November 4, 2007:  KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK
Luke 19:1-10; 2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12; Psalm 119:137-144
Eileen Parfrey  --  Springwater Presbyterian Church

In this day and age, an American who doesn’t buy insurance is either too quaint or too poor.  It’s as if Americans think that having insurance means they don’t have to suffer.  I have friends in Wisconsin who make it a religious practice to not buy insurance, other than what is legally-mandated to drive.  I was appalled when I first learned of this, but I have come to appreciate their point of view, especially since reading the article, “Fitness Fixation:  Why health is not a civic virtue.”  I read it, thinking to be let off the hook at the health club, but instead found why the lectionary committee eliminated from today’s 2 Thessalonians text the part where Paul says suffering strengthens faith.  In our culture (at least according to this article), avoidance of suffering has become the focus of life, rather than the living of it, almost like a second god.  We’re so concerned to remove barriers to health and longer life that “how long” we live is more important than “how” we live. 
            Paul tells the church in Thessalonika that suffering is a part of life, and embracing it deepens their faith.  To hear him, suffering is a means of grace.  Well, the crowd in the gospel lesson would have cheerfully embraced suffering as a means of grace on behalf of that new convert, Zaccheus.  After their own suffering for the sake of Zaccheus’ career trajectory in the Roman tax bureaucracy, his ready access to cheap grace didn’t fit their picture of a just God.  Zac oughta go through proper channels, pay tuition and get a degree from the synagogue in Voluntary Restitution, do the repayment project, write a dissertation on Public Remorse.  After he did the Law thing, maybe they’d cut him some slack, but tree climbing is simply not enough.
Negative and judgmental though the crowd may be when Zaccheus gets religion, how many of us don’t narrow our eyes just a bit when a prsioner’s claims to finding Jesus are the basis for early parole?  Maybe they’ve made peace with Zac and his brand of evil, learned to manage his style of extortion, and now they were afraid of a replacement.  Maybe they’re reacting with the “me too” of little kids seeing the big kids getting something good:  “How come I’m not getting any?”  It’s convenient to believe that they get what they deserve when tough times fall on those whose lives we don’t approve.  The scary thing about social lepers is the fear that we might catch what they’ve got.
Maybe if the crowd understood that forgiveness is not condoning, they might have an easier time with Zaccheus.  They needed judgments to live in their messy culture.  They are as efficient as Simple Living magazine which offers to re-organize its readers’ linen closets.  This is “good” (hang onto it) and this is “bad” (toss it).  The problem with these judgments is that people are not half-empty mouthwash bottles, slightly worn towels, and out of date medicines.  There is no doubt that Zaccheus is a bad guy.  Tax collecting was legalized extortion.  As the bureau chief, he had the highest level of complicity, even if he didn’t personally make concrete overshoes.  He’s rich, and Luke never conceded a rich person could get past the pearly gates.  And yet, radical grace is bestowed on him in Jesus’ self-invitation. 
Zaccheus can only respond with gratitude.  And he expresses that gratitude in generosity—the offer of restitution. which mirrors the abundance he receives.  You remember abundance.  Not “how much” you’ve got, but “there’s more where this came from.”  Who is to say?  Perhaps Zaccheus, that great extortionist, had more to be forgiven than anyone else there.  The crowds at least got that he needed it.  But when that social leper receives the forgiveness, they are offended.  So does that make them in need of healing for begrudging grace extended to another?  Francis, that silly, pampered rich boy, dreaming of grandeur and glory before he took the road to sainthood, Francis did not think he was the one in need of healing.  He was no leper!  He was the golden boy of Assisi, his public frivolity liberally garnished with piety and generous alms giving.  He didn’t know when he got down off his high horse that he was the one being converted.  He just knew, when he met the leper at the side of the road, that he was the one who needed to get down.  He didn’t know that kissing a leper would change his life, he just knew for the first time that an exception had not been made in his case.  He was no better and no worse than the most revolting person he met.  A leper, whose bad breaks and undeniably bad lifestyle choices had him living out of the back of a truck.  Francis had the styling new clothes, the late-model horse, a commission in the Pope’s army, to prove that he did not need healing.  His father could have tolerated the bills for drink and women and clothes.  But to give away his wealth, to live in freedom from it—that was intolerable.
            But it was also grace.  The same grace that had Zaccheus climbing down from the tree giving away his ill-gotten gains, and doing it in a way that didn’t just go above and beyond the Law, it burned any bridges for going back. What offends the crowd, what draws persecution to the church in Thesslonika, is daring to live in a way that takes God’s promises seriously.  Last week, Don MacKinnon told why he has continued in adulthood the practice of tithing his mother taught him the day he received his first paycheck for delivering papers.  Don’s reasons are simple.  He believes in Jesus Christ, that the church is the Body of Christ, that his giving makes a difference, and it is a source of joy to him. 

Simple reasons.  Reasons as simple as Zaccheus’, who declares he’s going to make restitution.  Sometimes people think Zaccheus’ act of restitution means he “did” something to merit the grace Jesus extends to him.  But given the excessiveness of his offer—above and beyond the Law’s requirements—I think Zaccheus knew something.  He knew he’d already been forgiven, had already been given a way out of his bad, old life.  His offer neither bought salvation nor earned it.  His offer showed it as an accomplished fact.  He was living as if salvation had really happened. 
            I’m coming to appreciate Francis’ view of poverty as a spiritual practice.  When our hands are busy hanging on to what we’ve got—even “what little we’ve got”—they are too full to receive anything else.  Try working on your computer or driving a car while holding a tennis ball in each hand.  Empty hands are open to abundance.  Zaccheus could receive the grace offered by Jesus because, despite being a rich man, he understood his own poverty.  Had Zaccheus bought the crowd’s understanding of him, he could have believed it was because of his wealth that Jesus invited himself to his house.  He could have said, “An exception has been made in my case,” and that would have been the end of the story.  But because Zaccheus knew his own poverty, his own need of grace, his own undeserving, he was able in effect to say of Jesus, “You cared about me.”  Not about what he could do or buy or make for God’s kingdom.  Not even about how bad he was.  Just, “You cared about me.”  That’s abundance.  Then he could be extravagant in restitution because money was no longer his source of security and identity.  Abundance is being able to say, “You cared about me.”  That is how Francis understood poverty, friends.  But it is also how we can understand abundance.  To be able to say of God, “You cared about me.”  Not about what I can do.  Me.  Not about how bad Iam or my illness.  You cared about me.  Abundance, then, is to live that way.