Looking for Security
Jesus Encounters Zacchaeus as He Enters Jericho, from the Gospel Book of Otto III, German (Reichenau), c.1000, Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MS Clm 4453, fol. 234v, click on image to link to source.
Many of us remember an old Sunday school song that goes something like this:
Zacchaeus was a wee little man,
a wee little man was he.
He climbed up in a sycamore tree,
for the Lord he wanted to see.
And when the master passed that way,
he looked up in the tree.
He said, “Zacchaeus, you come down,
for I’m going to your house today.”
If you’d asked my six-year-old self to draw a picture of Zacchaeus, then I’d probably have made him a head shorter than Jesus, with a scraggly beard (even more scraggly than mine!) He would be courser and meaner, quite different in appearance and attitude than my Sunday school teachers and pastor. My older self, however, has more sympathy for Zacchaeus, as I’ve tried to imagine life from his perspective. The Bible says he was a tax collector, but surely he was defined by more than his job. Most Jewish men were also husbands and fathers.
Years ago, I was leading a men’s Bible study, and the icebreaker question was: “If you could be guaranteed one thing in life, what would it be?” Most of the men in the group had children at home, and the conversation turned to our concerns for the safety, health, and happiness of our sons and daughters. We realized how much of our time and energy was devoted to this end, directly or indirectly. Some men in the group felt tied to particular jobs or geographical places in order to provide stability and security for their families. Most felt they had given up things they enjoyed in order to maintain a home, and guide and support family through school and variety of extracurricular activities.
I imagine Zacchaeus wanted to be a good father. He didn’t necessarily enjoy his job, but there were mouths to be fed, and a household to be maintained. At the time, there was a limited number of occupations that a man of his talents could fill. Unfortunately, these positions were secured by making friends with some unsavory people in power within the oppressive Roman government.
In some idyllic rural past, perhaps Zacchaeus seemed like an unsympathetic character in a foreign environment. But, here and now, when our livelihood depends upon a complicated network of allegiances that stretch far into unknown and sometimes dark places, Zacchaeus is a character that we can better understand. We’re delighted to see balances grow in our retirement and stock portfolios, currently due in large measure to investment in artificial intelligence, the same artificial intelligence that threatens the jobs of many ordinary people. We’re happy to spend less for items sold on the internet from companies whose profits enrich billionaire oligarchs, and drive local stores out of business. We may be concerned about negative impact and outcomes, but few of us will tell our financial advisors to divest from artificial intelligence stocks, and most of us will still buy some things from Amazon. It’s difficult for most Christians to insulate themselves completely from the less savory aspects of our larger culture, and so Zacchaeus’s dilemma is our dilemma.
If we tune in carefully to the words of Luke’s gospel, then we hear several solo speeches that speak to our dilemma. For example:
· The prodigal son, coming to his senses, says, “How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.’”[1]
· The dishonest manager, being fired from his job, says, “What shall I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me …. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.”[2]
“What am I going to do?” ask the Dishonest Manager and the Prodigal Son, when faced with apparent security giving way to insecurity.
You can almost hear this inner struggle going on in the mind of Zacchaeus, as hears about Jesus, observes Jesus, and eats a meal with Jesus. Instead of a parable with an unhealthy model to avoid, this time we observers of the biblical drama get a real flesh-and-blood person who we can emulate. Instead of hearing the question, “What shall I do?” this time we hear the answer: “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.”
It’s as if the warning bell of a navigational beacon has sounded in Zacchaeus’s life, and in the foggy landscape, he is able to hear the truth about his situation and direction, and change course before it leads to a bad end.
The bad end he is heading toward is described in a tale by the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy about a peasant named Pahom, who says “If I had plenty of land, I shouldn’t fear the Devil himself.” The Devil overhears, and, through an elaborate set of circumstances, arranges for Pahom to find a deal. He can, for a flat fee of one-thousand rubles, purchase as much land as he can circle by foot in a day. If he isn’t back to home base by sunset, he must forfeit everything, including the one-thousand rubles. Pahom sets off in great excitement, marking his stops with a spade. But he keeps seeing another meadow or another stand of trees. Suddenly, he realizes that the sun is setting, and he is a long way from home. Off Pahom sprints, getting home just as the sun slips below the horizon. He is congratulated. But, just at the moment of victory, he dies of an apparent heart attack. Tolstoy answers the central question of the tale in the pithy conclusion: “His servant picked up the spade and dug a grave long enough for Pahom to lie in, and buried him in it. Six feet from his head to his heels was all he needed.” How much land does a man need? Enough to bury a six-foot box.[3]
One day, long ago, Zacchaeus was suddenly confronted with this stark truth. Today, listening to his story, we hear the same stunning word: disconnected from anything larger or nobler, in the end we’re nothing but a body in a six-foot hole. All the real estate and financial treasures in which we are tempted to place our hopes for happiness are, in the words of my old preaching professor, “like confederate dollars in 1863, the currency of a doomed sovereignty.”[4]
It’s that realization that moves us in the direction of loosening our grip of money and possessions, and grabbing hold the hand of God. And when you believe God is holding your hand and leading you along, it’s possible to trust God just enough so that money is no longer a tyrant, but rather a tool for you, your family, your community, for addressing in just and compassionate ways the needs of this beautiful but broken world. When we do that, Jesus says, “Today salvation has come to this house.”
NOTES
[1] Luke 15:17-19
[2] Luke 16:3-4.
[3] Tolstoy’s tale was first called to my attention in a lecture series entitled “Reading for Preaching: The Preacher in Conversation with Storytellers, Biographers, Poets, and Journalists,” by Dr. Cornelius “Neal” Plantinga Jr., president and Charles W. Colson Professor of Theology Emeritus, Calvin Theological Seminary, delivered at MacKay Center, Princeton Theological Seminary, 26 March 2012.
[4] Personal notes, lecture by Thomas G. Long, Reclaiming the Text Preaching Conference, Montreat Conference Center, 2 June 2006.
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