Pen 24 C / Reformation – The Unexpected God

Luke 19:1-10

Dear Partner in Preaching,

Many of you may be preaching this Sunday as Reformation Sunday. Others will preach it as the 24th Sunday after Pentecost. Whichever “day” you may be observing, I’d like to suggest there is a common theme worth holding up, and that is that the God we encounter in Jesus is not the God we expect – and that’s a good thing!

I’ll start with the Zacchaeus story appointed for Pentecost 24. I have long felt that we misinterpret this story as a repentance story. That is, we read the events as follows: Jesus seeks out Zacchaeus, a notorious chief tax collector; Zacchaeus, overwhelmed by the presence of Jesus, repents of his sin and promises he will make amends; acknowledging Zacchaeus’ repentance, Jesus declares that salvation has come to this house.

But there’s one small problem with this interpretation. Neither Jesus nor Zacchaeus says anything about sin or repentance. Only the crowd does. When Jesus decides to go to Zacchaeus’ house, they grumble, upset by Jesus’ choice of companion (not a new theme in Luke!), and call Zacchaeus a sinner. Which prompts Zacchaeus protest. Indeed, it’s important to note that Zacchaeus doesn’t actually make a promise to give half his possessions to the poor or repay anyone he has defrauded in the future. He says he is already doing that, a claim he probably makes in light of the crowd accusing him of being a sinner. The verb tense in Greek is present, you see, not future. So it’s not “I will give” and “I will pay back” but rather “I give half my money to the poor” and “I repay.” As in now, already, this is my current practice.

The key to this story is not sin and forgiveness but sight. Zacchaeus wants to see Jesus. Because he is short, he can’t see him, so he climbs a tree to be able to. When Jesus come his way, Jesus looks up and sees him and invites himself to Zacchaeus’ house. Why? Because he has seen Zacchaeus. Really seen him, when so many in the crowd despise and would ignore him.

Of all the evangelists, Luke is the one most sensitive to issues of money. Unfortunately, he doesn’t offer us neat theological categories. In the first century it was fairly common to assume that wealth was inherently good and a sign of God’s blessing, but Jesus undermines that notion when he said that it’s very difficult for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God (Lk 18:25). In our time, it’s easy – especially for church leaders to act (if not say) as if wealth is bad (except, of course, when given to the Church!). Yet in this story Jesus declares that Zacchaeus, this wealthy chief tax collector despised by his neighbors, is also a child of Abraham, beloved of God, and a recipient of God’s salvation. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus doesn’t care so much about wealth as about what we do with our wealth, and Zacchaeus does good things.

Even more, however, Jesus cares about those who are on the edge. Throughout this Gospel, Jesus encounters those who society has declared unfit and wants to ignore and he sees them, recognizes them, seeks them out, spends time with them, and in all these ways honors and blesses them.

And this is not what those around Jesus expect him to do. Indeed, it is not what any self-respecting messiah should do. God, after all, has standards, and if God isn’t going to stick to those standards and punish sinners and reward the righteous, then what can we count on? I mean, how can God just forgive sin? Or, and to follow the traditional interpretation of this passage, shouldn’t God’s forgiveness at least be preceded by genuine repentance? If God is holy and just, after all, then sin should be punished, right? Or at least repented? Absent that, we might take advantage of God and make a mockery of God’s justice.

Yet the God we encounter in Jesus doesn’t care about our sense of justice or fairness or any of the other ways we seek to order our world. The only thing this God cares about is seeing – and seeking out – the lost and bringing them home again. God’s love routines trumps justice and God’s compassion overrides all of our sense of fairness.

Which can be rather upsetting – whether to the crowds of Zacchaeus’ day or to us. Until, that is, we are the ones who are down and out, made to feel invisible, whether because of our actions or those of others, whether because of illness or loss, whether because of our gender or race or age or sexuality or whatever. Whenever we feel on the outside, abandoned, invisible…that’s when we need a God who sees us, seeks after us, and promises to bring us home.

At the heart of the Luther’s Reformation was the recognition that he had been worshiping the wrong God. He was taught to see and fear a God of holiness and justice, a God who expected righteousness and punished those who could not meet that standard. Jesus, from this point of view, was little more than a whipping boy, the one who stood in and took the beating we deserved. Luther, agonizing over God’s righteousness, finally realized that righteousness isn’t the standard God sets for us, but rather is the gift God gave to us. Righteousness isn’t a requirement but a promise. The God Luther expected was all about justice; the God he met in Jesus was all about love. Jesus, it turns out, didn’t die to make God forgiving but died to show us how forgiving God already is. Little wonder that Luther would later describe meeting this unexpected God by saying it was like having the gates of heaven opened to him.

A pastor recently shared with me that when one member of her youth group asked her friends what they imagined Jesus thought about them, the overwhelming answer was disappointment. That is, they assumed Jesus and God were disappointed with them. Why? Because we still define God in terms of righteousness, sin, punishment and the like. So this week, Dear Partner, whether you are preaching on the gospel readings from Luke or John, observing Pentecost 23 or Reformation, let’s open the heavens for our people. Let’s surprise them – just as Luther and the crowd gathered around Zachaeus was surprised – by God’s unexpected salvation and grace. It’s a message that is still needed to be heard and so easy to share: God sees us, God accepts us, God loves us, and God brings us home. No exceptions!

Thanks be to this God for this good news…and for all who share it. Blessings on your proclamation.

Yours in Christ,
David

PS: Many versions of the Bible translate Zacchaeus’ statement as referring to future action, even though they are clearly present tense verbs in the Greek. To justify that decision, they argue that this is an instance of the “future-present tense” in Greek. Curiously, there is no other instance in biblical or classical Greek literature of a “future-present tense,” which means that translators actually made up a grammatical category to justify their poor translations. Why? Because we really, really want God to conform to our expectations. Once again, we don’t get the God we expect, but rather the one we need. Thanks be to God!

PPS: For those preaching Reformation Sunday, there is no reason you could not substitute this Gospel for the appointed, and somewhat ponderous, John 8. Indeed, that would be an example of evangelical freedom. 🙂