Common
practice among the writers and makers of TV shows and movies these days,
creating a cult following for many, are putting what are called “Easter eggs”
in episodes that regular viewers delight in finding and then explaining to simpletons
like me. Filmdaft describes an Easter
egg as “a hidden detail, reference, or
message purposely placed by film or series makers for eagle-eyed movie or
series buffs and fans to find. These eggs can nod to other works, inside jokes,
or future projects, enriching the viewing experience for those who catch them.”[1]
For example, the Indiana Jones series,
sharing the creative genius of George Lucas, had regular Star Wars references
sprinkled into its making. In the
Raiders of the Lost Ark Well of Souls scene, hieroglyphs depicting the famous
droids from “Star Wars”, R2-D2 and C-3PO can be seen on a pillar. We can imagine that ancient aliens put those
there, right?
In Pixar films, placement of “A113” is
regularly featured. “A113” shows up in
Pixar movies unceremoniously placed on license plates, model numbers, and
walls. “A113” is a reference to the
California Institute of the Arts classroom where many Pixar animators
studied.
So too the Bible. The author of the Gospel of Luke is a matrix
of hidden and no-so-hidden references to Hebrew Bible stories and to links
across stories within the gospel of Luke itself. A regular theme in the Gospel of Luke is
economic inequality. And so we end up
with a number of stories and teachings that involve a “rich man” who Jesus
invites to transformation. The Biblical assumption
is that if you are rich, you are not self-made, but that your wealth was
obtained through ill-gotten means. That
Biblical assumption is a strong critique of our modern-day, capitalist system
that is constantly telling us that the wealthy our somehow morally superior.
The story before us today, domesticated
through the “wee little man Zacchaeus” camp diddy many of us have sung, makes
clear that we are dealing with another rich man. This is now the sixth story in the Gospel of
Luke about a rich man—an indication that economic inequity is pervasive in the
time of Jesus. And their frequent
appearance unable to do what Jesus asks of them . . . with yet another story,
shows that Jesus . . . he ain’t giving up.
Today’s story is followed up by another story of a rich man, a nobleman, who sends his underlings to and fro in
his service. They are to grow his money,
use the system that devours the lives of others so that when I return, I have
even more ill-gotten gain. Those who do
not do the nobleman the requisite service, increase his profits, he wants them
brought before him, so he can slaughter them.
Jesus makes it very clear that these rich men are regularly about
violence against the local populace. In
bringing up regular rich men, Jesus is telling us that this is not about a few
bad apples. The economic inequity and
its violence are structural and systemic.
The other Easter egg comes from the story
just before Zacchaeus climbing up a mulberry tree to “see” Jesus in Luke,
chapter 18. A blind man is sitting not
on the road but alongside the road and learns that Jesus is passing by. The blind man is not unlike the bent-over
woman earlier in Luke’s Gospel, Luke, chapter 13. Both bent-over woman and blind man are dehumanized by the existing
economic disparity, both made whole by being seen so that they may then follow
in the Way as disciples of Jesus.
Again, to get to that healing, the blind man
shouts out to Jesus. And like many
people who are not on the road but alongside the road, his cries make the
church people uncomfortable. The people around the blind man tell him to
shut up, don’t inconvenience the mission and ministry. The blind man shouts even more loudly. Jesus stops . . . in . . . his . . . tracks .
. . to ask the man what he wants. Healing is about to take place.
Like Zacchaeus in the story that follows on
into Luke, chapter 19, this poor, blind man wants to see, though the blind man
and Zacchaeus inhabit different ends of the economic and political spectrum. Jesus makes it clear that loyalty to the way
of Jesus and an unwillingness to be silenced, a willingness to be seen, are the
prerequisites to healing. The blind
man’s willingness to disturb and his willingness to walk the road, his faith,
have liberated or saved him. He can now see and is now following with Jesus
and all the rest of his homeless cohort.
Another Easter egg. Before Zacchaeus, or Zack, announces his
repentance and reparations, Luke says that Zack stops in his tracks, like Jesus
did before salvation of the one who once was blind. Easter egg.
Stops in his tracks. Remember, healing
is about to take place.
I want to make it clear who Zacchaeus
was. He was not one of these low level
tax collectors that belonged to Jesus’s disciples. Biblical scholar, Ched Myers describes who
Zack was in detail:
Tax
collectors referred to in the New Testament were local Jews employed by the
colonial occupiers to do something called “tax farming.” In this system, the [tax]
farmer paid Rome its money in advance, then made it up by exacting commissions
on enforcing taxes, tolls and customs (on land, on products and on persons).
Since the taxed had no idea what sort of financial arrangement had been
negotiated by the [tax] farmer, they were at the mercy of whatever he
charged. Due to their extortion as agents of Rome, these collectors were
socially rejected, religiously excommunicated and viewed as political
traitors.” But street-level tax collectors . . . —the ones doing the street
level dirty work—were rarely socially powerful, since their profits flowed up
the hierarchical ladder. The chief tax collector, however, would have
been the richest and thus the most rapacious and despised.[2]
Zacchaeus was the chief tax collector
who climbs up, ready for another Easter egg?, a mulberry tree, to see
Jesus. Remember our Scripture passage
from a few weeks ago? Jesus says that
all you need is the faith of a mustard seed and you can remove the mulberry
tree, that symbol of oppression and occupation, into the sea. And all of Rome was thrown into the sea in
Revelation. Zack may climb the mulberry
tree to see Jesus but now he has to do downward mobility, get to ground level,
to encounter and engage Jesus.
Zack greets and welcomes Jesus
joyfully to his home for tea and muffins.
And by welcoming Jesus, Zack welcomes the whole posse of Jesus which now
includes the poor, blind man, who has become a follower in chapter 18. So, if we can imagine, in contrast to the
wide chasm created by the rich man in the Lazarus story in Luke, here is a rich
man taking this rag-tag group of people to his opulent, well-appointed crib in
the finest Jericho subdivision. I imagine
that every rule in the HOA is broken as the group follows Jesus to Zack’s
home. Zack bridges the divide, crosses
the chasm, the chasm he himself helped to create.
Jesus’s
followers are unsettled. Smartly
so. They do not like that Jesus is going
to dinner at the home of one of the oppressors.
The Scripture says that they grumbled.
And table fellowship is one of those things that told everyone who they
were in the world. The poor and
dispossessed dined with their own but certainly not with someone who made their
lives ever more miserable--like a chief tax collector. The rich, powerful, and the elite dined with
their own, the most rich, powerful, and elite sitting at the head of the
table. So you can imagine as Jesus and
his lot cross the threshold of Zack’s home, how all Zack’s servants must have
made sure that the fine china and silverware are on lockdown. The neighbors in the subdivision are peering
out from behind the curtains and locking their doors.
A
few weeks back I quoted the great Wendell Berry who said, “The great obstacle
is simply this: the conviction that we
cannot change because we are dependent on what is wrong. But that is the addict’s excuse. And we know that it will not do.” The chief tax collector’s whole life depends
on an unjust system that regularly harms the lives of his neighbors . . . but
enriches him. Will he now take the step,
according to the tradition of his people, to fully traverse the great chasm he
has created?
Again,
as Jesus did in his pronouncing the healing of the blind man, Zacchaeus stops
dead in his tracks. Healing is about to
be accomplished. “The addicts excuse
will not do. Not for climate crisis; not
for racialized disparities; not for genocidal militarism.”[3]
Zacchaeus does not indulge in a pious lament about inequality, or a ritual apology in front of the press, or a call for a high-level commission to study the problem, or a rant about government policies. Rather, he commits to redistributing his wealth–half of it, not a 10% tithe (per the Pharisee [earlier in Luke’s gospel]). Huparchonton, [the Greek word used], is best translated as “properties,” not just possessions or surplus cash. [Zack will give it] to the poor, not to the nonprofit industrial complex. Let us be clear: what Luke’s character is proposing here is not charity, nor white saviorism, nor guilt-money, nor donations with strings attached, or any of the other strategies that lock the privileged into splendid insulation. It is restitution and repatriation, according to the teaching of Torah. [Now the Easter eggs from Hebrew Scripture or more commonly known as the Old Testament begin] Exodus 22 says that one who has stolen from another must restore equity and then some—4 or 5 fold—in order to make up for breach of trust, aggravation and injustice. Zack is doing nothing more or less than recovering the Sabbath Economics teachings of his ancestors.
Leviticus 6, in turn, indicts defrauding—and deception, robbery, lying and swearing falsely—which frankly reads like an annotated history of how the rich have always exploited the poor. Breaking faith and relationship requires restitution of what was expropriated plus 20%, a commitment that is adjudicated through elaborate rituals of accountability. [We can imagine] Zack entertaining the prospect that [he is willing to give back “if]” he may have defrauded some folks; [at which point] one can imagine Jesus raising an eyebrow and saying, “If???” Zack, [then in response] goes well beyond Torah’s 20%. He is not just making restitution; he is making reparations. The [Greek] verb apodidomi is an intensification of the verb “to give,” and means “payback.”[4]
In contrast to all the other rich men
in Luke’s stories, Zacchaeus makes right.
Gets square. This is an actual
redistribution of wealth, a break from the system. One might say this is a form of Land Back to
all these peasant farmers whose debt left them high and dry as sharecroppers on
their own land.
You can’t heal people
if they don’t know that they’re sick.
The story ends with a reminder that the Human One came to save the
lost. Zack knows, knew that he was lost. Zack was hopelessly addicted to privilege and
power. Does he want his salvation,
restoration back into the family, or did Zacchaeus depend too much on a system
that exploited his neighbors and made him a pariah in his community?
When this homeless,
rag-tag lot crossed the great chasm, they carried with them God’s salvation. So now Jesus, with God’s eyes, announces what
he sees, “Salvation has come to this
house.” Jesus then speaks of Zack’s restoration to the ancestral family, he is
returned to being a son of Abraham, much like he did for the bent-over
woman. Upon her healing, standing up
straight, she was acknowledged as a daughter of Abraham.
Easter egg! Remember the rich man who created the chasm
between himself and Lazarus the poor man at his gate in Luke, chapter 16? Who stood with Lazarus, rocked Lazarus within
his bosom, to tell the rich man of his fate and the fate of his family? It was Abraham. All of these Easter eggs sprinkled throughout
the Gospel of Luke now come to their culmination in the transformation of
Zacchaeus. Before Zacchaeus, the rich
men cannot find their way to salvation.
Jesus keeps inviting them to transformation. And it is only Zacchaeus who finds his way
home. Justice and kindness and healing
for everyone are accomplished.
Here is the rub
though, the conflict that is to follow.
The chief tax collector will have to report his transformation to the
higher-ups. They will be expecting their
pound of flesh. What will happen when
Zacchaeus has removed himself from their extractive system? Jesus follows the transformation of Zacchaeus
with the story of a nobleman who will slaughter those who do not abide by the
extractive system. The cost of
discipleship is real, even scary, and Zacchaeus will have to figure out how to
negotiate that reality into the future.
That story seems to be a warning to Zacchaeus that Jesus knows all to
well the price he has paid in reparations.
Ched Myers summarizes
what we have learned about the ministry and teaching of Jesus through these
three stories: the poor blind man, the
rich chief tax collector, and the violent nobleman.
Jesus pays attention to the marginalized, and empowers their recovery of a full humanity: “Your faith has liberated you” he says to the poor blind man.
He also invites the powerful to change, by emphasizing that reparations are the only way to recover kinship that has been shattered by social and economic disparity.
And he is realistic about resisting the Domination system, which is why he called his followers to a discipleship of the cross.[5]
Ah,
dear listeners. This is when the Bible
now reads us. In March of 2025 it was
stated that since 1975, 79 trillion dollars has been re-distributed from the
bottom 90% to the top 1%.[6] And, as you might guess, legislation has been
passed and is proposed to make that re-distribution even greater.[7] What I hope and pray is that we know the
Easter eggs in this repeated story that will stop us in our tracks—so that we
might declare our readiness for salvation and liberation. Ready to get out of the system doing
extractive violence?
Carrying
now salvation and liberation in Jesus’s rag-tag crew are trans people and
members of the LGBTQ community, the immigrant, girls and women experiencing
violence, the Palestinian, so many going through a housing crisis, those
accumulating tremendous debt to survive, and any number people of color and the
economically poor. Jesus has brought
them along and they are now waiting to be received into our homes, to sit at
our tables. As people who come to the
First Congregational UCC of Coloma/St. Paul’s UCC on a regular basis hoping to hear a word from
Jesus and seeking to welcome Jesus with joy, are we ready to receive the
community he has brought with him? Are
we ready to make reparations and show that we are ready to break with the
addict’s excuse and not hitch our wagon to what is wrong and unjust and unkind
just to protect our treasure? Are we
ready to do reparations?
Easter
eggs await us. Now is the time for us to
be a part of the long story which not only has us welcoming Jesus but
reconciling ourselves to the family of Abraham and Sarah and Hagar. Sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins of
Abraham, now is the time. Praise
God! Amen.
[1]
Jan Sorup, “Easter Eggs in Movies. Meaning and Examples,” FilmDaft,
November 14, 2024, https://filmdaft.com/what-are-easter-eggs-in-movies/.
[2]
Ched Myers, “One Final Time: Poor Man, Rich Man, and the Cost of Discipleship,”
Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries, October 31, 2025, https://bcmonline.org/2025/10/31/one-final-time-poor-man-rich-man-and-the-cost-of-discipleship/.
[3]
Ibid.
[4]
Ibid.
[5]
Ibid.
[6]
Alexandra Jacobo, “Since 1975, $79 trillion has been redistributed from the
bottom 90% to the top 1%,” Nation of Change, March 5, 2025, https://www.nationofchange.org/2025/03/05/since-1975-79-trillion-has-been-redistributed-from-the-bottom-90-to-the-top-1/. From the non-partisan RAND Corporation.
[7] In
his book, Burned by Billionaires: How
Concentrated Wealth and Power are Ruining Our Lives and Planet, Chuck
Collins shares 11 ways we are personally getting burned by billionaires: 1) The billionaires stick us with their tax
bill; 2) They rob us of our voice and vote; 3) Billionaires supercharge the
housing crisis—and profit from it.; 4) They inflame existing divisions in
society; 5) They are trashing our environment; 6) They are making us sick; 7)
They are blocking timely action on climate change; 8) They are coming for our
pets; 9) They are dictating what’s on our dinner plate; 10) They are corrupting
charity and philanthropy; 11) They are buying up and hijacking the media.
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