Toward Sunday, November 3, 2013

Scripture:   Luke 19:1-10 (the story of Jesus and Zaccheus)

What were the early Christians like?  What kind of people were members of the early churches?

Some were like Zaccheus who, before he experienced Jesus as the Christ, was a chief tax collector and rich.  In other words, he was a Jew who made his living by collaborating with Rome against his own people.  And he was good at it -- so good at squeezing the money out of his own people that Rome made him chief tax collector, and so good at adding his own percentage on top of what he collected that he became rich.

No wonder when Jesus came through town and people lined the streets to see the teacher and healer, no one would let Zaccheus through to the front of the crowd.  Zaccheus was little in stature, but that wasn't the only reason his own people looked down on him and pretended not to see him.

But then Zaccheus and Jesus meet.  Jesus chooses to stay at Zaccheus's house.  And Zaccheus in turn chooses to change his ways; he chooses to undo the wrongful gain that has been his livelihood.

So what kind of man is Zaccheus?  What kind of life-story or narrative finds its way into the story of the early church?

Is Zaccheus just a miserable sinner who is embraced in ways he doesn't deserve, and who then makes restitution to the people he has wronged for the good of his soul and the easing of his conscience?  No doubt this is part of what salvation is, and part of what our life-story and the story of church membership still is about today.

But is Zaccheus also a local hero?  Is he someone who is employed in a wrong and unjust system, doing a job that hurts other people but pays him well (I'm just doing my job!), who when he comes to know Jesus, decides he can't do it anymore -- can't keep on ripping people off, can't continue to be part of something so wrong, can't stay inside a system so immoral.  So he gives up his job and his comfortable place in the system, blows the whistle on the company (in this case, the Empire), and commits his life to something more whole and life-giving.  Is this, too, part of what salvation is, and part of what our life-story and the story of church membership still must be about today?

Additional readings:  Habbakuk 1:1-4 and 2:1-4; 2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12