Salvation in Christ
4 November 2007
May I speak in the name of the Living God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen
Anyone who went to Sunday school as a child will be more than familiar with the gospel reading this morning. When I saw what story it was I was both delighted and distressed. Delighted because I love this story and distressed because it brought to mind the Sunday school song about Zacchaeus -- who was a very little man who climbed into a sycamore tree for the saviour he wanted to see --, a song with a deeply annoying tune that has stayed with me all week. The story, as taught to us at Sunday school, is a classic gospel story of how a sinner met Jesus, repented and was saved.
As is often the case with our Sunday school understandings of stories, the nuts and bolts are good but the rest is a bit shaky, and it is the wider, though slighlty shaky understanding of the story that I want to reflect on this morning.
If we were to read the whole of Luke’s gospel in a great sweep by the time we get to this story, there would be a number of familiar themes – at this point in the lectionary year they may even be monotonously familiar by now. One of the most important of these themes is Jesus' upside down gospel - it is those most excluded who find their inclusion greatest in the kingdom, those on the margins who are closest to the centre.
True to form the story opens with Zacchaeus, a chief tax collector, outsider par excellence. Tax collectors are never wildly popular, even now, but at the time of Jesus they were loathed with a passion. The Romans inherited a deeply corrupt system of taxation – called tax farming --, which allowed people to buy the franchise on the taxation for an area and then to recoup their losses in whatever way they saw fit. To give the Romans credit they reformed the system but never quite managed to cast off the whiff of corruption assoicated with the role, add to this the fact that tax collectors betrayed their fellow Jews by collaborating with the hated Roman oppressor and you begin to understand something of the hatred this title evoked.
Just to make sure we get the point, Luke tells us that Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector, presumably therefore even more hated than a normal one, though what a chief tax collector might do is by no means clear. The gospel writers regulalry remind us of the status of tax collectors with the epithet 'tax collectors and sinners' - they were so hated they didn't even warrant the title sinner. In these few brief words, then, the scene is set and our expectations framed.
If we had been reading the chapter before this passage, we would be also bringing other expectations to this story. The two stories immedialty before this one are of a certain ruler who desires eternal life and learns to his grief that he must sell everything he has, and the story of the Blind Man who though he couldn’t see Jesus was healed because of his faith. In both of these stories we find the theme of salvation. The ruler seeks it but loves his money more; the blind man yearns to see Jesus and his faith saves him.
So who, then, is Zacchaeus more like? The ruler or the blind man? The answer is of course the blind man. They both yearn to see Jesus but cannot - one because he cannot see, the other because he is too small. In both stories the crowd attempts to prevent them from seeing, the one by telling the blind man to shush, the other by squeezing him out. Both persist and in their persistance find their salvation. Just in case we are left in any doubt at all Zacchaeus does what the ruler cannot - he gives half of what he owns to the poor and uses the other half to bring restitution to those he had wronged.
What we see in this run of Lukan stories is Luke's major theme writ large one more time. It is not the ruler, who has so much, who is at the heart of the kingdom but the blind man and the tax collector. They are there not because of who they are or what thy do, but because their knowledge of their need of God is so great. It is desperation that causes the blind man to yell out loud, and desperation that causes the tax collector to ascend a tree in so undignified a manner -- it would be odd for a grown man to climb a tree now; then it was horrifying. The ruler simply has too much to lose, the blind man and the tax collector have so much to gain.
In fact, it is passages like these that remind us of the utter simplicity of the values of the kingdom – the kingdom of God is available to all who need it, and the more we need it, the easier it is to enter. The more stuff we bring with us, the harder it is to get in.
The image that comes to my mind here is that of my three year old daughter, who when friends comes to play collects all her favourite toys up into her arms and staggers around lest she be made to let go of any of them. Of course from time to time, something else – like chocolate – is so tempting that she drops the lot to get it. Each one of us approaches the kingdom (whether for the first time or as part of a life of faith) with our arms full of stuff – will we like the ruler care for our stuff so much that we go away sad or like Zacchaeus drop the lot to receive the prize that is worth so much more? This challenge never leaves us, whether we meet it for the first time or the ninety-first time.
This story ends with Jesus’ proclamation of salvation: ‘Today salvation has come to this house’. It is here, then, that we discover the shaky foundation to our Sunday school understanding of the story. This is not so much a story about repentance and forgiveness because neither theme appears in the story. This is not to say that they are not important for Luke, simply that they are not important here. What is here is salvation and this story, along with the two that precede it are a sort of Lukan reflection on salvation and where it is to be found. It is to be found in Zacchaeus’ yearning for a glimpse of Jesus, in Jesus’ turning aside in a gesture of welcome that was so much greater than Zacchaeus could ever have imagined possible, and, perhaps most importantly in Zacchaeus’ response. It is this dynamic of salvation – our faint yearnings, God’s overwhelming generosity and our need to respond to this with everything that we have and everything that we are, that lies at the heart of the Eucharist. As we receive the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, we enter once more into the dynamic of salvation – salvation in Christ -- in which our dim longings are met with the awesome generosity of God sending us out into the world once more with the challenge of the nature our response – will it be like that of the ruler or of Zacchaeus?
Dr Paula Gooder Canon Theologian of Birmingham Cathedral