C All Saints BFC
2019
Luke 19:1-10
November 3, 2010
I grew up in a small, rural community
where the animus between the Protestant and Catholic churches was too often on
display. In my faith formation, I
remember people within my local church taking little jabs at the Roman Catholic
faith. “Look, the Roman Catholic faith
has Jesus still on the cross. That runs
counter to a Jesus who was resurrected.”
Or, “They may call it saint veneration but it sure looks like idol
worship to me—filled with all kinds of weird superstitions.” Or, “Word on the street is that those nuns
who teach at the Catholic grade school are as mean as heck. They’ll rap your knuckles if your handwriting
is not up to snuff!” (Gulp)
I found myself parroting those kinds of criticisms
until I got older, interrogated my faith in a healthier way, and did a 180 on all
three counts. I find the saint tradition
within the Roman Catholic Church a healthy way to tell the stories of ancestors—ancestors
who showed courage and resolve in all kinds of times and settings. To seek their support and counsel as we
experience the trials and tribulations of everyday life seems only right and
appropriate Plus, I have ended up with
all these friends within the Roman Catholic Church, both lay and clergy alike,
who are these fantastic people. Two Roman Catholic sisters saved my life when I
was in mission in southern Mexico. And
my life would not be the same without Amy Aguirre and the host of Roman
Catholic sisters here in Billings who bring such meaning and joy to my life. I swear that Sister Ann Schoch is the older
sister I never had who is full of mischief, laughter, and courage—whispering
curse words under her breath, snickering at my bad jokes, and accomplishing
things in the world such that she is regularly traveling off to receive another
reward for her incredibly brave work.
She will be and is St. Ann to me.
The principal meaning of the word “saint” is “one
who belongs to God.”[1] And the saints I have met are not people who
have their halo on too tight but ones whose halo is a little tilted, “genuinely
good people who struggled like the rest of us to get better, but they didn't
wait until they were perfect before entering into a relationship with God. Real
saints are ordinary people who gave up pretending they were without fault and,
instead, accepted the fact that God loved them and accepted them just the way
they were.”[2]
I think one of the requirements for a saint is
courage. For saints regularly run
headlong into a society like the healthy person in an alcoholic family. Sometimes
unhealthy systems are hard to identify because the very people acting healthy
within the system are shunned or punished.
Saints are often punished and shamed for their unwillingness to join in,
their unwillingness to take advantage of and share in the everyday harm of an
unhealthy system, and saints are sometimes even those who do things that many
might see as not very loving by refusing to participate in the games and
secrecy treasured by an unhealthy system.
In the Bible, the stakes are even greater. In making our way through the book of
Revelation over the last few weeks, I spoke of the everyday violence and war
that Rome waged against its subject peoples.
Galilee was considered the breadbasket of the Roman Empire. And Rome and its collaborators regularly used
taxes to create debt among the populace, leveraged that debt into the sale of
land which had historically allowed subsistence farmers to provide for their
families and communities, and turned subsistence farmers into tenants or day
laborers on their own land. Worse yet,
many Jewish people became a part of a debt slavery economy that ran counter to
the Jewish covenant tradition of freedom, sabbath, neighborliness, and
grace.
We can imagine, then, how Jewish tax collectors
would have been seen by the rural Jewish populace. At the least, tax collectors
would have been seen as collaborators with Rome. Many in the Jewish community would have seen
tax collectors as traitors over and against their Jewish neighbors. Particularly as they fed off an unhealthy
system a tax collector’s wealth was directly correlated to how much he was
willing to cheat, ask above what Rome and its collaborators required, or refuse
to offer grace to a neighbor who could not meet their obligations. Tax collectors were the arbiters of the
economic violence Rome used to acquire greater and greater wealth, land, and
resources as they bled Jewish communities dry.
This is no small thing that Zacchaeus might
recognize something in Jesus that might provide for his salvation. Jesus and his community represent the healthy
person in the alcoholic family. They
stand outside of that system, help others to imagine themselves living a life
outside of it. The Gospels make it clear
that the unhealthy system regularly reacts to Jesus by suggesting that he
should be shamed or punished for not getting with the program. Understand.
Jesus is not offering a program that helps Jewish peasants in Galilee
set up a system of alternative wealth.
Rather, he offers a system that helps people remember how they might be
an alternative community—suggesting that they can be something more together in
mutuality rather than scraping and clawing or alone or profiting off the
hardship of their neighbors.
Zacchaeus, maybe has an a curiosity, an inkling,
maybe a small gnawing, that though his
wealth provides him with a kind of status his wealth reflects the dis-ease, the
disease, he has with his Jewish neighbors.
Jesus invites himself to Zacchaeus’ home, to dine
with him, and become part of his circle.
But salvation does not come to Zacchaeus when the unclean Jesus dines at
his table. The gospel lesson today
teaches that Jesus only declares salvation coming to the home of Zacchaeus when
the tax collector declares a new relationship with his neighbors and the poor. Zacchaeus shows true repentance through his
unwillingness to profit from his profession at the expense of others.
Maybe in Jesus, Zacchaeus sees an opportunity to
redefine his life by extending the table.
Jesus indicates that salvation is not bound up in relationship with him
but with Zacchaeus’s neighbors. If
Zacchaeus simply delights over the presence of Jesus at his house, salvation
never comes. If Zacchaeus is satisfied
that Jesus is willing to dine with him, salvation never comes. If Zacchaeus provides great hospitality, even
makes Jesus laugh, serves Jesus in every imaginable way, salvation never
comes. But salvation does come—through
the newly proclaimed relationship Zacchaeus will have with his community. Zacchaeus may remain a tax collector, but he
will no longer participate in the oppression and extortion of the machine, no
longer grind the poor into dust.
Within the story of Zacchaeus, we learn how Jesus
defines salvation. Through this story we
learn that salvation, for Jesus, has very little to do with heaven or an
afterlife, believing in Jesus or his miracles, or even doing prescribed
rules. Salvation for this Jesus of
Nazareth has to do with relationship you’re your neighbor, and, in particular
those who are consistently injured by the machine or the system. Salvation is
defined by how we interact with our community.
We live in a time of great anxiety and fear. And it makes it very tempting to go it alone
and scrape and claw for what we can get or to participate and collaborate in
unhealthy systems that profit off the destruction of the land, take advantage
of our neighbors, or even profit off the pain that is found in our
communities. Jesus calls us down from
our curiosity in the sycamore trees of our lives, as observers of faith, to
participate in bringing about salvation to our communities. Jesus invites Zacchaeus to be “one who
belongs to God”, over against a system that crushes neighbor. Jesus invites Zacchaeus, in all his
continuing imperfection, to be a saint.
Saints and our good ancestors are not about an
agenda to reinforce a narrative that they are always the blameless hero. Rather,
the agenda of saints and our good ancestors is to genuinely not cause harm, to
learn, grow & repair harm if it turns out they have caused it. A lot of times, those two agendas will lead to
vastly different actions. We should get clear that if we want to be saints and
good ancestors for a new age which agenda we will choose.[3] It will take courage. But look at the ancestors and saints who have
gone before you. Look at the saints who
are gathered around you on this day to encourage and support you. Sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins,
you belong to God. You are the saints of
the Living One! Praise God. Amen.
[1]2 Timothy 3:16
[2]Michael Piazza, “Liberating
Word,” http://web-extract.constantcontact.com/v1/social_annotation?permalink_uri=2JRekJ4&image_url=https%3A%2F%2Fmlsvc01-prod.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fbb2deeec001%2Fe538e9bc-420a-496b-ade5-06e86648d56d.jpg%3Fver%3D1486182388000&fbclid=IwAR1pokaRnQWWzdqIayYXoNr9dtKfXshlkf7M86ZRsFFnWg9Rx17o_y8ofns.
[3] Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg,
Twitterfeed, November 2, 2019, 4:30 p.m.
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