Christ Cathedral

Old Testament - Isaiah 1:10-20
Psalm 32:1-8
New Testament - 2 Thessalonians 1:1-12
Gospel - Luke 19:1-10

Not long ago, my son Nathaniel presented me with the fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin, which he wanted to read for his bedtime story. As the story goes, a certain miller wanted to look more important, so he bragged that his beautiful daughter could spin straw into gold. Soon, word of this amazing talent reached the king who carried her off to his castle and locked her in the tower with the promise that, if she could really spin straw into gold, he would make her his queen.

Of course the girl can do no such thing. But as she sits wondering just how she might accomplish such a task, a dwarf named Rumpelstiltskin appears. He offers to spin the straw into gold for a price: he takes what little money the girl has, then her mother’s gold ring, and finally he agrees to spin one more batch of straw into gold in exchange for the first child born to the miller’s daughter. She agrees to this bargain, and shortly afterward she marries the king. A year or so later, a child is born and Rumpelstiltskin comes to claim his prize.

Like many fairy tales, the only thing more obvious than the innocence of the victims is the treachery of the villains. The good guys are good, the bad guys are very bad, but all the characters are extremely flat. They are like cardboard cutouts of human behavior. The miller is desperate for attention. The king is greedy. Rumpelstiltskin is cruel, delighting in the misfortune of others. Every one of these characters is clearly a villain, whose flaws are so obvious that the underlying humanity quickly disappears behind the cardboard cutouts.

Reading the story of Zacchaeus, it is tempting to make it into a similar sort of fairy tale. Zacchaeus was the chief tax-collector in the province of Jericho and was quite probably the most despised man in the province. The reason for this is that Roman tax collectors were more like the Mafia than the IRS. There was no such thing as a graduated income tax or a fixed percentage that they were assigned to collect. Instead, the Roman government put tax collection out to bid. The highest bidder paid the Romans the agreed upon amount and kept everything else that he managed to collect for himself. Since Zacchaeus was rich, we can only assume that he was busily extorting as much as he could from his fellow Jews in Jericho, and it’s easy to guess why no one liked him.

If you have any doubts about the way people felt about Zacchaeus, try reading the story again, and ask yourself why Zacchaeus had to climb a tree. When he tries to poke his head through the crowd lining the side of the road, they push him aside. When he tries to get down front where he can see, the crowd closes ranks and pushes this disagreeable fellow back to the rear. They might have to pay their taxes, but they don’t have to be nice to this little creep.

We all know what happens from here. Zacchaeus runs ahead of the crowd, climbs a tree, and waits for Jesus to arrive. When Jesus arrives at the place where Zacchaeus is perched in the tree, he looks up and tells Zacchaeus to come down and join him for lunch. Then, Zacchaeus has a change of heart, promises to give back his ill-gotten gains, and Jesus declares, "Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost."

The temptation as we read the Gospel of Luke is to treat this story like a fairy tale. Before Jesus came along, Zacchaeus was bad, and after Jesus came to his house, Zacchaeus was good. He repented and everything was different. In one sense, this is exactly what happened. There can be no doubt that meeting Jesus changed Zacchaeus, but we must be careful not to let Zacchaeus turn into another cardboard cutout from a fairy tale about redemption. If that happens, the only real difference between Zacchaeus and Rumpelstiltskin is that the cardboard Zacchaeus has two equally flat sides, one good and one bad, where Rumpelstiltskin has only one. It may entertain us, but the challenge of the Gospel will disappear.

So why isn’t Zacchaeus just another fairy tale? The first reason is that Zacchaeus was a real person who met an equally real Jesus. This man, Zacchaeus, lived in Jericho; he was the chief tax collector; he was rich; he was short; and we know that he was curious about Jesus. But we also know that like most human beings he was deeply conflicted on the inside. Like Rumpelstiltskin, he has made a living from the misery of others, and he is left to fend for himself in every way. For Zacchaeus this means climbing a tree just to get a glimpse of this man Jesus who is rumored to be on the road.

Everything about this picture makes it far more human than anything from the Brothers Grimm. Zacchaeus makes a living by a legal form of extortion, but he wants to see a poor itinerant preacher who says that it is nearly impossible for a rich man to enter heaven. He is a member of God’s chosen people, but he collaborates with the government that destroyed the holiest site of his people. He is curious about Jesus, but everyone else who is interested in Jesus is standing in his way.

When we consider Zacchaeus in this light, it opens up a world of possibilities. His story is a human story that is not so different from our own, and I wonder how we would fit into the story of redemption we see in Zacchaeus. If we think about where we fit into this story, my guess is that most of us would find our place in the crowd. We are not so bad as to identify with Zacchaeus, but neither are we so good that we can see Jesus in our own everyday actions.

So what about the crowd? Who are they? What makes them tick? From what I see in Luke they are fairly normal people. They are interested in Jesus, make efforts to see him, but they are conflicted. Jesus preaches a message of love and forgiveness, but they are pretty content to hold petty grudges and engage in a mild and socially acceptable form of selfishness.

They believe that life is every man for himself, and that people should be loved or rejected based on their previous behavior. And so, here is Zacchaeus, someone who could easily stand front and center without obscuring anyone’s view of Jesus, and yet the crowd is not willing to let him in. It won’t cost them a thing to share Jesus with nasty little Zacchaeus, but they don’t feel like being nice to him. After all, he has never gone out of his way to be nice to them. Maybe if he were nicer, they would treat him better.

This sort of "eye for an eye" philosophy is still the unwritten code of our society. We help the people who are nice to us, we help the people who are helpful to us, and when we get a chance to close ranks on that disagreeable person at work, at school, or in our family, we generally do. After all, if they weren’t such jerks, we wouldn’t treat them this way. They are just getting what they asked for. It makes sense, and we do it all the time. But it doesn’t make the world a better place and it doesn’t make us better people.

So how can we change? I think that it starts by looking carefully at people who are like Zacchaeus. Sure, they do things that make them disagreeable. They are rude. They brag. They are conniving and selfish, and they take advantage of anyone they can. However, we must remember that they are like Zacchaeus, and not like Rumpelstiltskin. The biggest jerk you will ever meet is still a human being. Like Zacchaeus, the grumpy manager, the playground bully, the whining hypochondriac are all people who are, in one sense, asking to be rejected. But that is not the way that Jesus saw Zacchaeus, and it is not the way we should see the problem people in our lives.

Like Zacchaeus, the unpleasant people in our lives often have everything they need, but they are broken in ways that we do not really understand. Maybe like Zacchaeus, they have some physical shortcoming that makes them insecure. Perhaps mild addictions and chronic stress have left them unable to act with grace toward others. Sometimes the habit of treating others badly starts with one incident and grows as the world and the crowd simply responds in kind.

It is hard to say why a person is unpleasant, but if we want to help someone we can’t be like the crowd. The crowd was never going to help Zacchaeus get any better. Even when he showed signs of wanting to change, even when he showed signs of wanting to reform, the crowd did not help him. Zacchaeus tried to change, but they could only see the cardboard figure of a greedy tax collector, not the child of Abraham whose life God wanted to redeem. I am afraid that all too often we are like the crowd, all too ready to see a cardboard cutout jerk, instead of the lonely soul looking for redemption.

In this light, the story of Zacchaeus is a parable for us to consider as we interact with the unpleasant people in our lives. Where the crowd saw a chance to give Zacchaeus something that he deserved, Jesus saw someone whose choices had cut him off from polite society, and he saw someone who was looking for a way out. The love and concern Jesus showed to Zacchaeus opened the way for him to change, and we can do the same for the unpleasant people in our lives. But we have to be careful. The process of redemption is not a fairy tale. Sometimes it takes a long time; not everyone responds quite as readily as Zacchaeus.

Just last week I helped a stranded couple, who had through no fault of their own, arrived in Salina on an empty tank of gas without a dime in their pockets. It was a temporary problem, and they mostly needed a place to stay for the night. As I checked them in at a local motel, one of them began to complain about the price to the guy at the desk. It was an ironic situation. Here was a person who was begging for assistance and at the same time, he had the nerve to complain and generally make himself disagreeable to the very people he needed to solve his problem. I sighed a little on the inside, paid for the motel, and drove away. But for me it was a reminder of the difficulty we all experience in accepting the grace and love of God.

I personally believe that every person is somewhere on the road to redemption, moving either toward the grace and love of God or away from it. In any case, we all have unsolved problems, and in some way or another, we are all trying to cope with them. But only God can truly give us what we need. Not long ago, I heard a song which seemed to capture the predicament that we all find ourselves in when it comes to accepting God’s grace. The song was about two lonely and desperate people talking at a bar, and all the troubles they had seen. I think the chorus says it all:

I could use a double whiskey, but it would not save my soul.

I could use a hundred dollars, but it would not make me whole.

I could use some understanding, no need for no excuse.

O let’s just second hand it, only love can cut me loose.