Luke 19:1-10
Then Jesus entered and walked through Jericho. There was a man there, his name Zacchaeus, the head tax man and quite rich. He wanted desperately to see Jesus, but the crowd was in his way—he was a short man and couldn’t see over the crowd. So he ran on ahead and climbed up in a sycamore tree so he could see Jesus when he came by.
When Jesus got to the tree, he looked up and said, “Zacchaeus, hurry down. Today is my day to be a guest in your home.” Zacchaeus scrambled out of the tree, hardly believing his good luck, delighted to take Jesus home with him. Everyone who saw the incident was indignant and grumped, “What business does he have getting cozy with this crook?”
Zacchaeus just stood there, a little stunned. He stammered apologetically, “Master, I give away half my income to the poor—and if I’m caught cheating, I pay four times the damages.”
Jesus said, “Today is salvation day in this home! Here he is: Zacchaeus, son of Abraham! For the Son of Man came to find and restore the lost.”
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Psalm 46:1-6, 10-11 I was talking with a person last Thursday, in a counseling setting, and this person was expressing their frustration about a situation they are currently involved in. They are frustrated with the other people involved in the situation, and with the way the situation was moving. They want it all to move faster. They want it to be all over with … to be behind them. They kept assuring me they trusted God’s timeline. “I trust God…but…”
The person used this phrase several times until finally I held up my hand and said something to the effect of: You know you really can’t say that. They stopped and looked a little puzzled. I continued, You really can’t say you ‘trust God … but …’ This applies in any discussion of “trust” but you especially cannot “trust God …but” because the “but’ immediately negates any claim of trust. Trust is an all-or-nothing proposition. You either do or you don’t. There is no half-in, half-out. You can say, with complete honesty, such things as “I want to trust God completely” or “I’m trying to trust.” And I think this is what many of us mean, when we say we trust God. And sometimes we think we really do trust God … until we get to that “…but.” In my life I have found myself in dark places where it seemed that trusting God was the only option open to me. And yet, I knew full well that I wasn’t very good at it – and I found myself forced to confront that unspoken “…but.” Forced to say things like, I going to trust you even though I don’t feel very trustful – I’m going to say the words and trust that you will help me to eventually feel it. And God honored that pathetic prayer and in time I was able to recognize that God had come through for me – not in the way I initially wanted, but still – God had come through for me and with me. The Psalm we just read sets a very high standard for us. It most clearly does not say that we can trust God because God is always going to jump in and fix everything for us – give us everything we think we need. God is most decidedly not Santa Claus. [For that matter, when did Santa Claus ever give you everything you thought you wanted?] None of us has reached the age we are today without at least once or twice being forced to acknowledge that things around us are most definitely not OK. This isn’t what we prayed for. We don’t get the job we really, really want. The medical test comes back with a not-good result. Someone we love dearly does die in spite of our best prayers. What the Psalm does tell us is to trust God even if the earth gives way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea. Even if everything literally falls to pieces, even if the worst possible thing happens. And that is hard. I suspect in actual everyday life that it is impossible. And so we aim at something close. We manage the best we can. We trust God to be there even when it doesn’t go the way we want it to go. When we honestly trust God with our lives, we pray…and then we accept what comes as the answer for those prayers – even if it is light-years away from the thing we asked for. We accept that God is with us here and will guide us through. And if we have really practiced trusting then we one day wake up to realize that where we are is exactly the best place for us to be. Not only a place that we can make work, but the very place that gives us our deepest joy. THIS, not the thing we asked for, is what gives us joy and life – and we might never have asked for it because we never even knew it was an option for us. God knows stuff like this. "Be still and know that I am God..." Knowing that God is God lies at the heart of trusting. Trusting God is going on with our lives knowing that it is going to be all right – somehow, it is going to be all right. Trusting God is waking up that one morning and recognizing that it is, indeed, all right – somehow it really is. And life is good. And God’s goodness surround us. And there is joy in the world – in spite of all the terrible things that happen. Somehow – we recognize God’s presence in us and around us – and we know that God is taking care of things. And God is taking care of us. Be still and know ..... Genesis 32:22-31 When I was younger, back in the days when I was still a loyal Catholic, my husband and I were close friends with the young Irish priest who served our local parish. This parish had a school attached to it and it was part of Fr. Dan’s day to make the rounds of the classrooms and chat with the kids.
One day when Dan arrived in a certain classroom he was greeted with this question: Is it true that when Mary died the room was filled with the scent of roses? Being fairly young and none too versed in parish politics Dan answered honestly: No – that’s just a nice story that shows the love and reverence we have for the Mother of Jesus. Well later that day, Dan got reamed up one side and down the other by Sr. Mary-Whoever who was that classroom’s teacher – and the person who had told the children the story in the first place. Dan learned that day that it is never a good idea to casually discount another person’s mythology. And that’s what this reading is today – a piece of the Hebrew peoples’ mythologizing of their relationship with God. This kind of mythologizing is a recounting of an event – most often with grandiose detail added to emphasize the importance of the event and the people involved. Everyday human transactions are easy to forget in time. But the ones that truly have an effect on us tend to grow in our retellings – not because we intend to lie but because they just seem that important to us – we use verbal frills to make sure everyone understands their importance. In time, these “frills’ become part of the story. Sometimes – over long lengths of time and many repetitions – they become the most important part of the story, all that we remember. The story for today – Jacob wrestling with an angel -- is a story that has puzzled readers for generations. It seems to tell an exciting story, but when you stop and think about it afterwards it really doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. Let’s set some background, first. Years ago, after Jacob had cheated his brother Esau out of his legitimate eldest-son’s blessing, he had run away to live with his uncle Laban. Over the years he had worked for Laban, married his two wives Rachel and Leah and had become a rich man himself. He was so successful that he was now crowding Uncle Laban and things were getting tense between them. At this point Jacob received a message from God telling him that it was time now to go home, take up his stolen blessing, and make peace with Esau. And so he did, he and his wives and his servants and his flocks. They packed up and left, stealing as much as they thought they could get away with in the process. It’s important to remember that Jacob truly is a thief and a scoundrel. That’s a key piece of this story. And here is where our reading picks up today. Jacob is understandably tense at the prospect of facing Esau again so he sends everybody else across the river into home territory but stays behind himself for one last night alone – maybe to wind up his courage. It is entirely typical of Jacob that he sends his wives and children off to an unknown reception in what he has every reason to assume is hostile territory, and remains behind himself. Read at just a surface level, this is a nonsensical story. Some stranger comes out of nowhere and attacks Jacob and they wrestle all night long – and then we have this “important detail” that the stranger throws Jacob’s hip out of joint – this point appears to be important to the Hebrews, signifying something we really don’t get – and then Jacob decides the stranger was God. We can – and do – explain the wrestling as metaphorical. We have all, I suspect, at some point in our lives, wrestled with God – not literally, not really – but still legitimate emotional wrestling. But if we allow that to be the point of the story then we risk missing what I believe is absolutely the most important part, which is that Jacob was given a new name. And with that new name, Jacob truly does appear to become a new person. Jacob was a thief and a con-man. Israel is not. Israel makes peace with his brother – acknowledging his wrong and offering to make it as right as he can. Israel settles into fatherhood and becomes a good citizen. It appears that Israel, once free of carrying the burden that had been Jacob – a burden that told him he had to cheat and connive to get through life – Israel could now become the one whom God always intended him to be. What names do we put on ourselves? What names do we put on others? Have you ever thought – when you are calling yourself loser, or stupid, or useless or ugly or whichever of the dozens of ugly things we have to choose among that we occasionally decide to call ourselves – do you ever remember that that is not the name by which God calls you? Do you ever -- when you’re yelling at someone on the TV or that driver who just almost hit you – or the friend who has betrayed and hurt you – do you really think that is the name by which God calls them? Jacob bore the burden of his name for years before God set him free to be Israel. God said, in effect, You don’t have to be that Jacob anymore. You never have been that ‘Jacob’ to me. Now you will know yourself as the one I’ve always known you to be – you are ‘Israel,’ my beloved child. What name do you carry in your own heart, your own mind? Is it the name God calls you when God speaks to tell you that you are loved? When we talk about others, are the names we use the names that God uses for them? What burdens do we place on other’s shoulders with the names we give them? What unnecessary burdens do we carry ourselves when we live the name the world gives us rather than the name that God has given us? When God calls us by name, that name is always Beloved Child. Luke 24:44-49 Well, here we are. We’ve had a few gaps in our summer and it has taken longer than I thought it would, but we have made it through our intensive study of the four Gospels – reading and studying them in the order in which New Testament scholar Marcus Borg suggests they were originally written down: Mark, Matthew, John and – finally – Luke. I have a couple of thoughts on Luke just to wrap up and then I want to hear from you what you think about this experiment we’ve conducted this summer. What, if anything, have you learned by dealing with these writings in the order in which they came into being and began to pass around the newly emerging Christian world? Does Borg’s thesis make sense to you? How has it helped your understanding of the Bible – or has it? But first a few odds and ends we haven’t covered. One thing I haven’t mentioned yet that Borg brings out is Luke’s emphasis on the Spirit – in this gospel it is made clear that Jesus’ ministry is facilitated by the workings of Spirit in this world. Jesus in conceived by the Spirit, and then the Spirit descends on him at his baptism, after which he returned from the Jordan, filled with the Spirit, to withstand the temptation in the wilderness. Throughout his ministry he makes the claim that he is guided by the Spirit – he is doing the Spirit’s will. The other gospels – especially John -- refer to the Spirit, of course, but just for fun I checked out my NRSV Concordance and found that the word “Spirit” occurs almost twice as often in Luke’s gospel as in any of the other three. Jesus’ first public words of ministry are “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor...” and as he was dying on the cross, his last words were into your hand I commend my spirit. The book of Acts, which as we know is simply a continuation – Chapter Two – of Luke’s Jesus story, begins with the grandest of all Spirit stories – the wide-scale over-taking of the Spirit on the believers at Pentecost. Another important point to recognize in Luke’s gospel is his inclusivity. We talked last time about Luke’s social justice emphasis and his inclusion of all the peoples that orthodox Judaism had excluded: those in certain “unclean” professions, such as those shepherds who were so prominent at Jesus’ birth; the poor and property-less, who rarely count in any culture; women, represented by the many strong and important women in this gospel; and finally, Gentiles – the ultimate outsiders. All the way back when the infant Jesus was presented in the Temple, the Elder Simeon rejoiced that he had lived long enough for his eyes to have seen God’s salvation, “which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for the glory of your people Israel.” One last comparison: Both Matthew and Luke recount the parable of the Great Feast. Matthew’s version is, as we have seen throughout that gospel, directed at “the Jews” and this version ends with an emphasis on anger and punishment against those who were initially invited but refused to attend the feast properly dressed and in celebratory mode. Luke’s version, on the other hand, does say that those who were invited are now out of luck, but here the emphasis is on going out and inviting everyone in. Matthew’s retelling of the story is a cautionary tale. Luke’s is a worldwide invitation. To quote Borg one final time (for this season) – speaking of Luke: “The author [Luke] proclaims in both volumes [Luke & Acts] that the inclusion of Gentiles as well as Jews in the Jesus movement was divinely and providentially ordained from the beginning of Jesus’s life. It was neither an accident nor a mistake.” If you would be interested I would like – probably next summer – to take this same approach and look into Paul’s letters – and we’ll find out quite a lot there about the troubles that trying to include those Gentiles could lead to. Now … let’s hear your thoughts … Some thoughts on our discussion: |
Rev. Cherie MarckxArchives
January 2025
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