"Saint or Sinner?"

Saint or Sinner?

The texts for this sermon are: Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4 and Luke 19:1-10

Today we get the chance to look at another one of those familiar passages that we think we know all about, only to discover that we really didn’t even learn the half of it when we were in Sunday School.

The story goes like this - we may even remember the song:

This all-too familiar “vertically challenged” person plays Tarzan for a moment just to get a glimpse of Jesus as he passes by, and instead of just getting to see Jesus walking past as he’d hoped, he instead finds himself suddenly thrust into the position of host to the very man he’d been trying to see.  Jesus looks up at the sycamore tree, sees Zacchaeus there, and quite literally invites himself to Zacchaeus’ home.

It’s a simple story - it seems pretty cut and dry, easy to understand.  Jesus did what he does time and time again in Luke, picking out the sinner in the crowd and choosing to spend time with those that other people would sooner just pretend don’t exist.  The crowds around that sycamore tree sure get it - they grumble and complain, “There he goes again - now he’s the guest of a sinner…” and then Zacchaeus offers that he will give away a large amount of his wealth and Jesus tells him that “Today, salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham.”  It’s another stunning example of a sinner recognizing his sinful nature, repenting and making amends, and then being forgiven and restored by Jesus.

That’s a story that sounds pretty familiar to us.  It’s a story that definitely works - it’s the way we’ve been taught the story and the way that the majority of people understand it.

But what if there’s another story that we haven’t thought of before?  What if Zacchaeus wasn’t the person we’ve all made him out to be for all these years?  What if Jesus’ invitation wasn’t made to inspire this sinner to stop sinning, but to give justification to someone who was already getting it?  When I read the commentaries suggesting this, I thought it was crazy, too - at first.  It’s just not the story we know!

But there’s an interesting thing that happens in the Greek text of Luke’s gospel - and I’m not usually one who starts talking about all the Greek in a passage, but this one really got me thinking.  In verse 8, as Zacchaeus responds to the crowd’s grumbling, our translations typically interpret his response as “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor.”  But the Greek word didōmi is actually found here in the present tense.  Zacchaeus says “Half of my possessions I give or even I am giving to the poor.”  It’s possible that Zacchaeus isn’t just this rich and evil person, chief among the tax collectors, but into a person who is actually doing the right thing and not being recognized for it until Jesus comes and invites himself to his house.

When I started to think about it this way, my own perceptions of this passage from Luke’s gospel were completely changed.  What if the message of this passage wasn’t directed at Zacchaeus himself, that grace and salvation only comes out of a transformed life and a repentant spirit?  What if it was instead a message to the people who had already categorized and classified this man just because he was both wealthy and a high-ranking tax-collector?  What if by reading Zacchaeus’ response in the present tense, we suddenly see Zacchaeus defending himself and showing what he already does, instead of completely changing in a split second in response to Jesus’ invitation and the grumbling crowd?

Suddenly, the story changes entirely, doesn’t it?  We stop seeing Zacchaeus as the short man who wanted a glimpse of celebrity and start seeing him as another of the marginalized sinners and outsiders who were actively seeking Christ.  Zacchaeus, already no stranger to humbling himself by giving away his wealth and possessions, further humbles himself by becoming a five-year old child once more and climbing a tree to get a better view.  And as one commentator wrote, “Zacchaeus by climbing that tree in the manner of a child and embracing his littleness, so to speak, becomes one of the least of these. It is precisely because he humbles himself in this way that he is in a position to welcome Jesus just two verses later.”  And so, when Jesus responds to Zacchaeus and the crowd by saying that “salvation has come to this house” and declaring that Zacchaeus is a son of Abraham, he’s not conferring salvation as conditional upon a tax-collector’s repentance, but as an acknowledgment of what Zacchaeus is already doing as a demonstration of the very Gospel that Jesus teaches!

It changes the tone of the story - it makes us step back and think about the assumptions we make about Zacchaeus right alongside the people of the crowd.  But it also makes sense in the context of Luke’s gospel - Luke consistently seems to portray wealth and power in a bad light.  Even these last few weeks of readings have shown that - both the story of the wicked judge and the widow and that of the rich man and Lazarus pit someone humble against the rich and powerful.  The story of the Pharisee and the tax collector shows a tax collector who repents of his sin, comparing the humility of the tax collector to the braying of the proud Pharisee - the parable that Jesus tells immediately following his encounter with Zacchaeus is about the ten talents and actively using the gifts that God gives us.  If Zacchaeus were the kind of man that the crowds presume him to be, he’d have been turned away by Jesus!  He’d have said “I give half my possessions to the poor” and Jesus would have said “Good - now turn around and give the other half, then come follow me.”  That’s the kind of expectation that the crowd has, the kind of expectation that we have now, too after 19 chapters of Luke.  But the parable Jesus tells after his encounter with Zacchaeus emphasizes the very point of Luke’s gospel and the point of why Jesus affirms Zacchaeus instead of turning him away as so many other wealthy people before him.  For Jesus (and for Luke’s Gospel), it’s not so simple as “rich is bad, poor is good” - Jesus loves the 1% just as much as he loves the 99 - but what God looks at isn’t just about the size or lack thereof of our bank accounts - it’s about what we do with what we have and the relationship that we have with the blessings which God has given us.  Because ultimately, relationship is what God is all about.  God is so determined to be in relationship with us and for us to learn that same value of loving relationship that God became flesh and dwelt among us.  And God defeated sin and death itself to restore us to that relationship.

When Jesus says that the Son of Man came to seek out and save the lost, we go back and forth over whether he speaks of Zacchaeus or speaks to the crowds - and maybe there’s room for both stories.  There’s a call to repentance throughout the Bible that we can hear in Zacchaeus, even if we also hear him defending a life led in virtue - he still recognizes the nature of being a tax collector and the fact that it was, by its nature, an unjust system that was built intentionally to defraud people of their earnings.  But at the same time, we also need to remember that all of us - even when we live virtuously, are lost and in need of a savior.  Jesus came for all of us, saints and sinners alike.  To God be the Glory.  Amen.