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Pentecost XXII - 26-C Oct 31,2004
H O M I L Y G R I T S
Twenty Second Sunday after Pentecost
(Proper 26C)
October 31, 2004
All Hallows Eve
©Copyright 2004 by Grant M. Gallup
Book of Common Prayer Lectionary:
Isaiah 1:10-20 Come now, let us argue it out, says the Lord.
Psalm 32 Beati quorum - Happy are the forgiven
2 Thessalonians 1:1-5(6-10)11-12 We must always give thanks to God for
you
Luke 19:1-10 Today Liberation has come to this house
"Moon City" (i.e., Jericho ) was an important town just north of the Dead
Sea, and with a great history. It is the lowest city on earth, 840 feet
below sea level, and claims to be the oldest as well. It's not surprising
that it's still a market town. Here, remember, Joshua had "fit the
battle". The city is much spoken of in the Hebrew Scriptures, and in
secular history as well, for Mark Antony had once presented the city to
Cleopatra as a gift, and here Herod the Great had died in 4 BCE. Here his
son Archelaus built a magnificent palace with rose gardens. It was a busy
town, with the kind of business a crossroads town would have. Its entrance
roads were bordered no doubt with lovely trees, as ancient towns
were. We hear about a Sycamore in today's gospel. The tree combines
features of the fig and the mulberry, and it can grow to the height of an
elm, with stout branches not far from the ground, that make it easy to
climb. Jesus followed other pilgrims from Galilee down the Jericho road
through this town to Jerusalem, to avoid going through Samaria, the
heretic territory. I went there a few years ago as a "social justice
tourist" dodging my way about with an Israeli visa in my passport, which
prevented me from visiting Arab countries on the same trip with the same
passport. So I had two passports, and had to remember which to show. We
rode into town in mid afternoon and stopped at an air-conditioned tourist
trap full of Holy Land trinkets and sleepy shopkeepers, where we all had
ice cold beverages, gratifying indeed in the sizzling heat. It was hard
to imagine it in Jesus' time, with no ice, no air. The same suffocating
politics, the same occupied territory. Now it is occupied by Israelis,
then by Italians. In Jesus' day there lived here a lot of folk who
collaborated with the occupying Roman Army, for it was a place much like
Baghdad's green zone now, where the collaborators live with Iwad Allawi, or
like old Saigon in the days of the American Imperium there, or lovely old
La Habana before Fidel liberated it from Gringo occupation. Or Kabul,
when the Russians tamed it in 1979 and made it a livable university town,
before Jimmy Carter's CIA funded the muhajadeen in 1980 to overthrew its
stability and drive the Russians home. Civility fled with the
students, and the Taliban took over. Osama bin Laden helped to wrest
Afghanistan out of the grip of the Communist civilization, and the U.S. was
grateful then. It was "payback" for the U.S.' own expulsion from Viet
Nam. We drove it back 500 years into the Dust Age. That's the goal now in
Mesopotamia, Between the Two Rivers, a/k/a Iraq. It may even astonish
Dick Cheney, in time.
Amongst colonial officials who lived and served the Roman masters in these
provincial capitals, there was long ago a little man named Zacchaeus, which
may be an ironic name, for it means "the Pure One." Far from "pure", he
had made himself rich from trafficking in the servile status of his people;
decent people would have nothing to do with him, publicly. In every
country and in every class there are those who will collaborate, and last
Sunday we met such a one, daring to enter the Temple at the same time as a
holy man, to say his prayers.
Today we have the little man who made himself tall by his fraud, and by
shinnying up the sycamore. He has doubtless heard that the radical rabbi
who preaches tax resistance and civil disobedience has come to town with
his Zealot disciples. Zacchaeus is likely more apprehensive than eager,
and has no reason to be glad for the coming of Rabbi Yeshua of
Nazareth. Among the followers of Jesus is a man named Simon the Zealot,
that is Simon the Militant Revolutionary. Jesus is already unpopular even
with the conservative Scribes, the Pharisees, the Temple officials, and his
name has reached the ears of the High Priest and the Puppet King, who has
long heard of his celebrity and wants to see him "pass a
miracle." Zacchaeus is no more eager to see Jesus than an Uncle Tom was
to see Dr. Martin Luther King come to Selma. The police like to take photos of
civil rights and peace marchers, but in those days you had to go see them
for yourself. He wanted a look, and since he is wiry as well as
wily, he squirrels himself up the Sycamore. He has found his
tree. He doesn't want to be seen in the procession, waving a
messianic palm, nor to be part of the rabble that is thereby roused,
for Zacchaeus is a bystander, politically, socially, theologically. There
are many of those, as Real Life passes by, as the Struggle straggles down
the street, as Time Marches On, as the Child of Humankind goes this way,
today and tomorrow.
Lots of us prefer to stay in our Tree, amongst the pinched figs, for it's
safer to watch the world's procession as a spectator than to come down to
the dusty street and follow the Galilean. As he passes by, Jesus sees a
stirring in the branches, and amongst the heart-shaped leaves spies little
Zeke clinging like a ripe fruit, ready for pinching into maturity. "Just
looking, thank you" Zeke might have nodded to this accidental attention
> from below. Zeke is where he thinks it possible to look down in safety
upon the world's procession down the street, and stay uninvolved. Jesus
will soon "walk on by" and Zeke can get back to his ledger and his tax
bites, where cross the crowded ways of life. But Jesus ups the
ante: "Zacchaeus, Hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house
today." And thus so softly and simply Jesus plucks this unripe fig of a
fellow from his branch. How did rabboni know his name? Ah, the oppressed
always know the name of the oppressor; anonymity is mostly the lot of the
lowly, but the rich oppressor hides his identity when he can, in the shade
of the sycamore tree, and his profits in secret bank accounts. Jesus'
yell is not only up the tree of Zacchaeus, for he has been barking up our
own trees these thousand years. This pericope used to be read at the
Dedication of Church Buildings, for its declaration that "today Liberation
has come to this house." But the liturgical engineers perhaps got wary of
the connotations, and slipped it out. The church did not want to appear to
have Zeke for a landlord, repenting and sharing his goods with the poor.
It nevertheless seems an appropriate time to recall it for the blessings of
church real estate. Most of the Christians in the world are well-off
amongst the planet's religious people. In VietNam, Christians were mostly
those who had cooperated with the French, and before them the Chinese, and
then in turn, the Estadounidenses.
(Now that's a word that's easy for you to say!) United Statesers!
In our century, the Christian Church is mostly made up those who have
figured out a way to accommodate themselves to the Empire, that we may
survive what Lillian Hellman called this "Scoundrel Time." The
contemporary denominations make their peace with Scoundrel Time. And we
know that the world is full of the poor who have suffered because of us--we
who call ourselves "Church" are Zacchaeus and his friends, lapsed and
compromised believers. We know also that Jesus is a poor man who comes for
the poor, as their Liberator. But is he here for us burgesas too? Is
there to be "liberation" for Zacchaeus and the rest of us trimmers? (the
Church prefers to call it "salvation"--and this religious word limits
it to her Blanc Mange soul). Is there a way out for us too? Can we be
saved who have been part of the problem, and not part of the solution? Is
our salvation to be integral, and not fundamentalist? Integral liberation
is to fundamentalist salvation what whole wheat bread is to the Bimbo loaf
of air blown froth that passed for bread in the U.S. for a
generation. It's recital religion, the Scripture-as-slogan faith of Me
and Jesus swingin' on the out-house gate. The real Jesus bids us, "Come
out of your tree, for I'm moving in with you today." The complaint of the
neighbors is always the complaint of those who reject the God incarnate, as
"all who saw it began to grumble and said, 'he has gone to be the guest of
one who is a sinner." That is always the way Jesus gets his ticket punched
among us--with a grumble from the onlookers.
When Jesus moves in with us Republicans and Sinners, he rudely Humphrey
Bogarts his way to the head of the table and expects radical change, not
just the paper napkins of cosmetic hospitality. Not just
appearances. Zacchaeus receives the Lord with joy, we are told--he has
apparently been waiting for someone to liberate him from his life of luxury
with no friends left. The condemned are often on the edge of their despair,
waiting for Hope to come, often at the end of their wits, waiting for
Mother Wisdom to whistle. So Jesus says, Ï'm your friend, Zaccheus. I'm
here for supper. And thereby Zacchaeus revolutionizes his life--that is,
he repents. "I give half of my money to the poor" -- a nice
beginning! What a nice requisite for church membership! If every church
member in the U.S.were to do that, it would be a stick in the eye to
starvation in the land, a Banquet of the Poor from sea to shining sea. .
(Instead, we air-drop three-bean-salad in heat proof packs into the barren
Afghan desert for starving Taliban to find, or K-rations into Darfur for
mothers with dead children hanging at their paps.) And to those I have
cheated, says Zeke, I will do what the Scriptures require, and pay it back
four times over. The re-distribution of wealth is a Sign of the Coming of
the Commonwealth of God. It is, Jesus says, not only saving your neck. It
is Liberation. It is a restoration of wholeness for Zacchaaeus, and for
"all his household." It is a restoration of wholeness to the children of
Abraham, a restoration of life to the lost. The story is not told to us
merely as a sample of an individual escape, a soul snatched like a branch
> from the burning. The story is a parable and a paradigm for our
ecclesiastical praxis: it outlines the way our own assets as converted
people are to be assessed and redistributed in a Nuevo Alianza. We are to
invite Jesus into our lives, into our life as a parish, a diocese, a
conference, a presbytery, a synod, to sit in at our hearths and hearts,
look into our handbags, and look at our tax returns, with the former
capitalist tax cheat, now New Socialist Zeke: the books of household
accounts. Explain the Income and Expenses--the Ingresos and
Gastos. "Come now, let us argue it out" ("Let us reason together, as KJV
wrote it, and LBJ put it so memorably to the U.S. Congress, speaking like
Jehovah to Israel) Jesus asks Zacchaeus and you and me. Come down out of
your tree, you paid up churchmembers, and invite the Liberator indoors to
cast a liberative look at your ledger. Perhaps I'll have a look at your
hands, Yahweh says--or, "When you lift up your hands in prayer I'll hide my
eyes. . . there is blood on your hands." Yahweh has already responded ;
"Put away the evil of your deeds, away out of my sight. Cease to do evil
and learn to do right, pursue justice and champion the oppressed; give the
orphan her rights, plead the widow's cause. Come now, let us argue it out."
Verse 21 is not included in our pericope today, but you are free to expand
the lection to include it if you think it relevant to your situation in a
pulpit in Englad, Australia, in New Zealand, or in the USA today: "How the
faithful city has played the whore, once the home of justice where
righteousness dwelt--but now it murders!" What U.S. citizen, voting on
November 2d, does not know this to be true. Blue States or Red Ones.
.
Shall we dismiss the murder of unarmed Iraqis, nonviolent and humanitarian
workers in Iraq, whether by Bush, Blair, or the other Baghdad
terrorists, as "collateral damage," with the same nonchalance as the true
believers/bombers who thought the same about the slaughter of innocents in
the World Trade Center? Their objective to assault the Empire and the U.S.
objective to kill anyone it names as "terrorists" are to be balanced in
the economy of a slaughter house, a shambles of civilization? Do you think
this is what the Pauline writer meant today when he declares, "It is
surely just that God should balance the account by sending trouble to those
who trouble you, and relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well,
when our Lord Jesus Christ is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels
in blazing fire." But the writer goes on: "Then he will do justice upon
those who refuse to acknowledge God and will not obey the gospel of our
Lord Jesus."
The Qur'an also speaks of balancing accounts: "God knows the thoughts
within the breasts. It is He who accepts repentance from His servants, and
pardons evil deeds; He knows the things you do. And He answers those who
believe and do righteous deeds, and He gives them increase of His
bounty. And the unbelievers--for them awaits a terrible chastisement."
Sura XLII. 24ff. The Arabic word for repentance here is "taubah"which
means (as does our "repent") "turning away", a revolutionary reversal away
> from wrong, back towards justice. "Taubah" washes away the stain of
wrongdoing by right behavior. That is what little Zeke saw immediately
that he must do, upon leaving his tree and exiting his former
lifestyle. The justice of God in the day of Judgment will do for the
unrepentant Zekes what they failed to do themselves--balance the
accounts. That is the "terrible chastisement" that awaits the
unjust. It is the same fate the just have freely chosen and acted
upon. The tree will be shaken, indeed uprooted, and its clinging fruit,
the hidden and unrepentant compromisers with capitalism, will fall. But
for the repentant righteous, two gardens full of trees to climb for their
fruit await them (Sura 55:47) "which of your Lord's bounties will you and
you deny? wherein of every fruit two kinds" --two gardens, one in this
world and one in the life to come. And near the end of the Qur'an is also
the Vision of the Dawn, revealed In the Name of God, the Merciful, the
Compassionate:
"As for humankind, whenever the Lord tries him, and honors him, and
blesses him, then he says, 'My Lord has honored me." But when he tries him
and stints for him his provision, then he says, 'My Lord has despised
me.' No, indeed: but you honor not the orphan, and you urge not the
feeding of the needy, and you devour the inheritance greedily, and you love
wealth with an ardent love. No indeed! When the earth is ground to powder
and thy Lord comes, and the angels rank on rank, and Gehenna is brought
out, upon that day humankind will remember; and how shall the Reminder
be? He shall say, 'O would that I had forwarded for my life! Upon that
day none shall chastise as He chastises, none shall bind as He binds." But
to the just the message will be: " O soul at peace, return unto thy Lord,
well-pleased, well-pleasing! Enter thou among My servants! Enter thou My
paradise!" (Sura 89:20ff)
GRANT GALLUP
Apartado RP-10
Casa Ave Maria
Managua, Nicaragua C.A.
Tel. 011-505-2662165
gallup@tmx.com.ni
GRITS 4th series now on-line: http://newark.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/homilygrits