Zacchaeus’ Costume

October 31, 2004 (Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost - Proper 26)

By The Rev. Benjamin J. Newland

- Isaiah 1:10-20
- Psalm 32:1-8
- 2 Thessalonians 1:1-12
- Luke 19:1-10

Part I: Halloween

The thing I love about Halloween is that for one evening you can be whatever, and whoever, you want. It is inevitable, given our human nature and how we grow from childhood to adulthood, that more kids dress up in costume than adults do. You can say, these days, that Halloween is a children’s holiday, and maybe we’ve made it into that, but it wasn’t always that way. Most cultures, religions, tribes, and societies have some celebration, usually around November first, that commemorate the dead, spirits, ghosts, &c. Our holiday of Halloween grew out of a very adult idea about the influence the dead have on the living, and why and when it might be important to acknowledge that presence. We’ve taken that fairly spiritual concept and turned it into an occasion for dressing up and consuming unhealthy quantities of highly refined sugar products.

Holidays with a particularly powerful spirituality about them, however, seem to resist the simplification and secularization that we attempt to bind them with. Christmas, for example, began as a pagan festival of midwinter, complete with a ceremony of burning the dead and dry wood (Yule Log) while erecting the new and green wood (Christmas Tree) in order to encourage the earth to be regenerated and become fruitful again. Christmas then evolved into an occasion for the contemplation of another profound act of regeneration, the Nativity of Jesus Christ. Currently in our culture, the Christmas holiday has become an occasion for crass commercialism. Yet even under the billion dollar onslaught of commercial capitalism, Christmas refuses to be completely subverted. Churches are still full that night, and families gather despite torturous travel arrangements to share some of the warmth and regeneration that those long lost pagans must have felt watching the old wood burn and gazing on the green-wood-hope of the Christmas tree.

Just as Christmas refuses to surrender, so too does Halloween hang on by its fingernails to a greater meaning than candy and worries of witchcraft have assailed it with. The reason more kids dress up for Halloween than adults do is not that Halloween is a children’s holiday. The reason is that kids haven’t yet figured out who they are, or who they are going to be, and so it is much easier for them to put on a costume and become someone, or something, entirely different-entirely new.

Adults don’t have it so easy. Even if we wanted to be someone, or something, else, we’ve been being this one, this thing, for a long time now, and changing that involves not only changing ourselves, but changing the way all of those people around you see you and think about you. I’m guessing that this is a fairly common feeling among adults. I for one tend to change things about myself when I move to a new city, since I don’t have to explain the changes to all those people that knew me. When I moved away from everyone I knew to go to seminary, I bought a motorcycle and became a vegetarian, not because I wanted to reinvent myself, but just because I had wanted to try those things, and it was easier to do when all the people around me just assumed that I had always been a motorcycling vegetarian. Brave people will change right in front of folks they know, but most of us aren’t that brave, not even on Halloween.

Part II: Zacchaeus

Zacchaeus, as Luke says in today’s Gospel excerpt, was a chief tax collector. That brief description alone might be enough for you to assume he’s the bad guy in this story, but it gets worse. Under the Roman system of taxes, locals were given the job of collecting tax in the part of the Empire in which they lived, from the people around them. Zacchaeus was a Jew, and he collected from Jews. This alone made him a collaborator with the Imperial overlords in the minds of most, and a traitor in the minds of a dangerous few. Even those who didn’t mind Rome so much had good reason to hate Zacchaeus, since the Roman tax system worked by allowing its tax collectors to collect whatever amount they could manage to extort. The tax collector had to collect a certain amount for Rome, but anything above that amount he kept as his own income. This is clearly a system open to abuse, and abused it was. As chief tax collector, Zacchaeus had the same relationship with other tax collectors, so even his fellow extortionists had good reason to hate Zacchaeus.

So you can understand why Zacchaeus was a bit nervous about pushing his way to the front of the crowd to see Jesus. Not only was he too short to see from afar, and too small to bully his way up front, the crowd very likely needed little to no reason to turn their resentment of the chief tax collector into action against the chief tax collector.

Now that I have convinced you (hopefully) that Zacchaeus deserved and got the scorn of those around him, allow me to suggest that we give Zacchaeus a two thousand year benefit of the doubt. Let us imagine that Zacchaeus meant well; that he inherited this position from his father; that he ran in circles where such collaboration, extortion, and wealth were normal and not thought of as evil. Let us further imagine that Zacchaeus had been hearing about Jesus for some time now; that he was intrigued by this itinerant rabbi who advocated a peculiar version of adherence to the Law of Moses: not the scrupulous ritual adherence of the Pharisees, but a fresh, honest observance that inspired in him thoughts of freedom.

If that were the case (and I freely admit that I am making this up), then Zacchaeus was in a worse position than the average adult is on Halloween. If Zacchaeus wanted to change, to become someone new, even just by trying it on like a costume, he faced not just raised eyebrows, but violent reprisals. What could he do? How could he escape the crowd yet still see Jesus? Well, he could run ahead like a five year old and climb a tree.

Part III: Isaiah

Before we get to Jesus and what happen to the tree climbing Zacchaeus: a brief interlude on the passage from Isaiah. A cursory reading seems to indicate that God is expressing, through his prophet, a preference for Low Church Anglican worship. “I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats,” says God, which is fine, since our altars are set with silver, wine, and wafers, not animal sacrifice. More to the point, especially for the allergy-prone Episcopalian, is when God says, “…incense is an abomination to me.” Lest you imagine that we have addressed God’s concerns already, let me rephrase Isaiah:

Thus says the Lord: “Offer not to me the fineness of your worship. I am sick to death of your liturgy. I do not delight in the anthems of your choir, the choreography of your acolytes, nor the lofty tones of Priests chanting Eucharistic prayer A, B, C, or D.”

God expresses in this passage from Isaiah, and frequently in other books of prophets as well, a clear bias for justice over worship. Worship without justice is empty, an abomination, saith the Lord. The usual response to this temper tantrum of God’s, is to say that of course worship without justice is no good, we need both: justice and worship together, equal partners in faith.
But that isn’t what God said. God didn’t say (or rather, Isaiah didn’t say for God) that he wanted justice and worship together. He said he wanted justice, and until he got it, he was sick of listening to worship. In numerous passages, God’s prophets report that God finds worship without justice unbearable. Not once is it reported that God finds justice without worship to be any kind of problem at all.

Part IV: Jesus

The rich don’t fare well in the Gospel of Luke. Luke has Jesus lambasting the rich farmer, and tells the story of the rich man finding himself in Sheol forever separated from Lazarus and Abraham. It is in Luke’s Gospel that Jesus says, “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God.” For Luke’s Jesus, it doesn’t pay to be rich.

And so we have little hope for Zacchaeus, who is not only rich, but rich from extorting his fellow Jews and collaborating with Rome. Jesus seems to be aware of Zacchaeus’ perilous perch, not only on a tree limb, but on the ledge between his past life and the Kingdom of God he can almost, but not quite, see. “Get down!” Jesus nearly shouts, “I’m coming over to your place right now.” There’s no time to loose and Jesus can sense it. He’ll pay for this in the end. The crowd he’s gathered around him won’t like him accepting hospitality from public enemy number one. If he tried this with every low life he came across he’d never make it to Jerusalem, but in this case it might be worth it. Zacchaeus is a long ways along the road to nowhere, but he’s looking over his shoulder and maybe he can be dragged back.

Zacchaeus, by divine inspiration, or instinct, or because he just finished reading Isaiah, knows just what to do. Worship is not called for here. Fine observance of ritual over dinner is not in order. Action is. If he’s going to try on this costume well and long enough for the mask to become not a mask but his true face, then he must act.

And he does. Half of all he has he’ll give away, and four times whatever he’s stolen he’ll repay. Considering that he makes his living by extortion, Zacchaeus just took the most serious pay cut in all of the New Testament. It is enough, Jesus says, and again reflecting the urgency of the situation he tells Zacchaeus that that very day salvation is his, and once again he is the child of Abraham his neighbors have been denying that he was for years now. Behold, this camel, at least, made it through the eye of the needle.

 

We are, none of us, perfect applicants for the Kingdom of God. It may be that something about us needs to change. Yet like Zacchaeus knew, there is great risk in change, particularly the kind of change that might make us into people that can accept the salvation Jesus offers. Zacchaeus abandoned his dignity along with his previous persona to scramble down the road and climb up a tree like a little kid, just to get a glimpse of what his life might look like were he to try on a different costume. Perhaps we ought to take heart from Zacchaeus’ bravery and try something different than what we’ve done before. Maybe our children’s willingness to don a costume and try out a different way of being themselves is just what Jesus had in mind when he insisted the disciples let the little children come to him. Maybe those little children were wearing costumes, playing at being something new, something different, something great. AMEN.