October 31, 2010
(Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost;
Proper 26)
(From The Lectionary Page)
Unmasked
by The Rev. Canon Susan Sommer
I found an old photo of my brother and me dressed in our 1962 Halloween costumes. Tom was a pirate and I was Yogi Bear.[1] I remember those dreadful Halloween masks of my childhood. They were horrible things: plastic, with tiny slits for eyes and mouth. You could barely see where you were going once you had them on, and as they were unventilated, the interior quickly became clammy from your breath as you went trick or treating on a cold Michigan Halloween night. Most of us soon learned to push our masks onto the tops of our heads as we walked from house to house, and put them on our faces just in time to ring the doorbell.
Well, I was thinking about putting masks on and taking masks off, in light of our gospel passage for today: Jesus calling Zacchaeus down from the sycamore tree and inviting himself to dinner. This is Luke at his story-telling best. We learn that Zacchaeus is an odious little tax collector, who compounds his odiousness by doing something that no adult man with any sense of decorum would dream of doing in 1st century Palestine – he climbs a tree to see what’s going on. It’s a great visual image and we, who have been treated to nearly a year’s worth of Luke’s skill with visual images, think we know what’s going to happen next. We’re pretty sure that the respectable crowd is going to be appalled that Jesus has singled out some horrible person to eat with. We’re all set for this to be another story of a sin-filled person undergoing conversion in the presence of Jesus. After all, look at that fine speech Zacchaeus makes: I give half of my money to the poor, and if it can be shown that I’ve ever treated anyone unfairly, I repay it four-fold.
That’s when Luke springs the trap. See, there’s nothing in the text that suggests that Zacchaeus has repented, certainly not when compared with the story of the penitent tax collector we heard in last week’s gospel, to say nothing of all of the other stories of outsiders or penitent sinners who throw themselves at Jesus’s feet in worship, or follow him on the way. All of those very familiar Lukan details are strangely missing in this account. So I want to suggest something else. I think that Zacchaeus put on his mask, so to speak, as he scurried down from the sycamore tree. I think that his words to Jesus reflect his oh-so-human desire to be seen as a worthy insider, rather than to be seen as he saw himself: a worthless tax collector, climbing trees like a child because no one in the crowd would make room for him.
Let me be clear here: I’m not for a moment suggesting that Zacchaeus is hypocritical or even insincere when I talk about wearing a mask. I’m suggesting instead that when he came face to face with Jesus, he wanted to appear respectable and worthy even though such an appearance was distinctly at odds with how he (and others) saw himself.
Notice what happens next. Jesus doesn’t praise him for his generosity, as he praised the healed Samaritan leper, or the penitent tax collector in last week’s gospel. Instead, he announces that salvation has come to Zacchaeus’s house for no reason other than Zacchaeus is a child of Abraham. That, after all, is the business Jesus is in: seeking and saving the lost. Right there in Jericho, the resting place for pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem, Jesus invites Zacchaeus to take off his mask because Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. There he will ensure, through his death, that nothing we have done, no shame we have incurred, no unspeakable deeds we’ve committed can ever place us beyond the eternal love of God. The one sees beneath our carefully placed masks, the one to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid, sent his Son into the world for the sole purpose of drawing us to him.
Today, salvation has come to this house, Jesus said to Zacchaeus. Literally. Jesus, as the embodiment of God’s salvific work in the world, showed up at Zacchaeus’s house. And in so doing, he removed the death mask from Zacchaeus’s face, refusing to judge him as others judged him, opening up the possibility that Zacchaeus might even stop judging himself long enough to actually BE the kind of disciple God created him to be. Maybe even the kind of disciple who routinely gives of his wealth, for no reason other than the sheer exuberant joy of being loved unconditionally by God.
Today, salvation has come to this house. Jesus says that to us as well. Calls us by name and shows up at this house for dinner – the bread of life and the cup of salvation. And when we are tempted to bring before him things we think will impress him – the good that we have done or that we will do – may we embrace that moment when he reaches out and gently removes the masks we wear – the masks that we think hide the judgments we make about ourselves or others, or that we attribute to God making about us – judgments that we believe disqualify us from being his disciples. And may we rejoice in that moment, because we too will have been given new life. We will be on the way to being the kind of disciples God created us to be.
[1] For the non-Boomers among us, that was a cartoon character from a LONG time ago.
