Monthly Archives: October 2022

30 October – Seeing Zacchaeus

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Pentecost 21
30/10/2022

Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4
Psalm 119:137-144
2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12
Luke 19:1-10

Sermon preached by Rev. Em. Prof. Robert Gribben


This story must be one of the most vivid, and memorable stories in the Gospels.  Children love it and remember it, Sunday School plays used to be made of it and we could all happily believe it is just a tale, a diversion from the serious stuff in the Gospel. The reality is that it is a meticulously formed story in Luke’s carefully constructed two-volume proclamation of God’s plan for humankind in Jesus.

So I thought we’d examine the text in a bible study this morning and perhaps discover more than we did when we were young. The verses are all set out in your service sheet.

The trouble with lectionaries is that they chop a biblical book into small chunks, and place them alongside three others which may well also have the gospel we need to hear for the day. We regularly lose our place in the stories. So let’s begin by stepping back and seeing where today’s chunk fits.

Today’s story has its beginning back as far as chapter 9, when, after the transfiguration, Jesus sets his face to go to Jerusalem. Jericho is the last stop on that line, 20 km to go. But Luke has been theologically leading his readers on this journey too. At the end of the last chapter (18), he gives us (v.31-) the third prediction of Jesus’s passion, three sounding gongs in his narrative about what will happen in Jerusalem, and how it will be the fulfilment of prophecy regarding Jesus.

Jesus is not just walking by himself; he is part of a great crowd ‘going up’ to the Holy City for the Passover festival.  As they approached Jericho, he meets a blind beggar who calls out to ‘Jesus, Son of David’ and when asked what he wants he says, ‘I want my sight back’ and he receives it, instantly. And all present praise God for it.

So, let’s now follow the text in my favourite translation, from the Revised English Bible, which replaced the NEB in 1989.

1 Entering Jericho Jesus made his way through the city.

2 There was a man there named Zacchaeus; he was superintendent of taxes and very rich.

All we need to know about Zacchaeus in one line! Older translations say he was a ‘Chief Tax Collector’, the only such one mentioned in the NT. He is in charge of other tax collectors (‘superintendent’) and will have added to his income from them. In short, he belonged to the most despised section of Jewish society.

3 He was eager to see what Jesus looked like; but, being a little man, he could not see him for the crowd.

‘See’ in the sense of wanting to observe this man, not to consult him.  But there is one more fact: Zacchaeus was ‘of small stature’ [helikia mikros] and couldn’t see for all the regular-sized folk in front.

4 So he ran on ahead and climbed a sycamore tree in order to see him, for he was to pass that way.

Sycamore trees are good for climbing: they have a sturdy trunk and spreading branches, but they also have abundant foliage. Peter’s graphic looks right!

5 When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said, ‘Zacchaeus, be quick and come down, for I must stay at your house today.’

Leafy or not, Jesus spied him, almost as if he expected to see him. Jesus already knew his name. Notice that Jesus says he ‘must’ stay with him – not just for a meal, but for a B&B on the journey to Jerusalem too. There is a sense that the Abba God compels him to stay.

The crowd would have spotted him. He will have been conspicuously well-dressed, and the sight of him shimmying up a tree invited sniggers. He may have hoped to ‘see’ Jesus, slither down and vanish unseen. Not likely.

6 He climbed down as quickly as he could and welcomed him gladly.

Both verses 5 and 6 speak of ‘hurry’, ’quickly’, which is intended to highlight the urgency of Jesus’ summons and of Zacchaeus’s obedience. (We might remember the haste of another rich man in robes, running to greet his prodigal son. That too was undignified and unexpected.) Zacchaeus’ welcome of Jesus hardly suggests reluctance.

7 At this there was a general murmur of disapproval. ‘He has gone in to be a guest of a sinner,’ they said.

Suddenly the mood changes and the fickle crowd turns on Jesus and this is not the only time we hear this criticism. Jesus (in Luke) is often in the company of ‘tax collectors and sinners.’  It is part of Jesus’ divine mandate to sit with sinners.  Such actions belong in the kingdom which is breaking in.

8 But Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, ‘Here and now, sir, I give half my possessions to charity; and if I have defrauded anyone, I will repay him four times over.’

However successfully he descended from the tree, Zacchaeus doesn’t care. He ‘stood there’, calm and composed before his critics. And his first words are what the NT calls ‘fruits worthy of repentance’ – though there is no other sign of his penitence. He is, from that moment, giving half of all his goods to the poor and a four-fold restoration to those he has defrauded. Now, the degrees of compensation are laid down in Jewish law (it’s all there in Leviticus 6: 1-5): Zacchaeus’ offer exceeds the legal requirement. He chooses to relinquish his very profession and embraces a considerable drop in economic status. By contrast, in the previous chapter (Lk 18: 22-24), we have just heard of a rich young ruler who sadly turned away from the kingdom because of his great wealth.

9 Jesus said to him, ‘Today salvation has come to this house – for this man too is a son of Abraham.

It would be possible to describe Luke’s Gospel as dedicated to showing the restoration of all the children of Abraham to their rightful relationships. Abraham’s children have been scattered, exiled, lost in biblical history; in Luke they are being gathered in once again, not least women and children – and even Gentiles. Compassion marks Luke’s Gospel.

Included are include the blind beggar (19:35f), the tax collector (!) praying alongside the Pharisee (18:8f) and earlier, the crippled woman in the synagogue who is healed on the sabbath day, who is called ‘a daughter of Abraham’ (13:10f). Zacchaeus has demonstrated that he has come home.

Two notes to end on.

Jesus says ‘salvation has come to this house and it’s worth remembering that Zacchaeus’ ‘house’ now includes all those who have suffered by him, but also his family and his slaves. Zacchaeus continues to be their guardian and benefactor, in a very different spirit – as kin under the God of Abraham, through Jesus.

And ‘salvation’ may begin here with one man’s conversion, but it has personal, domestic, social and economic dimensions. The biblical word can be translated as ‘made well’ or ‘healed’. The whole of life is embraced by Jesus’ ministry, and all who follow him have a foretaste of the coming reign of God.

The meeting of this little man with the very Word of God incarnate is not a diverting tale in a larger story: it is the larger story.

10 The Son of Man has come to seek and to save what is lost.’

Sunday Worship at MtE – 30 October 2022

The worship service for Sunday 30 October 2022 can be viewed by clicking on the image below. 

Other worship services can be found in the list below or at the MtE YouTube channel

The order of service can be viewed here.

 

MtE Update – October 28 2022

  1. The most recent news from the UCA Assembly (Oct 26)
  2. We have an MtE luncheon following worship on Sunday Nov 6
  3. This Sunday October 30 our service will be led by Peter Blackwood and Robert Gribben; for info on the readings for Sunday, see here.
  4. The MtE Events Calendar

Worship

  1. Our COVID policy for worship continues to be as follows, to be reviewed again by the church council in November:
  2. Mindful of the health-vulnerability of some members of our congregation and the uncertain state of play with respect to the pandemic, the church council has decided that we will continue to wear masks in worship throughout October, except for those who need to remove them when leading the worship, and for morning tea, or who have an exemption from wearing a mask. Holy Communion continues to be served in both kinds, the wine via small communion glasses only.

Advance Notice

  1. Congregational luncheon following worship on Sunday Nov 6
  2. Pre-election candidates’ forum, Nov 7

 

 

23 October – Of Righteousness and Contempt

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Pentecost 20
23/10/2022

Joel 2:23-27
Psalm 65
Luke 18:9-14


In a sentence:
Humility overcomes hard righteousness to bring
reconciliation for all

The obvious lesson from our Gospel reading this morning is, Don’t be the Pharisee: “for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.” This presumes, of course, that we all want to be exalted, at least a little bit!

This reading works even for those not really sold on the whole God thing. We value humility and have little time for self-righteous posturing. Not taking ourselves too seriously is appreciated by others, and so is a helpful rule of engagement as we move through daily life. Here endeth the lesson, then – at least the obvious, moral lesson – and a good one to learn.

But let us look to see what might be less obvious here. While the two figures in Jesus’ little story are poles apart in terms of moral judgement, they have in common that each stands at his pole alone. I don’t know whether this is intentional in the original telling of the story, but I’m going to make quite a bit of it in what follows! The Pharisee is a self-made man. It is “standing by himself” that he declares his judgement on himself and the other. He needs no other, because this is the meaning of self-righteousness: righteousness by virtue of what I am or have done, perhaps against great odds, with reference only to the truth I perceive and not to others and their truths. The unexpected and usually unobserved effect of self-righteousness is that such a person ultimately stands alone in the world they have created, which does not require and so finally does not admit others. The heaven of the self-righteous has a population of just one. My presumption to be able to perceive the unrighteousness of all others excludes them. Judging and rejecting others has no end and, finally, I am alone.

The experience of the tax collector is the aloneness of being rejected. We don’t know why he considers himself unworthy before God but we can take him at his word that he is, for whatever reason, morally (or otherwise) unworthy. If the Pharisee is a self-made man, this tax collector is a self-unmade one. This is the moral reading of their different experiences.

But the important point is not the difference of their moral achievements but the similarity of the effect of those achievements: both men stand alone. Both have isolated themselves. This sameness makes possible a new perception of their difference. No longer is this difference in taheir moral performance; it is in their perception of their being alone. For the Pharisee, aloneness is a virtue to be celebrated, for which he even thanks God. Or, more precisely, the Pharisee doesn’t see the aloneness but only his isolating righteousness. The Pharisee doesn’t know his condition. And so he also mistakes the condition of the tax collector. The Pharisee sees the other’s sin but not the other’s aloneness. The Pharisee, then, doesn’t see how he and the tax collector are the same.

While the Pharisee celebrates his righteousness and the alone‑ing it brings, for the tax collector, aloneness is a devastating affliction he desperately wants to escape. Recognising his problem, he seeks relief by the only means available – the appeal for mercy. And so the one whom the Pharisee’s moral, alienating righteousness holds in contempt now finds true, reconciling righteousness.

Hoping that this much has made sense, now for something less sensible. All this makes possible what is, on most grounds, an untenable assertion but one we must nonetheless make. If the tax collector is alienated by hard righteousness and is restored to life by God before the one who rejected him, then the tax collector is Jesus himself. It was the righteousness of the Pharisees, priests and scribes which cast Jesus out – which “alone‑d him” – in crucifixion. Easter Saturday becomes the prayer for mercy – a strangely unvoiced prayer of the dead – and the resurrection becomes God’s healing insistence on life not only for himself but for those who rejected him in Jesus. The tax collector’s prayer is not for himself only.

Notice how far we are here from the mere morality of arrogance and humility as personal attributes we might or might not possess and which we eulogise or lament in others. Humility is now nothing like a meek mildness but the opposite of the hard righteousness which divides and alienates us from each other and even from ourselves. Humility becomes the possibility of connection, reconciliation, and so of the creation of something which wasn’t there before. The truly humble do not slip quietly into the background. The truly humble are the means by which the world is made whole again. The tax collector’s prayer is not for himself only.

This is, perhaps, an appealing exaltation of the humble. But there is some bad news here. Such justification as the tax collector received that day in the Temple didn’t change much. Things will be the same tomorrow as they are today. The Pharisee isn’t likely to have changed, nor most of the rest of us who are like him to varying degrees. Ours is a world of harsh alienating righteousness, increasingly pressing towards cynical contempt and contemptuous cynicism. This is not the rejection of righteousness but a relentless demand for it – a demand in and all around us.

In the face of this, prayer for reconciliation, and work toward it, are a struggle, something of which we see in the demeanour of the tax collector and in the crucifixion. There is nothing easy about a sinner’s prayer for mercy. Humility which is merely a mood or way of negotiating difficult circumstances cannot survive the “cost” of mercy. The humility which creates is difficult work. Without the conviction that things can be made out of nothing – the conviction that God will raise the dead – humility is something better seen in other people, a convenient pathology which makes our lives easier (if not theirs).

The humility of the tax collector, however – the humility of Jesus himself – recognises poverty and trusts that God can do something about it. Death and nothingness – the ultimate humiliations – are not barriers to life. And the humility which seeks mercy from God also seeks mercy in the world. To be humble in this way is not to be weak but to desire the smashing of the cold fetters of hard righteousness. This is not easy in a world like this one, in which the alienating righteousness of the Pharisee in Jesus’ story is part of what drives our society and its politics.

Cynicism and contempt are the fruit of an excluding righteousness, the application of some moral or political code against which the enemy measures up only very poorly. This contempt, however, is not a moral flaw in those who look about with contempt but a misreading of justice and righteousness, usually on all sides. Against this, Jesus summons us to what he calls elsewhere the righteousness which exceeds that of the Pharisee (Matthew 5.20). The righteousness of the Pharisee leads to a myriad of heavens with population one, from which we can hurl contemptuous abuse at others in their lonely heavens. But the righteousness of God is towards a single heaven bursting at the seams with Pharisees and tax collectors, Russian presidents (and American ones), rapacious colonists and displaced indigenes, billionaire entrepreneurs and gullible consumers, cynical politicians, sarcastic shock jocks, smug baby boomers, sanctimonious gossips and even Uniting Church ministers.  There they – we – all shall be, in a heaven pressed down and flowing over for the wantonness of unrighteous grace, of unrighteous mercy, of unrighteous forgiveness and of unrighteous reconciliation. With graced abandon, the unjust justice of God exceeds that weaponised righteousness with which we cut and divide so deeply.

Let us, then, not cheapen humility by mistaking it for niceness, and the call to humility as a nudge in the direction of not taking ourselves too seriously. Humility, at least that of Jesus the tax collector, testifies to God’s refusal of any final alienation and so to the power of God to reconcile.

Blessed are the humble – blessed are the peace-makers. They will be called the children of God because, like God’s first Son, their way of mercy and reconciliation grants a glimpse of what heaven looks like.

Humble yourselves, then, that God might exalt the whole world.

Sunday Worship at MtE – 23 October 2022

The worship service for Sunday 23 October 2022 can be viewed by clicking on the image below. 

Other worship services can be found in the list below or at the MtE YouTube channel

The order of service can be viewed here.

 

Lectionary Commentary – Ordinary 31C/Proper 26C (Sunday between October 30 to November 5)

The following links are to the Revised Common Lectionary commentary pages of Howard Wallace and Bill Loader, and are suggested as preparation for hearing the readings in worship for the Sunday indicated above.

Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4 see also By the Well podcast on this text

Psalm 119:137-144

Luke 19:1-10

2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12 see also By the Well podcast on this text

MtE Update – October 21 2022

  1. Moderator’s pastoral letter, pertaining to the recent floods.
  2. The most recent Synod eNews (Oct 20)
  3. The most recent news from the UCA Assembly (Oct 19)
  4. This Sunday October 23 we will be consider the set Gospel reading from Luke 18.9-14; for info on this and other readings for Sunday, see here.
  5. The MtE Events Calendar

Worship

  1. Our COVID policy for worship continues to be as follows, to be reviewed again by the church council in November:
  2. Mindful of the health-vulnerability of some members of our congregation and the uncertain state of play with respect to the pandemic, the church council has decided that we will continue to wear masks in worship throughout October, except for those who need to remove them when leading the worship, and for morning tea, or who have an exemption from wearing a mask. Holy Communion continues to be served in both kinds, the wine via small communion glasses only.

Advance Notice

  1. Congregational luncheon following worship on Sunday Nov 6
  2. Pre-election candidates’ forum, Nov 7

 

 

16 October – Of Prayer and Netflix

View or print as a PDF

Pentecost 19
16/10/2022

Jeremiah 31:27-34
Psalm 121
Luke 18:1-8


In a sentence:
Prayer requires a vision for peace for the whole

Conventional wisdom has it that when the going gets tough…there’s always Netflix. Of course, that’s not quite how the saying goes, but could it speak a truth about our infatuation with binge-watching inexhaustible streaming services? While storytelling and story consumption are deeply embedded within us, this is not enough to account for the explosion of streaming subscriptions and our consumption rate of films and TV series. No small part of this must be the escape the screen offers. There is much from which we want to escape, of which the headlines and TV news reports are sufficient evidence, whatever else might be happening in our personal lives. But video streaming is scarcely the only means of escape. Grey nomads across the county are getting away from it all in droves, extending indefinitely the escape the rest of us hang out for in this land of the long weekend. Gamers disappear into parallel universes for hours or days on end. We can escape into exercise and the body beautiful, or self-consoling overeating, or radical political and religious causes which provide meaning and refuge within the chaos. Or we can simply avoid the daily news for the stress it induces and not venture out too much.

The point here is not to criticise the much-needed holiday, the relaxing weekend immersed in a favourite TV series or setting different priorities from those of our parents’ generation – whichever generation that was! The point is to express the suspicion that, perhaps for most in the modern world, life is lived in the mode of distraction from life. If this is true, it is because of a perceived inadequacy of the story we are presently living, or even the unliveability of that story. A few brave souls – or perhaps deluded ones – don’t experience themselves in this contradicted way. But many of us have become more adept at losing ourselves in stories rather than featuring in them.

My interest this morning is not Netflix or purveyors of other streaming services and means of comforting distraction. Rather, I’m interested in prayer as it features in today’s Gospel reading. What we think prayer might be is controlled by our response to the story we think we are living, because prayer has to do with changing our stories. If video streaming or early retirement or upgrading a spouse or drinking ourselves into oblivion is about leaving behind our present uncomfortable story, then this will affect our sense for prayer. In particular, if escape is our mode of coping, we’ve already decided that prayer cannot help us with our uncomfortable existence. Those escape artists who still pray do so as escapees. The escape is a disconnection from the whole, so that the escapee’s prayer is now not about the whole but about the individual. My inner, personal spirituality and communion with God become my escape. I’m spiritual-but-not-religious because religion is worldly, and the world is what I’m leaving behind. Prayer turns inward because that is the only place I find myself to be safe. Prayer beyond this is pointless for those who have lost hope that there is a story of the world other than that of grim newsfeeds with their wars and rumours of wars, and in which “everyone is angry about everything all the time”. At best, prayer might help my inner story by re-storying me apart from the wider world. Such prayer is now not for the world with its roar of cascading, contradictory stories but against that world.

At the end of today’s reading, Jesus asks, “…when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”. That is, at the final setting right of all things, will there be anyone left who is praying for that setting right? Clearly, there may still be prayer, in the sense of those inward-looking prayers in the hearts of the escapees. But the faith and its praying sought by Jesus is not this. It is the faith suggested by the widow’s persistence in his parable. If her constant harassing of the lazy judge is what prayer is to be like, such prayer bears no marks of escapism. She lives her uncomfortable story as she seeks to see it changed. Her effort is not towards escape but transformation. As one of the tough, she gets going in action which models the kind of prayer which wants to change the world’s story. This kind of prayer – and action – denies the world’s brokenness from within that world. It is, then, prayer not against the world, justifying my flight, but prayer for it, necessitating my staying. This prayer does not abandon ship but can only be prayed from onboard.

This is the very ministry of Jesus. He is pushed out of the world onto the cross by us in a kind of reverse escapism; the world-as-a-whole can’t flee but it can fling just the one Jesus away. Yet, true to his deeply world-centred existence, Jesus will not be suppressed or escaped. And so he prays even from that cross – literally from on‑board, both within the world and cast out of it: “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what to do”; they don’t know how to pray. Such prayer seeks community even out of alienating rejection. Prayer like this expresses a vision of the reconciliation of the whole world. This world so deeply divided by cynicism, contempt and fear needs a faith which will do this work of prayer – a work that can only be done from within the brokenness and not from outside.

And so this is the kind of prayer, work and life to which we are called. This is the taking up of our own cross after Jesus, with prayer that leans into the world and not away from it. It prays for the coming of God’s peaceable kingdom; that earth become heaven; for bread, grace and safety. Outside the world which is not yet its true self, but within it and sharing in its brokenness, we pray and work for the forgiveness, reconciliation and wholeness which will make all things – even us – new.

In such prayer and the active struggle for life it expressed, let us be unceasing.

Sunday Worship at MtE – 16 October 2022

The worship service for Sunday 16 October 2022 can be viewed by clicking on the image below. 

Other worship services can be found in the list below or at the MtE YouTube channel

The order of service can be viewed here.

 

Lectionary Commentary – Ordinary 30C/Proper 25C (Sunday between October 23 to October 29)

The following links are to the Revised Common Lectionary commentary pages of Howard Wallace and Bill Loader, and are suggested as preparation for hearing the readings in worship for the Sunday indicated above.

Joel 2:23-32 see also By the Well podcast on this text

Psalm 65

Luke 18:9-14 see also By the Well podcast on this text

2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18

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