Foothills Congregational Church The Rev. Matthew Broadbent

United Church of Christ Communion Sunday

461 Orange Ave., Los Altos 94022 November 4, 2007

Welcoming Jesus

Luke 19:1-10

Some of you know that I like to cook and on occasion I surf the channels for an interesting cooking show. The other day I came across this great recipe for a chocolate-date pudding cake that begins with boiling into a mash sweet, pitted dates. Into the mash is powdered cocoa, vanilla, a little extra sugar and ½ cup of flour to hold it together. Then you add the whipped egg whites. There is a special technique to this procedure. You take the warm date-chocolate mash and slowly incorporate eggs into it. This “tempers” the eggs. Then you can add all of the egg whites and fold them into the mash. Fold, not stir, (this is important) because you don’t want to break down the fluffy texture of the egg whites. You pour the mixture into a baking dish and what you get is a light, chocolate, soufflé like cake.

I don’t know if Zacchaeus baked this confection for Jesus, but Luke practices the techniques of folding one story into another in chapter 18, culminating in the story of Zacchaeus at the beginning of chapter 19. We have heard three of these stories in the past three weeks. We read of the persistent widow and applied it to prayer; The Pharisee and the Tax-collector prayed in the temple. We did not read of the rich young ruler who asked: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” And we didn’t read of the blind beggar whose insight recognizes Jesus as the Son of David.

The story we read today is of one last outcast on the way to Jerusalem: Zacchaeus, whose name means “clean” or “innocent,” (righteous) is surprisingly unclean and a sinner (unrighteous). But this is part of the ironic storytelling of Luke who reverses all our assumptions. The unrighteous tax-collector becomes the model for righteous action, and all previous stories fold into his narrative. Zacchaeus, like the widow, is so persistent in his desire to see Jesus that he climbs into a sycamore tree – because he is short.

Who was short? Greek has no punctuation marks and depending on how you punctuate the sentence it could mean that Jesus was “of little stature.” But that can’t be because we like our heroes tall.

Zacchaeus is also a tax-collector, hated and despised as a collaborator with Rome. He might very well have felt threatened by the large crowd, so he climbs into the safety of the sycamore tree so that he can see – like the blind man “sees” - this son of David walking through Jericho. Zacchaeus, the tax-collector, is also rich, and we remember the rich young ruler who, sadly, could not let go of his wealth. But Zacchaeus will give away half his wealth to the poor, and reimburse four-fold to anyone who feels they have been defrauded.

Zacchaeus may be hated by the crowd but he is loved and valued by Jesus. Not only was Zacchaeus looking for Jesus but it appears Jesus was looking for him, as the last line of our text says: For the Son of Man came to seek out and save the lost.

Richard Swanson (Provoking the Gospel of Luke) writes: “The resolution of this scene turns on ritual practice.” Rituals are important social forms that express “realities too important to be left for words alone.” First there is the subtle ritual actions that define who is in and who is out of a social setting. An invited guest is warmly embraced, while a party crasher is greeted with cold attention. We all know what it feels like when we have not dressed appropriate to the occasion. You don’t go to a wedding in shorts and flip-flops, unless it is on the beach. We have to pay attention to these details.

Zacchaeus is a tax-collector. That makes him a traitor to his people. That puts him on the other side of the ritual line that defines faithful Israel. It is important to know where people stand.

Then there is the ritual of hospitality. Ultimately “this is a scene about eating together, about offering and receiving hospitality.” This was and still is a sacred duty in the Near East, and certainly important in our day. What would you do if Jesus looked up and said, “hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” Ahhh… good, just give me time to go home and clean up the place.

Audrey West (Christian Century, Oct. 16, 2007, p.23) tells of living in a downtown Chicago neighborhood in a 120-year-old house. “They might imagine a stately old home with oak paneling and crown moldings, lovely patina and nooks and crannies in the attic that might hold a hidden trunk of old letters. The reality is that nothing in the place is level or square. The electrical wiring includes a significant amount of knob and tube elements, meaning we have to be careful with overloading the circuits. There is no oak paneling or crown molding. There are cracks in the ceiling; the front steps are crooked; the door needs painting. Spiders are more at home on the porch than we are, and they prove it almost every night by weaving intricate webs at face level. If Jesus were coming over for dinner, I would want time to clean the place, to make it look more tidy than it really is: if nothing else, to vacuum the dog hair, shoo the cats off the bookcase and sweep the spider webs away from the front door. I would want it to look like we keep a nice house, even if the reality is considerably different.

Zacchaeus has no time to get ready. This is it. This is the moment. Right now. Jesus wants into his life no matter how messy it is. Hospitality does not wait at your convenience

Then there is a third ritual of caring for the poor, an obligation for Jews and Muslims, and certainly a high value with Christians. The story tells us in the NRSV – 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. This is all put in the future tense, but the Greek is in the pesent tense: Lord, half of my possessions I give to the poor; and if I have done falsely with anyone, I restore four-fold.

It would appear Zacchaeus has been practicing such just actions for a while. Biblical scholar John Pilch believes Zacchaeus is describing “His repeated and customary practice,” not something he is going to start doing now: Zacchaeus “converted earlier and was misjudged by the grumbling [religious elite]. Even in antiquity the only exercise some people got was jumping to conclusions.” (The Cultural World of Jesus)

The surprise in this story is that the outcast is the observant one. This is a scene of revelation, not redemption, and as such there is an element of joy in its telling, which is a theme running through the whole Gospel of Luke. Joy. Irony. Reversals. Luke is not above tweaking the cultural powers that be to get to the essence of the message: the outsider is welcomed into the house of God.

We should give thanks for this story of Zacchaeus which is found only in the Gospel of Luke. Luke is the Gospel to the Gentiles, which is you, and me. And it is to people such as us that Jesus has asked to come to dinner, to share a meal and consider what it would take to live a generous and joyous life.