RonBlog

Sunday 31st October, 2010 Twenty Third Sunday after Pentecost

Sentence
Today salvation has come to this house, for the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.
Luke 19:10
Collect
God our Father, Whose will it is to bring all things to order and unity in our Lord Jesus Christ; may all the peoples of the world, now divided and torn apart by sin, be brought together under His sovereign rule of love, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

Old Testament Lesson Habakkuk 1: 1 – 4 & 2: 1 – 4

The oracle that the prophet Habakkuk saw. O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you "Violence!" and you will not save? Why do you make me see wrong-doing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails. The wicked surround the righteous-- therefore judgment comes forth perverted.

I will stand at my watch-post, and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what he will say to me, and what he will answer concerning my complaint. Then the LORD answered me and said: Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it. For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay. Look at the proud! Their spirit is not right in them, but the righteous live by their faith.

Psalm 119: 132-144

Righteous are You, Lord God: and just are Your judgements
The commands that You have commanded: are exceedingly righteous and true
Zeal and indignation have choked my mouth: because my enemies have forgotten Your words
Your word has been tried in the fire: and therefore Your servant loves it
I am small and of no account: but I have not forgotten Your precepts
Your righteousness is an everlasting righteousness: and Your law is the truth
Trouble and anguish have taken hold on me: but Your commandments are my delight
The righteousness of Your commands is everlasting: O give me understanding, and I shall live.

Epistle ` 2 Thessalonians 1: 1 – 4 & 11 – 12

Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, To the church of the Thessalonians in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We must always give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of everyone of you for one another is increasing. Therefore we ourselves boast of you among the churches of God for your steadfastness and faith during all your persecutions and the afflictions that you are enduring.
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To this end we always pray for you, asking that our God will make you worthy of his call and will fulfill by his power every good resolve and work of faith, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

GOSPEL Luke 19: 1 – 10

Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through it. A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, "Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today." So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him.
All who saw it began to grumble and said, "He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner." Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, "Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much." Then Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost."

NOTES ON THE READINGS

Old Testament Lesson
There will be rather few people who may have heard of Habakkuk, but I suspect many will be aware of the statement at the end of this passage. Minor prophets are often overlooked or perhaps never seen or referred to, and that is a pity. They often reflect the struggle that the real people of God had with those who simply went through the motions. Injustice is the issue, and that is never a rare experience for anyone, let along people of truth.

A comment I dare to make on that ‘the righteous live by their faith.’ This was sufficient a variant to have motivated so much of Luther’s reformation in Germany, though I suspect that much of the real emphasis has been missed in the furore. I suggest that the word ‘faith’ should be translated ‘faithfulness’ – a reflection of their direction and goal, rather than anything less visible. In a world of injustice and greed, when people to live by the ancient verities of justice and truth, it meant that they had a far more solid and substantial basis by which to live. In so doing, they reflect the nature of their God and Father.

You might observe that my difficulty with ‘the just shall live by faith’ has so often been demeaned to a so-called ‘spiritual’ level that is internalised and no longer visible. It turns the Faith into a somewhat secret religion and that is the antithesis of either Old or New Testament theology.

Psalm
There will ever be a strange dichotomy between Law and Faith in people’s minds and in their practice. Quite some comment has been made in last week’s readings, but I offer a comment or two here.
First of all, this psalmist rejoiced in the mere fact of God’s Law, for law properly seen and used offers a clear and solid regime for living and inter-relating. It is the opposite of chaos, something that both Jews and other of the time feared greatly. Chaos is destructive and pointless; Law is neither, properly approached.
On the other hand, when I become legalistic, I become harsh and divisive. It becomes a tool to ensure (to my certainty) my superiority and your inferiority, and that becomes almost as destructive as chaos.
If there is one thing that mars the lives of countless people these days, it is the utter uncertainty and lack of values – so people end up being unaware of which way is up. One wonders to what extent the current issues of depression and anger stem from that factor in life.

Epistle
If you take the time to read the omitted verses (5 – 10) you may realize the reason for their non-inclusion. Thessalonians was written quite early in Paul’s ministry and you may note that if you read Paul’s letters in order of date of writing, that the development of his eschatology is clearly visible. So too is his rather punitive theology of hellfire and damnation.
It must have been a very difficult thing to be Christian in Thessalonika – then and now one suspects. It was a pagan city, of Greek allegiance - and the ancient Jewish expectations within the Faith would have been quite anomalous to most people there. It is remarkable to see the extent to which the Faith grew in such infertile ground. Remember, too, that Christianity was not the only ‘new religion’ (or old!) floating around. What is called ‘New Age’ these days is nothing but a revival of much of what passed for religion then – and before, and after.

GOSPEL
This story of Zacchaeus is a stunning tale of growth of a human being from self-obsession to faith, and it also illustrates the stunning capacity of Jesus to recognize and respond to people in unexpected and surprising situations. Our Lord’s ministry was, primarily, to offer the chance to move forward and develop as human, and this is a remarkable instance.
Read between the lines, and do not miss the ‘small man syndrome’ that seemed to motivate this man. You have come across other examples surely, where little people try to magnify their position to make up for their lack of size and influence. One suspects that Zac became a tax collector simply in order to amass wealth and (somewhat false) status simply to thumb the nose at his contemporaries. That he would have been hated for it would have had little effect: this short man had endured such misjudgement all his life, no doubt.

I find it fascinating that Jesus invited Himself to Zac’s place for lunch. As the tale unfolds, Zac would have been somewhat delighted that Jesus Himself thumbed His nose at current social etiquette for the sake of another human being. Jesus never was one to kow-tow to current social practices, as you will have noticed. And the mere fact that he was seen as human as anyone else may well have been the pivot on which the sudden and powerful change came to that man.

Notice, if you will, the use of the word ‘salvation.’ It has nothing to do with heaven here: it has everything to do with being made whole, being healed, given room to move and grow. It is the opening of the door of opportunity for Zacchaeus to become the person he was created to be. Barriers to that growth were removed, not by Jesus interestingly, but by the little man himself.

NOTES FOR A SERMON

Several times over the years I have pondered with people outside the Faith about how they would consider a world and life not so much without conflict, as without unresolved conflict. Their responses have been quite interesting, really. One of the chief complaints as they ponder the apparently impossible is that it strikes them as being boring, boring, boring. When you stop and think about it, you have to see that whilst no news can be good news, no news at all would leave a considerable blank at 7.00pm on ABC TV. So is all this a matter of the Good News being no news at all for most of our Australian contemporaries? In the face of today’s readings that may well appear to be the case.

So the question I have for you today is .......... is the Gospel irrelevant to most of today’s population? It is an important issue to discuss!

Irrelevance used to be very much the in word as Christians faced their uncertain future. It may still apply where some Christians tend to resemble troglodytes and attempt to live a matter of a century or two ago. Anyhow, it may well be that there are not a lot of people concerned enough about the state of the world and relationships – or perhaps feel that it is futile to attempt any change or betterment. In the end, it must be said that in spite of such resistance to change, the need is there, and is worth attempting to find a resolution.

“Today salvation has come to this house.” It may well be that one of the problems we Christians have is the use of words, and the meanings we place upon them. That ‘s’ word is a case in point, which reduces what we are on about to the old saw “Jesus saves” being met with ‘at which Bank?’ All a bit twee, of course. I have to say that the hardest part, I have found, in 50 years of ministry, is to get people prepared to think beyond the trite and tried understanding of the Faith. ‘I was taught such and such in Sunday School and that is what I will always believe!’ And there is not much one can do to move the troglodyte forward, in spite of the fact that Sunday School tended to be a rather poor learning centre. Lots of enthusiasm, thank heaven, but very little Biblical or theological skill.

So back to the Readings. Little is known about the prophet Habakkuk except that the evidence points to him being a contemporary of Jeremiah; that means also that 2nd Isaiah and Ezekiel we in action around the same times. This prophet’s problem with what he saw as evil is that God seemed to be using pagan – and therefore sinful! – nations as instruments of punishment of the People of God. Yet it was wider than that, for the prophet’s real issue was that evil always seemed to win the day, and that left the righteous out on a fairly useless limb. Unlike the other-mentioned prophets, Habakkuk was arguing against God, rather than against the errant Israel. In other words, evil was the great problem for the prophets; why is it not so much the case now?

Had you lived in the time referred to, around the beginning of the sixth century BC, you would be more aware of the fact that those now revered prophets were in an almost total minority. Jeremiah was imprisoned and threatened several times and went in fear of his life. Isaiah longed for Israel to take up its role as Servant of the Lord (though they still do not see that challenge in their reading of the Scriptures, I discover,) And you know from your own reading of the Gospels, that Jesus had no easy path to tread, being opposed so often and constantly by those who one would have thought knew better. In other words, it remains a fact of life, then and now, that searchers after truth and reconciliation may well be few and far between. In spite of that, the realities are also quite near to people, even if they turn their backs upon it.

I guess the surprising thing, as evidences by today’s Gospel, is that searchers after truth may well be found in the most unexpected places. (I can vouch, for instance, for the fact that my most responsive ‘congregation’ was in Prison.) Had you lived in Jericho then, (even more so now perhaps!) you would not have expected Zacchaeus to have reacted the way he did. He would have been one of the most despised inhabitant of the town, and an apostate of the first order as far as the synagogue was concerned. Mention has been made before of the small man syndrome, doubtless as common then as now. It may be reading into the information more than is there, but one can imagine this young fellow growing up in an atmosphere where he was looked down on, and despised for his lack of stature. That can be devastating for many people, especially in their younger years. (I recall having to do with a Senior School pupil many years ago, quite some inches shorter than his peers, male and female, and being ‘too big for his boots’ in order to prove some point or other. So doubtless our short character determined to rub it in the noses of his contemporaries by having ‘the best house and the best car and the highest status’ - albeit with the Romans! And it may well have been a situation similar to Matthew (Levi) who had come to the conclusion that the amassing of wealth did not reach it promised proportion. It is only as the honesty of such people comes to the surface that any sense of search or real betterment stirs within them. It certainly did with Matthew, and, as we see, with Zacchaeus.

It is often said that the ‘hip pocket nerve’ offers a real insight into the true nature of a person. If one gives to make an impression, then they have yet to learn. But if they act as did Matthew and Zacchaeus, then something rather more genuine is going on inside them. And I doubt if it needs to be said that there are never a great number of people of that sort of character around.

Salvation had come to the house of Zacchaeus that day because the barriers to him going anywhere in his real pilgrimage of life were broken down – and they were broken down by old Zac himself. Certainly, Jesus offered the possibility, which is all He did if you look closely, and then supported him for the time He was in town. The path ahead would still have been problematic for the tax collector, for he would have had to cope with a most unhappy Roman regime, a misunderstanding by his peers, and a sense of threat from his co-religionists. Following Christ is never going to offer a bed of roses, an easy travel.

So it is an informative and challenging series of readings, and one which intending Christians ought to take note of. Whilst the Gospel is Good News, it is also running diametrically opposite to the normal human stream of things, contrary to the culture of most parts of the world and times in history, but it remains – as far as I can see – the only valid, relevant, effective path to overcoming evil and creating community through reconciliation. And both the way it all works, and the outcomes it produces remains the same for either vertical (towards God) or horizontal (towards others) aspect.