24 Pentecost, Cp26,
November 3, 2013
Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4 Psalm 119:137-144
2 Thessalonians 1:1-5 (6-10) 11-12 Luke 19:1-10
Perhaps you
remember the Romantic Comedy movie from 1997 entitled, As Good
As It Gets? In this film a
reclusive, omni-phobic, misanthropic, obsessive compulsive writer, Melvin is
falling in love with a waitress, Carol who is the only person who put in an
effort to tolerate him. Melvin, played
by Jack Nicholson, is so pessimistic that he cannot say anything positive about
anyone or anything. With almost
Tourette-like compulsion he says offensive things. He is falling in love with Carol and he does
something wonderful to help her son who has health problems; but even Carol can
only take so much of his negativism. She
is at her wits end with him and she challenges Melvin to say something nice
about her.
And what is
the nice and winning thing that Melvin finally says about Carol? “You make me want to be a better man.” And the word better means several things for
Melvin. Carol made Melvin be better by
seeking some help for his panic condition; but she also made him better to
understand the give and take of winsomeness that one has to practice to be
successful in relationship and community.
You make me
want to be a better person. This might
sum up the dynamic of the encounter between Zacchaeus and Jesus of Nazareth. Zacchaeus was more than tolerated by Jesus;
he was invited by Jesus to a relationship and the end result was that Zaccheaus
was inspired and motivated to become a much better person. Jesus said about Zacchaeus: “Today salvation has come to his house.”
The quest
for salvation might be seen to be a selfish quest in that salvation means that we
become better people. But this is the
benefit of salvation; we become better people and the community becomes better
for it as well.
I was always
partial to Zacchaeus. He was stereotyped
forever as being the short guy who had to climb the tree to see Jesus. As a height challenged basketball player, I
think Zacchaeus should be the patron saint of short persons; why not we have a
saint for everything else? Some
traditions tells us that Zacchaeus was surnamed Matthias and became the twelfth
disciple who replaced Judas Iscariot.
On All Saints
Sunday, we trace the notion of saintliness to Jesus Christ. Jesus was one who made Zacchaeus and others
want to be better persons. Zacchaeus
became a better person first by amending his life. He had cheated people out of money in his profession
as a tax collector and after meeting Jesus he said, “Look, half of my
possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of
anything, I will pay back four times as much."
What could be
the literary function of this story about Zacchaeus in the literature of the
early Christian community?
It is a
classical salvation story. A very
dubious person who was caught between the Jewish community and the Roman
government was able to find a new status in his life.
When people
are desperate enough they become salvation voyeurs. They
start to become peeping toms for a better way of living. “I will sneak a peek at Jesus just to see
what he is all about.” There is another
incident in the Gospel of a voyeur for salvation. You remember the woman with the issue of
blood was in a crowd around Jesus and she thought, “If I just touch the hem of
the garment of Jesus perhaps I will be healed.”
And she was healed and Jesus said, “Who touched me?” And his disciples asked why would he say that
with so many people around him. And
Jesus said that he felt power go out of him.
Zacchaeus was
too short to see over people and so he climbed into a tree to see Jesus. His eyes made contact and with Jesus. And in the crowd, Jesus was aware of the
staring eyes from the seeking heart of Zacchaeus. Jesus looked at him and said, “Hurry down for
I must stay at your home today.”
A subtext of
this and other Gospel stories is that Jesus entered into fellowship with
dubious characters. Tax-collectors Jews
who worked for the Romans in collecting taxes; they were called publicans and
that made them automatic sinners in the eyes of the Jewish religious
establishment.
To whom did Jesus and salvations belong? Jesus and salvation belonged to the people in
need and who wanted him and the inclusive experience of salvation. This is why we call the Gospel good
news. People catch a vision of what
becoming better means. They look for the
people, the community and situation where they can become better. Salvation is the experience of being affirmed
and received into a community who support this quest of the heart to want life
to be better.
Today on All
Saints Sunday, we acknowledge that saintliness comes from Jesus of Nazareth and
it is still present with us in the risen Christ who is in our community.
We as the
community of the risen Christ need to be a community where saintliness means
that we want to become better people and that by being together we help to make
each other better people. As we look at
the role of the Christians in the community at large we need to ask this
question, “Do people see Christians and want to be better people?” There are many voyeurs for salvation in this
world. There are people looking on
without us knowing it who are looking for a place of salvation. There are people in quest to find people who
would help make them be better people.
This is our
challenge as a parish community: To help each other be better people because we
are together and as we do this we can become an inviting community for others
to join us as they discover our parish community to be a place of salvation, a
place where they can become better people.
Let the
salvation of Christ be known today in our parish community. And let us live in such a way that we invite
other people know that we are a community where they can become better people
in every way. Amen.
