Lessons In Contrition From a Wee Little Man

'Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through it. A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, "Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today." So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. All who saw it began to grumble and said, "He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner." Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, "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." Then Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost."'

--Luke 19: 1-10

How many of you remember the nursery rhyme about Zacchaeus, the wee little man?  It went something like this:

I actually sang that in the pulpit on Sunday when I preached on this story. I had, in fact, never heard this song before I was serving as a youth minister and school chaplain just before seminary. It makes for a catchy song for kids to remember, but as Paul says in I Corinthians 13, now that we are adults we must reason and think like adults, and when we do that we find a whole lot going on here, which is a story about a miracle, really - making amends, repentance, conversion, and the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to change people’s lives if they are open to being changed. 

An Orthodox icon depicting the encounter between Jesus and Zacchaeus.

Jesus says that he has come to seek out and save the lost, and to be certain Zacchaeus appears to rank among these. He is a chief tax collector, which means that he profited off of the corrupt system by which tax collectors would often charge ridiculous interest rates and cheat people, namely the poor. The chief tax collectors were then charged with making sure the Roman officials got their cut, so that the collaborative system of oppression could continue. Zacchaeus is among the most hated out of a group that is already pretty well hated. 

This story, at first, looks like it will repeat what happened when Jesus encountered a rich young ruler just one chapter earlier. Remember that story, how the rich man was devastated when Jesus told him the only thing he lacked in order to inherit the Kingdom of Heaven was to sell all he had and give it to the poor?. Now we find another rich man, and this one a tax collector, which means Zacchaeus didn’t exactly earn his wealth by honest means.  Surely, Jesus will call him out for his greed, right?

The rich young ruler, as depicted in the graphic novel Marked by Steve Ross

Here's why I love this story – and by extension the whole Gospel of Jesus – he never does what we expect him to do. Instead of calling out Zacchaeus’ sin, Jesus spots him in the tree and invites himself over for dinner. That seems a bit presumptuous, right? I mean, even for Jesus, to just say, “Hey! I’m coming over to your place for dinner, set another plate out!” seems a tad rude. Didn't his Blessed Mother raise him better? But let’s contextualize it for a second and remember what the table means. To invite someone to your table back then, and sometimes even now, was a power play; you invited others to dinner so that you may gain favor with them, which is why only those of equal or higher social standing were invited. Jesus turns this system around by inviting himself over. Once again, unexpected. That is pretty cool, and a helpful reminder for us even now to pay attention to whom we invite to our tables – and by extension, whom we do not invite. After all, Jesus made quite a habit of eating with the “wrong” kinds of people. Maybe we should follow his lead.

And this is where we see the conversion of Zacchaeus. Wherever he was spiritually before he saw Jesus, he’s not there anymore. He was certainly one of those who were lost, but now – through no will or actions of his own, but only by the grace of Jesus – he has been found. Which is why he doesn’t respond like the rich, young ruler. When the people start to grumble, he doesn’t try to defend himself. Instead, he wants to make restitution and reparation for what he has done. He will not only give half of his possessions to the poor, but from the rest he will pay back four times what he owes to any person whom he has defrauded. If we look at the Greek here, we have a curiosity: in the original Greek it’s not future tense – I will pay – it’s present tense – I am paying; and, in fact, the King James Version also uses the present tense. It’s not just some promise for the future that he may or may not fulfill, it’s happening right that second, and as is the case with the present tense of ancient Greek, it is implied that the paying is not just happening in that moment but will continue to happen, on and on into infinity. It is both a present reality and a future promise. Kind of like the Kingdom of Heaven itself.

This transformation is, quite simply, a miracle, and something of a fulfilled prophecy. Going back to the story of the rich, young ruler, Jesus points out that it would take a miracle for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. One chapter later, behold the miracle. Zacchaeus, the rich tax collector hears Jesus’ invitation and willfully and freely chooses to seek forgiveness for the wrongs he has done, and in so doing is changed forever and gives each of us hope that regardless of how others may see us, whatever stuckness we find ourselves in as a result of our sin, we can get out of it by accepting the free gift of the grace of God and doing the hard work of making amends with those we’ve harmed. That is a miracle, and it still happens whenever God’s kindness inspires us to acts of justice. 

We see in Zacchaeus another miracle, that of downward mobility. The world wasn’t that much different back in Jesus’ day as it is now. Folks were just as eager to move up in their social standing in 1st century Palestine as they are in 21st century America. Zacchaeus is a “climber” in more ways than one. He doesn’t just climb up that tree, but his role as a tax collector allowed him to move up and above his neighbors, resulting in them holding Zacchaeus and his ilk in contempt, judging them as sinners. But Jesus dismantles both of these claims to superiority when he calls Zacchaeus to “come down.” Zacchaeus can’t be in relationship to Jesus or his neighbors if he takes this lofty perch above everyone – both literally and metaphorically. He has to move down, move toward Jesus, move toward his neighbors. He had to abandon the vertical strategy for success that involved climbing over others, and instead adopt a horizontal vision of righteousness and justice characterized by redistributing his wealth. Downward mobility. Yet another miracle.

Finally, we have to imagine that Zacchaeus used this encounter with Jesus and this moment of inner transformation to help right the unjust system in which he had long participated.  As New Testament scholar Fred Craddock put it “while nothing of Zacchaeus private life is revealed in this story, this much we know on principle: no one can privately be righteous while participating in and profiting from a program that robs and crushers other people.” No one leaves an encounter with Jesus and remains the same as they were before. The same must be have been true of Zacchaeus, of all of us. If we are not inspired by our own spiritual transformations to address the ills of our time, then what was the point of being transformed to begin with?

This is a story about how the grace of God can transform any of us, if we are open to receiving it. Zacchaeus does to fight back, he doesn’t defend his sinful actions when confronted by the crowd, but he is accountable for the wrongs he has done, makes amends, and is changed by the simple invitation from Jesus, “Come down.”. He at last has eyes to see where he has been and what he has done, and by “coming down,” moving toward Jesus and toward his neighbors, his whole being is transformed. When we are as open to receiving the grace of God as Zacchaeus is, our eyes are open and we see the foolishness in upward mobility and are inspired to make amends for our wrongs and undo the systems of oppression in which we ourselves have participated. There’s way more to this story than just a fun little nursery rhyme. Would that we could all be as eager to see Jesus and be transformed by him as this wee little man.

Lessons in Prayer from the Pharisee and Tax Collector

'Jesus told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, `God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.' But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, `God, be merciful to me, a sinner!' I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted."'

--Luke 18: 9-14

What was the first prayer that you learned?  For me it was a bedtime prayer that hung on my wall: “Now I lay me down to sleep/I pray the Lord my soul to keep/If I should die before I wake/ I pray the Lord my soul to take. Amen.” There is a lot I could say about how theologically sound or appropriate that prayer actually is for a child, but I’m grateful my parents taught it to me because it helped me over the years develop a practice of prayer before bed. Even if it is just a “Thank you, Lord, for this day,” I try to manage some sort of acknowledgment of God, and very often that super short prayer has been the only one I can muster the entire day.

It is said that all prayer, when you get down to it, falls into one of four categories, four types of prayer: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication – or as Anne Lamont put it: Wow, Sorry, Thanks, and Help. Adoration are the prayers of praise to God and acknowledgment of who God is, and who we are not. Confession is when we acknowledge our faults and ask both God’s forgivingness and that of others. Thanksgiving is simply saying thanks to God for all God has done. Supplications are offered for particular people and situations, maybe for a loved one who is sick or a crisis going on in the world for which we cry out to God to intercede. I would say, “Now I lay me down to sleep” falls into the category of supplication. 

I’ve noticed that sometimes folks get the notion that praying is reserved for a certain type of Christian with a special aptitude for it, like the ordained. I get that a lot if I’m having dinner with someone who glances at me when it’s time for grace and says something like, “You’ve got the direct line to God.” Blessedly, while I was away on my medical leave our the Vestry of my parish adopted the practice of having one of their own say the opening prayer before the monthly meetings. I really like this, and I’m glad that it’s something we have continued to do since my return. It’s a good reminder that prayer is something we all can do, something we all must do, not just the clergy. 

Prayer, as it turns out, is a prominent theme throughout the Gospel of Luke, which we’ve been reading all year. From the adoration prayers announcing Jesus’ birth in chapter 1, to the supplication of Jesus on behalf of his murderers in chapter 23, the life and ministry of Jesus in this Gospel are distinguished by prayer. The parable that Jesus offers to his followers in today’s reading is a lesson on prayer.

An icon depicting the parable of the pharisee and tax collector/publican

Two men go up to the Temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. We are already conditioned to understand the contrast between these two people – the self-righteous, elitist Pharisee and the greedy, despised tax collector. The Pharisee, the text says, stands and prays by himself, suggesting a kind of aloofness. A better translation of the Greek phos heauton is that he prayed “within himself,” something of a narcissistic silique. While the tax collector makes his plea very loudly down on his knees.

Now to be sure, the Pharisee does pray one of those four types of prayer. It’s a thanksgiving to God and was actually a fairly common one among Pharisees at the time. He thanks God that he is not a sinner, like other people, especially this tax collector. Meanwhile, the tax collector puts himself in a posture of contrition and remorse, his is a prayer of confession and supplication. Which of these two characters gets the approval of Jesus? Of course it is the tax collector, who, though part of a notoriously greedy and sinful lot, humbles himself before God and his fellow worshippers in the Temple.

"Those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble those themselves will be exalted." We are all too familiar with these words of Jesus, yet I wonder how often each of us hears this story and asks which one am I? Jesus’ audience was literally filled with Pharisees and tax collectors , but because I am going to guess that none of you dear readers is either a Pharisee or tax collector, I think our challenge with this text is to find ourselves in it. 

We might be quick to vilify the Pharisee; after all, they are so often painted as the bad guys in the story. Yet, as the German theologian Karl Barth once said, both men are equally shamed before God: the Pharisee for his self-righteousness and the tax collector for his greed. The difference, Barth points out, is that the Pharisee doesn’t recognize his sin and the tax collector does, which is why Jesus commends him, despite his sin. The Pharisee is quick to point out the speck in his neighbor’s eye but not the log in his own, to borrow from another parable of Jesus from Matthew, chapter 7. And so, are we able to recognize our own sin, or are we too busy pointing out the sins of our neighbors? It takes a lot of vulnerability to the former.

This, I believe, is the great lesson of this parable for both Jesus’ audience then and for our own time. Last week I was making a pastoral visit in the home of a parishioner, and I noticed that the tv remained on throughout our visit, and I couldn't help but notice that every single commercial was a political ad. I paid no attention to the party or even the name of the candidates, just the tone of the ads, and even though the volume was off, I could tell simply in the formatting, the colors and saturation on the screen, the text that flashed, and the images of the candidate and the opponent that these were all attack ads, sending the message, “The candidate who approved this message is not like this other person.” It was the parable of the Pharisee and tax collector playing out in real life, and it made me very glad that I don’t have cable television in my home. 

The higher we lift ourselves up, the farther we will fall. To be humble, as Jesus teaches in this parable, is to have the vulnerability to recognize our own sin. The Pharisee was too busy focusing his prayers on thanking God for all the good stuff going on for him that he couldn’t see what he was doing. We develop eyes to truly see and hearts that are humble when we cultivate a full prayer life that incorporates not just thanksgivings but adoration of God, prayers of supplication for others, and confession for our mistakes, what we have done and left undone. Such a full prayer life is something we practice each Sunday in our liturgy together, but as a colleague of mine always likes to say, “Sunday is the dress rehearsal for the rest of our lives.” Every day brings with it the invitation to practice such a life, even if the prayers we make are super short.

If I ask myself who I am in this parable, the truth is I have probably been more like the Pharisee than I’d care to admit, too focused on saying thanks for all the good in my life to notice my own self-righteousness. But knowing that, what can I do about it? How can my prayer life be changed, so that I can be changed? I do not believe prayer changes things, but I believe it changes us, it changes the one praying. With a full prayer life that balances Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication we can meet and live up to the great challenge of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which is that all people are beloved – the Pharisee, the tax collector, you, me, them, everyone  - and that it is within our power to create Beloved Community (what Jesus called the Kingdom of Heaven) wherever we are. We don’t need to humble ourselves to the point of beating ourselves up, nor should we be so thankful as to exalt ourselves to the point of acting as if God should be thanking us for coming to church on a Sunday. It’s a balancing act. How might we humble and exalt ourselves and others in appropriate – that is, balanced – ways? 

In this world of ours right now it seems like everyone just wants to exalt themselves and throw shade at their neighbors the way the Pharisee in the parable does. It’s impossible to ignore because that message plays out everywhere we look. May we who follow the Way of Jesus take the higher road, which, ironically, involves getting on our knees and, like a humble, vulnerable child, simply praying: Wow, Sorry, Thanks, and Help

Wrestling With God

'The same night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob's hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, "Let me go, for the day is breaking." But Jacob said, "I will not let you go, unless you bless me." So he said to him, "What is your name?" And he said, "Jacob." Then the man said, "You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed." Then Jacob asked him, "Please tell me your name." But he said, "Why is it that you ask my name?" And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, "For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved." The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.'

--Genesis 32: 22-31

'Jesus told his disciples a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. He said, "In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, `Grant me justice against my opponent.' For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, `Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.'" And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"'

--Luke 18: 1-8

I have a confession to make.  I am closet fan of professional wrestling. I got hooked when I was in high school, thanks to Kenny Mullins, the senior in my 8th grade algebra class who said to me one week, “Just watch it!” I did and it was all over.  After about 10 years I gave it up like a lot of fans do – it was just too weird at that point – but even though I don’t watch much, I pay attention to what’s going on, listen to a weekly wrestling podcast, and am still fascinated by it. It may be predetermined or performative, but at its core it represents something fundamental about the human condition: the struggle between the babyface good guy and the heel bad guy, and in the end there is always closure to their conflict.

Jacob wrestling with God (artist unknown).

So however crude or rudimentary it may be, pro wrestling is what I first thought about when I read our passages from Genesis and Luke this week. In Genesis we find Jacob running for his life, and to be honest, he’s kind of the heel in this story. He has cheated his brother Essau of his birthright, stolen a blessing from their father Isaac that was reserved for Essau, and altogether cheated and lied to get what he wants. Essau is out to get Jacob, who we find in our reading on a mountain where he wrestles all night with a stranger. It is widely accepted that this stranger is some kind of earthly form for God. All night long they struggle, grappling with one another. It’s a slober-knocker, as the legendary wrestling announcer Jim Ross would say. God knocks out Jacob’s hip, but Jacob is relentless and won’t quit until he receives a blessing. When morning comes the blessing is granted, God gives to Jacob a new name, ‘Israel’ – literally, one who wrestles with God. Jacob even names the place where the contest took place ‘Peniel’ – the face of God. Wrestlemania’s got nothing on this bout. 

We generally associate the name Israel today with a specific place, the state of Israel that was founded in 1948, but throughout the Scriptures the name is not a reference to a geographic location. The earliest Scriptures of our Old Testament, the Hebrew Tanakh, were put down during the days of the Babylonian Exile, meaning that there was no kingdom or country called Israel during the entire time the Jewish and Christian Scriptures were written. Instead, ‘Israel,’ as it appears in the Bible, is a reference to a group of people, to the descendants of the one who wrestled with God on that mountain. And we see that population of people continue that tradition of wrestling with God, don’t we? We see it generations after Jacob is gone when the Hebrew people are enslaved in Egypt and then wander through the dessert to find their home. We see it in the aforementioned Babylonian Exile and the words of the Prophets and the Psalms written during that tumultuous time. We see it in the anguish experienced by Jesus’ own people in the Gospels as they live under Roman occupation. And certainly, in the years since, through the Inquisitions, pogroms, and Holocausts that have tried to destroy them, this persistent population knows what it means to wrestle with God because it literally is their name. 

That same persistence is what Jesus is articulating in the parable from the Gospel of Luke.  Let’s be honest, this is not an easy parable to understand, is it? If the judge in the story – often called the Unjust Judge – is a stand-in for God, it sure looks like he’s a bit of a jerk. He refuses to grant the widow’s request time and time again; she finally wears him out until he gives in to her demands, weary that she will exhaust him, or as the literal translation reads, ‘Give him a black eye!’ I don’t believe, nor do most biblical scholars, that we should equate the actions of God with those of the judge. Our relationship to God is not one where we pester God to the point that God gives us what we want – that is a pretty immature kind of faith. Yet one thing we can gleam from this parable is that, sometimes, it definitely feels like we are pestering God, that we are wrestling with God. The moral of the parable, then, is that our faith should be persistent and relentless, not so that we get what we want, but so that we always remember that God does, in fact, hear us and will bring closure, even if it is not always the kind that we were seeking. 

The persistent widow and the unjust judge (artist unknown).

The story of Jacob and the parable of the persistent widow both speak to something to which we all can relate, and that is the struggle we sometimes feel with God.  There isn’t a person among us who has not wrestled with God, sometimes all night like Jacob.  There isn’t a person among us who has not felt like they have pestered God again and again again with their request. I’ve been there. We’ve all been there the last two years, sure, but even in the Before Time we all experienced those moments. When a person died suddenly. When we lost a job. When we went through a divorce. When life made little sense.

 I can remember many times sitting in the parish oratory or at a coffee shop and talking to someone who would open up and share their experiences, and they would be scared because they had been taught that you don’t wrestle with God or question God. You just accept everything that comes your way, without exception. Yet this is contrary to what the Bible actually shows us. It’s not just Jacob or the parable of the persistent woman. Maybe the best example, of course, is Job. We don’t read nearly enough from Job, but that story is one that often gets misinterpreted. We celebrate his patience or the fact that Job coined the phrase, ‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,’ but we sometimes forget that Job eventually cursed God and cursed the day he was born.  Job, for those who don’t know, is the oldest story in the Bible, whose roots can be traced back to an era long before Judaism existed, and its lesson is older than our Scriptures themselves, the lesson that part of what it means to be human is to wrestle with the Divine. 

Job by Leon Bonnat (1880)

That may sound like a downer, but I actually believe it is Good News. Here’s why. When we accept the message that we shouldn’t question God, we minimize our experiences of pain and those of others. But when we wrestle with God and dare to ask questions like “Why did this happen?”  - or even the question Jesus himself asks on the cross, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”- we open ourselves up to an actual two-way conversation with God.  That conversation might not be easy or short – it seldom is either– but in the end, out of that wrestling, out of that struggle comes clarity and understanding, comes the closure that we need, even if it isn’t what we were originally seeking. 

We may often come to the Scriptures looking for the message that makes us feel good, only to be hit with stories like these. They’re not easy to hear, but they speak to a deep truth, the truth that when we wrestle with God we are not doing anything wrong. We are, in fact, growing deeper in our relationship with God, deeper in our knowledge and love of God, deeper in our understanding for how God is living and moving in our very being. It is similar to a marriage. I’ve probably learned the most about my spouse, myself, and our relationship in the times we’ve wrestled with each other. They’ve actually made our relationship even stronger and more meaningful. I suspect the same is true for y’all’s relationships, with your partners and with God. 

So if you find yourself questioning God, wrestling with God, know that it’s ok. If you feel like you’re pestering God, that’s fine because God can take it. And in the end, you might come away changed, maybe with even with a limp, but one way or another, when the bell sounds, you’ll find the closer you need.