Revealed

Luke 19:1-10

This is one of my favorite gospel stories. I love the comic element: I see Zacchaeus as a short little guy in an expensive suit, bobbing along behind the crowd, stretching his neck, trying to peer around and through, and finally giving up, rushing up a tree so that he can actually see this local celebrity coming into town. 

He just wants to get a glimpse of Jesus, the way many of us would with a celebrity. You don’t need a personal relationship, but it would be great to tell your grandkids you were there. You saw him. Maybe got an autograph.

Well, everybody in Jericho is out to see Jesus that day. Some of them probably want to touch him, to be healed, to become famous by association. The crowd is thick.

And now rich, short, Zacchaeus is up in a tree. Near the crowd but not really part of it.

You ever do that?
The center of the action isn’t for everyone. Sometimes you like to be just a little removed from the crowd; from the rough and tumble. You want to vote, but not knock on doors or go to rallies. Enjoy the music, but don’t need the crush and noise of a stadium concert. Love the worship; like your seat two-thirds of the way back; enjoy the sermon, but, you know… don’t want to demand attention up front, or get involved in how the sausage is made.

Anybody here ever feel like that?

I suspect Zacchaeus was feeling like that about seeing Jesus. He’s drawn to this wandering rabbi, this God-touched celebrity, but he’s just staying a bit apart. He’s got his observation post, up in the tree – not among the crowd, but able to enjoy it without getting too involved.

And then Jesus stops.
Looks up, straight at Zacchaeus.

“Hurry and get out of your tree, Zacchaeus. I’m coming to your place for dinner!”

Wait. What?!

I bet Zacchaeus’ heart stops for just a minute.

He wanted to see, but did he want to be seen?

Recognized?

I don’t know. There’s a good chance Zacchaeus didn’t know either.
Is this what he wants?

Well, he doesn’t have a choice now.
Jesus has just inserted himself into his life in a big and intimate and public way.

And now Zacchaeus is out of his tree, standing in front of Jesus, in the center of attention with everyone’s eyes on him. And nobody likes this.

Because Zacchaeus is a tax collector. He’s got one of those jobs that runs against the public good.  Think tobacco company marketer, slum landlord, telemarketing magnate, or subprime mortgage banker. He might be a nice guy, but he works for the bad guys. A little morally suspect if you don’t know him. And probably no one really knows him well.

Until Jesus bursts into his world, demands a personal relationship (how un-Episcopalian), and suddenly Zacchaeus is in the spotlight. And people are complaining that Jesus is going over to the dark side. Or he’s been duped into consorting with the Wrong People.

His reputation is at stake, and everyone’s cranky.

Now Zacchaeus’ character matters. And so – in public, in the presence of God – he confesses. He comes clean. But it’s not the confession anyone is expecting.

“Look,” he says, “I am giving away half of my wealth, and if anyone is injured by me, I pay it all back and more.”

The original Greek suggests that this is something Zacchaeus is in the habit of doing. Our translators see the powerful conversion moment, the encounter with Jesus, and translate it as a promise of new life, but it’s just as possible to read this as a revelation of the deep and long held character of Zacchaeus.

Something he doesn’t talk about, that people don’t know. The kind of care for others that prefers to remain anonymous, apart from the crowd, behind the scenes.

I mean, I want to keep my finances private. It’s between me and God, isn’t it?

But whether Zacchaeus is making a new commitment of life, or a revelation of the private, holy generosity he has practiced for years, it’s real and now it’s public.

It’s out there.

People know. (How un-Episcopalian.)

You know, I don’t talk about my giving habits either.

I bet you don’t, very often.

But here is Zacchaeus, one of my favorite biblical characters, thrust into the spotlight, yanked out of his tree, stuck in the center of attention and confessing his true character.

And maybe we should, too.

Maybe it’s time, after all these years, for me to come out as a tither. To talk about my quiet habit of giving ten percent of my gross annual income to the church, and of giving beyond that to other organizations that matter to me and help make God’s dreams for us real in this world.

And to tell you that I’m not doing this because I’m your priest. But because years and years ago,

someone else told me a story like this, and it moved into my heart and settled in.

It took time to take root; longer to grow. It wasn’t easy or immediate. It took years to build up to the goal, once I set it, of giving a full ten percent, and more.

And I never talked about it.

But on the way, I’ve discovered the truth of another thing Jesus is reported to have said: that “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

When we spend real money on something, when we invest, that cause or object or community gets bigger in our attention, in our perception of the world. It happens with our homes, cars, families, friends, hobbies… And let me tell you, investing a noticeable chunk of my income in the church has made me a lot happier, since that money pulls my attention and heart to the quietly life changing work that happens in classrooms and hospital rooms, meetings and study groups, over meals, and by prayer and worship. So the more I gave, the easier it got; and the more I gave, the more I saw God at work not only through the church, but beyond: in the community, in the world.

And I wonder if Zacchaeus found that out, too: that by investing in generosity, his heart and his attention are drawn more deeply to the presence of God in and among us, so that while it’s a shock to have Jesus at his dinner table, it’s not actually a new thing to find God so close to him.

It’s just new and shocking – and transformative for both him and his community – that he confesses his heart, revealing God already at work in unexpected ways, and instead of just seeing Jesus, becomes seen and known as an agent of salvation.

Maybe Zacchaeus’ story will be your story too.

Maybe it already is.

But if it hasn’t happened yet, I suspect it will. Someday Jesus is going to show up in your life, demand to eat at your house, and make your personal relationship with God public, whether you want it or not.

What character will you confess, then, when the spotlight shines suddenly on your relationship with God?

Will Jesus reveal your best self to the world?

What will your best self be?

And shouldn’t you be sharing that now?
Shouldn’t I be sharing that now?

I wonder what will happen if we all give up on the back of the crowd, expose our whole selves to the good and the holy that we are already attracted to, start sitting up front and meeting Jesus’ eyes, risk getting out of the tree and being seen, risk letting God burst in and take over and reveal our lives to ourselves and everyone else.

I don’t know what will happen, but I suspect there’s some glorious generosity hiding among us.

And maybe it’s time to find out. 

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To Not Lose Heart

Luke 18:1-8

How do you know when you’ve lost heart? When you’ve lost faith?

What do you do differently? Start doing/stop doing?

The most consistent thing I do when I have lost faith, or lost heart – and either don’t realize it or don’t want to admit it – is to start trying to do it all myself.

I’m fortunate that I have several good friends who will listen to me run through an ever-expanding to-do list and gently say, “But isn’t it actually the florist’s job to arrange the flowers?”

or “She’s a very capable person. She can probably do that for herself.”

or “You know, you might leave that one in God’s hands.”

Oh. Yeah. Right.

Prayer. Faith. Trust. Patience.

That’s what the gospel is about today, isn’t it?
Luke tells us that right away: Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.

In some city there was a judge who did not fear God or respect anyone. And a widow was in that city, and she kept coming to him and saying “Avenge me against my opponent.” And the judge kept not wanting to do so.

But eventually, he said to himself: “Even though I don’t fear God or respect any human being, she keeps making so much trouble and work for me that I will avenge her, so she won’t come and beat me up.”

Yep.

That’s the story about prayer.

About a judge who is too lazy or indifferent to act, and a woman demanding vengeance or vindication to the point that the judge expects her to beat him up. Literally, “hit me under the eye.”

A story about a person who gets what she wants through bullying, through implied violence; and another who gives in to that pressure for no better reason than a desire to be left alone and not have to bother.

We don’t know the particulars of the case, we don’t know where actual justice lies. Although centuries of commentators and translators have been generous to the woman, casting her as a vulnerable victim begging for justice, the raw vocabulary suggests that what she desires is not the righteous, godly judgement so often referred to in scripture, but vengeance, vindication or punishment. She wants to win, and to see her opponent lose.

Now, that still might be justice you and I would unhesitatingly support and call holy. She might be, for example, a rape victim demanding powerful punishment for her attacker. But she could just as possibly be more like a political candidate demanding an investigation and “consequences” for the “unfair” tactics of opposing politicians or indifferent third parties.

There are no good guys, no hero or heroine, in Jesus’ original story. If anything, this parable is about the opposite of the kingdom of God, about the ways our everyday world betrays our expectations and hopes.

And then there’s Luke, telling us it’s about persistent prayer, about keeping hope and faith alive.

The traditional interpretation, the one that starts cropping up as early as a generation after Jesus first told the story, is that persistence – sticking to what we ask for, even if we don’t seem likely to get it – persistence will wear down imperfect, corrupt fellow humans, so we expect persistence to work on God, too.

But do we really want to apply the lesson that you can bully or exhaust someone into compliance to our relationship with God?
Do you want to think of your prayer life as an effort to wear God down – even if we do it because we know God has already promised to act?

Or perhaps – just perhaps – is the single-minded, repetitive focus of that widow in the story actually what prayer looks like after we have given up?

Is it possible that dogged pursuit of the answer I want is a symptom of having already lost my faith or trust in what God wants?

Is it possible that to pray like that widow – focused on my own agenda, unwilling to let an issue go, repeating my demands to God even about something as obviously right as justice, healing, peace – is the prayer equivalent of my habit of trying to do everything myself because I’ve lost my fundamental hope, my trust in others, my heart’s faith in God, even while my head still insists that this repeated prayer is an act of belief?

It’s possible.

At least it’s possible for me.

And that judge might just be another model of lost heart, or faith, or hope – the model of disconnection. Because connection – respecting others, respecting God, showing up to do the work of relationship – takes ongoing, repeated, trust and hope with our actions, not just our heads.  And when we feel like relationship – with others, with God – is too much work, it’s often because the faith, heart, or hope we need for those actions is already lost.

So if, in fact, this story is a teaching from opposites, a model of the symptoms of lost faith and heart, then what it teaches us about prayer is to keep our conversation and relationship with God open-ended.

To pray, perhaps, by listening for what God might be doing for us when our petitions and intercessions seem to go unanswered.

To ask what work of the kingdom might be happening in the upheaval and distress – even while we keep praying for peace;

ask what unasked miracles might be happening in the illness itself, even while we pray for healing without giving up hope.

Perhaps this story teaches us that not knowing what to pray for – and praying uncertainly anyway – is more faithful and hopeful than knowing what we want and steadfastly praying for that.

To pray with faith, with trust, with hope, probably means letting go – over and over – of the need to work it out myself to get it right, letting go of the need to know the outcome, or the belief that there is always a right answer.

Because God treats us that way:

with faith that doesn’t force us to get it right,

hope that doesn’t need to know the end of the story,

and the trust to accept more than one answer – to our prayers, to God’s own dreams, and to Jesus’ question of whether there will be faith on earth when God comes again, and always.

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Already Given

Luke 17:11-19

At first glance, this is a story about how your mother was right.

Your mother – or whoever taught you to write thank you notes, to express gratitude as well as gratification at getting what you wanted – was teaching you something holy, something that Jesus cares about.

At first glance, it’s about gratitude, but just a little bit deeper than the surface, it is also a story about salvation, about just what it is that brings us into whole and holy relationship with God and one another, even strangers and enemies.

Ten people with leprosy encounter Jesus:

they pray for mercy, and receive a cure.

“Go, show yourselves to the priests,” Jesus says.

And by obeying his commandment, they are cured – their skin is made clean – and when the priests see that, they can be restored to their community. They can take up their lives again, be who they used to be, among their friends and family, the life they had to give up in their illness.

That’s what we mostly pray for, I suspect, when we are ill, or when someone else is sick. It’s certainly the cure I pray for when one of you is on my prayer list: That you may be well again: recovered and strong, restored to the community and relationships and daily tasks and pleasures that surgery or cancer or some other injury or illness has interrupted.

That restoration is healing, not just for the body, but for the spirit.

And often – not always – but often, we receive what we have prayed for. The cancer remits, the broken bone heals, the surgery is successful. Sometimes the cure leaves us different – not fully back to normal, changed a bit, but out of danger,  and with cause to rejoice, to hope, and to take up our normal lives again.

That story of answered prayer is the nine lepers’ story.

They ask for healing; they obey their healer;

they are cured, and can go home rejoicing.

But then there’s the tenth leper.

He doesn’t go on his way to getting his life back, instead he turns around in the midst of his healing, praising God, to fall at Jesus’ feet in thanksgiving.

And when he – a man who belongs to the wrong religion; a man who has no business claiming to know our God, Jesus’ God – when he gives voice to the wonders and power of God, to his own gratitude,

that’s when Jesus sees it, and says, “Your faith has saved you.”

It wasn’t getting religion right. It wasn’t faithful prayer, it wasn’t asking for the cure, it wasn’t following Jesus’ commands that saved him. The faith that saved him wasn’t the ways we normally measure our faith – prayer, persistence, obedience, trust – all ten of the lepers had that, and all ten of the lepers were cured.

What saves this man is something else.

I’m reminded of something Christian blogger and author Rachel Held Evans says, at the end of her “Year of Biblical Womanhood.” She spent a year trying to follow literally all of the Bible’s rules for women – rules for everything from silence and obedience to charity, investment, executive homemaking, and ritual purity, and she reflects, at the end of her project, on how we all seem to come to the Bible, to the Word of God, looking for something.

And whatever we look for, she says – whether it is liberation, war, peace, oppression, truth, or irrelevance – we will find it.

Evans says she dove into the Bible in her project looking for a good story. And she found one.

But also, she was looking for permission: “permission to lead, permission to speak, permission to find my identity in something other than my roles, permission to be myself, permission to be a woman.”

She was looking for a kind of healing, a restoration to wholeness of her sense of self in the midst of her holy community.

But, “what a surprise,” she says, “to reach the end of the year with the quiet and liberating certainty that I never had to ask for it. It had already been given."

She never had to ask.
We never had to ask.

It is already given.

Perhaps this is what that tenth leper recognizes: That what he was looking for has already been given. Not just healing, but salvation.

We ask often for healing – we’re trained to pray for healing – for the cleansing of illness, restoration to community, the end of pain.

What we look for, we will find.

But what our hearts seek more deeply, the longing below and above the things we know how to ask or seek, what we truly need when we ask for other things,

is the power of real encounter with the living God.

And before we ask – whether or not we ask! – that real presence of God is already given.

And the difference between healing and salvation in this story lies in the tenth leper’s recognition of that gift.

Undoubtedly, each of the other nine lepers celebrated their cleansing, and were thankful. They have a healing story to tell, but they aren’t telling a story about an encounter with the living God.

The nine got what they asked for, looked for, while tenth leper saw through the healing to the truth that the prayer he had never asked was answered,

that God had come face-to-face with him, living and active,

more real than his miracle or his prayer.

The power of that real encounter with God, living and active – hyper-present, excessively among us – is what we all come looking for – in the Bible, in the church, in the world – whether we know it or not.

Two thousand years after that encounter with this leper, God is still so committed to us and our wholeness that God continues to come face to face with us, even if we never know how to ask for that encounter our souls are starving for.

The remarkable thing that tenth leper does is to recognize that already given, unasked gift. And when he does, it spins him around in the midst of his healing, to return with the praise and thanksgiving of his salvation pouring off his tongue:

making that real encounter visible to the world,

opening that recognition to others who long for the living God without ever knowing how to ask.

And that recognition is the greatest possible act of our faith.

It saves us.

This story teaches us to say thank you.

It teaches that when we pray, God responds - often with the healing we ask for, equally often in a way we don’t quite understand.

And then it teaches that what saves us is not the answer to our prayers, but our own recognition that the gifts we can’t begin to ask for are already given, and our response of praise and thanks that pours that grace out to all the world.