing the surprising desire by Jesus to break bread together, catches a glimpse of the human being he is created to be – someone who has been fashioned in the divine image – someone who has more in common with his fellow citizens than with the oppressive empire of Rome.  “He insists that Jesus get a good look at his real self in action: ‘Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor’ (Luke 19:8)” (ibid).  Can’t you just hear Jesus talking with Zacchaeus over lunch – “Come, Zacchaeus, let us argue this out.  Though you sins are red like scarlet, God stands ready to wash them white as wool.”

I am convince this story is actually meant to provoke within the listener a crisis of faith meant to make us “give up normal, conventional responses and allow the narrative to take [us] into new and strange insights where we have never gone before” (Smith, The Word is Very Near You: A Guide to Praying with Scripture, p 92).  Even chief tax collectors can change when they find themselves face-to-face with Jesus.

It would have been easy to give up on Zacchaeus, knowing his personal history.  Unlike the certain ruler who walks away from Jesus, grieving over the directive to sell all that he has and give it to the poor – unlike that wealthy man, Zacchaeus needs no prompting other than the welcoming presence of Jesus.  And like with Zacchaeus, conversion takes place for us when we open ourselves to the presence of Jesus in our lives.

Knowing who Zacchaeus is, and the kind of lives collaborators with Rome live, we don’t expect the change of heart the man exhibits.  This is a first century Amazing Grace story as Zacchaeus realizes and then repents of his wretchedness – the way he has dealt with neighbors, not loving them nearly as much as he has seemingly loved himself.

And while Jesus, true to form, insinuates himself into the tax collector’s life before the scoundrel ever has an inkling of metamorphosis, change does happen: “Look, half my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone (a forgone conclusion for any intelligent onlooker, we might add), if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” And the fact that the story remains as part of our Scriptural canon leads me to believe that Zacchaeus followed through on his promise - that his actions were as good as his word.

Zacchaeus most likely goes from being comfortably rich to being an everyday Joe in the turn of a phrase.  In some ways it reminds me of author J.K. Rowling, who holds the present day honor of losing her billionaire status simply because of her philanthropic endeavors – recalling what it was like for her in her pre Harry Potter days.

Perhaps we find ourselves checking out Jesus in all his transforming power from a distance – if not from the low-hanging branches of a sycamore tree then from behind whatever obstacles we put up in an attempt to keep Christ comfortably at bay.  Perhaps like Zacchaeus we all too often mistake what the world sees of us as our own true selves, forgetting that we are each created in the image and likeness of the Divine – the One who creates, loves, and lives within us.

Checking out Jesus from the branches of a sycamore, or by peeking around a corner may seem like the safe way for us to engage the Son of God – but we can be assured – there will be a time when Jesus looks up, or looks around, and his looking up or looking around will become looking within.  Will we choose to stay high and safe in our own personal sycamore tree, or looking on at Jesus from around a distant corner?  Or will we have the stature of wee Zacchaeus – and take the risk to climb down from the branch – to come out from around the corner?  The Good News, my friends, is that Jesus is always read to break bread with us – and in that breaking of bread with Jesus we can let go of whatever possesses us, and once again find ourselves transformed.