The Letter and a Real Story about Welcome and Salvation, Luke 19:1-10

 

"Letter"
Franz Wright, January 1998

I am not acquainted with anyone
there, if they spoke to me
I would not know what to do.
But so far nobody has, I know
I certainly wouldn’t.
I don’t participate, I’m not allowed;
I just listen, and every morning
have a moment of such happiness, I breathe
and breathe until the terror returns. About the time
when they are supposed to greet one another
two people actually look into each other’s eyes
and hold hands a moment, but
the church is so big and the few who are there
are seated far apart. So this presents no real problem.
I keep my eyes fixed on the great naked corpse, the vertical corpse
who is said to be love
and who spoke the world
into being, before coming here
to be tortured and executed by it.
I don’t know what I am doing there. I do
notice the more I lose touch
with what I previously saw as my life
the more real my spot in the dark winter pew becomes—
it is infinite. What we experience
as space, the sky
that is, the sun, the stars
is intimate and rather small by comparison.
When I step outside the ugliness is so shattering
it has become dear to me, like a retarded
child, precious to me.
If only I could tell someone.
The humiliation I go through
when I think of my past
can only be described as grace.
We are created by being destroyed.

I want to tell you a little secret. Just a little one. Come closer. Don’t tell. One of the reasons that I have been acquainting you with poetry is to make you a better reader of Scripture, a more careful and curious person who pays attention to more than meaning but also to beauty and metaphor, rhyme and reason, silence and words. I don’t care if you like poetry. I want you to curiously love Scripture.

One of our values at Trinity is: Inspired by curiosity, we approach Bible reading with open questions, authenticity, and grace. In case you’ve forgotten, that word “curious,” notice the root c-u-r, is related to the word “cure” and originally meant “careful” encouraging us to explore slowly, gently. That’s what poems demand of us as well. They are like the beautiful “mountain roads” of the literary world, requiring that we slow down to engage hairpin words, and metaphorical corners, while navigating big ideas and emotions.

Last Sunday, someone confessed to me that she often doesn’t get poetry. She said something like, “I just don’t understand what they mean,” in an almost apologetic and forlorn way. I told her that it might help to get rid of that question or perhaps certainly never lead with it. I asked her, “If I took you out into the Oregon wilderness, and showed you the Three Sisters mountain range, would you look at it and say, “I just don’t know what it means?” Of course, you wouldn’t, I said. You would probably say, “How beautiful!” “Wow, look at the light flowing down the rock.” “Look at the dappled green rivers of tree on the mountain side.” “It makes me feel close to God,” or say, “I’m so amazed at what God has made.”

Friends, the best way to read mountains, poems, and Scripture is like that - inhabit them, wonder at them, notice the beauty, the elegance, the ways in which they look and how they make you feel. Don’t just try and wring meaning out of them like a wet dish cloth.

Our poem today is entitled Letter by Franz Wright, who has the only distinction of being the Pulitzer prize winning son of a Pulitzer prize winning dad – both in poetry. His poem Letter is about his experience of sitting alone in church, fearing the time of welcome, wrestling with his own anxieties, while finding himself being transformed by Jesus and connected to others. When I read that poem it made me feel that ache for connection, and had me think about the kind of letter that Zacchaeus might have written after his own conversion and also clued me into how Luke writes very poetically about this odd encounter. So I want to read both carefully, curiously, noticing how they talk about spiritual encounters with Jesus.

19 Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. ² A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. ³ He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. ⁴ So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.

Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. He’s actually fixated on it, Luke tells us, using the words: “He resolutely set out to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51). Like a boxer staring down his opponent, Jesus is unflinchingly determined to go and fight, to do what he has come to do. So Jericho wasn’t a stop – the language signals that he simply desires to quickly move through it – he’s focused on somewhere else, in other words and we now that something is the cross. And while he’s on his way, crowds are forming like spectators watching a parade or sporting contest – cheering him on, encouraging him as teaches and heals people. But there’s an obstacle – or at least nasty armadillo in Jesus’ path – waiting to be squished along the road – a man who was a “chief tax collector and was wealthy.”

 

This is the only place in the NT where the office of “chief tax collector” is noted referencing both Zacchaeus’ powerful rank and great wealth. We must remember that “tax collectors” essentially worked for the Roman Empire, the occupying force which had invaded and conquered the kingdom of Judah in 63 BC. That wound is still fresh and raw and Zacchaeus is a Jew who determined to collaborate with Jewish oppressors and in doing so enriched himself. We’ve foolishly focused on his height turning him into a caricature and clownish midget. Make no mistake, no one was laughing about Zacchaeus. He was a traitor to his people. His life feels like an earlier echo of Franz Wright: “I don’t participate, I’m not allowed.”

⁵ When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” ⁶ So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly. ⁷ All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”

And when Jesus, this one who is resolute toward a different goal, reached his spot – he stopped. A couple of weeks ago, I talked about Moses and the burning bush and how Moses was able to see and move toward the burning bush because he was curious and attentive. Friends, Zacchaeus was Jesus’ burning bush. I believe that Jesus stopping was miraculous but I don’t mean to say that Jesus knew that Zacchaeus was there or his name by some epiphany of knowledge. No, the miracle was simply being aware enough of to pay attention to his surroundings and those around him. I think that he saw Zacchaeus and knew his name because people were talking about him, berating him, pointing him, probably had been trying to keep him out, and Jesus heard. One of my favorite spiritual thinkers is the French philosopher Simone Weil who said: “Those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people capable of giving them their attention. The capacity to give one’s attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle. Nearly all those who think they have this capacity do not possess it. Warmth of heart, impulsiveness, pity are not enough…The love of neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say to him: ‘What are you going through?’”

Lukes telling of the story reveals a Jesus who doesn’t seem too concerned about sin but rather about seeing us, knowing our name, and inviting himself over. The only ones who mention “sin” in the story are “all the people.” When I was teaching about this story in a Sunday School class a number of years ago, I told the class that one of my questions that I was going to ask Jesus when I saw him face-to-face was: “What did you say to Zacchaeus?” I was totally surprised when a woman in the class responded: “What’s that to you? That’s none of your business.” She then turned the tables on me asking: “Aren’t you glad that he won’t tell others what he’s had to talk with you about?” “Yes,” I said. “Yes and amen.”

By the way, let’s lean into Luke’s thoughtful poetry of “All the people.” First, I can’t think of anyone in the Gospels, other than Jesus, in which an entire crowd is against one other person. This shouldn’t be surprising. This guy had defrauded his own nation and was helping fund an occupying force who killed his fellow citizens. Second, they aren’t “grumbling” or “muttering” as if Zacchaeus is an inconvenience. The word can be rendered that way but it also has the sense of something much more loud and emotional that matches a crowd furious that a traitor, who made it rich off the back of selling out his country, could be welcomed by Jesus. Perhaps a better translation which matches the sentiment is to say “bellowed” or “howled.” By the way, this same term is used in the Old Testament for when the Israelites are rioting against God and Moses’ leadership in the desert. Third, and perhaps more importantly, the only other place this word appears in the whole NT is Luke 15:2: “Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. ² But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So Luke is using the word to intentionally connect to Jesus’ fictional trilogy of grace, which includes the story of the Prodigal son, to the real life encounter with Zacchaeus. And this time, he signals, no one likes it! By the way, the negative reaction of “all the people” to Zacchaeus reminds us that everyone loves the story of the prodigal son until it’s a real story. We love the fiction of God loving others until real traitors who hurt us get involved. Everyone loves forgiveness as long as we are assured that the worst of us get what they deserve. All people love hearing about about grace until it’s offered to killers, traitors,charlatans, quacks, Democrats, Republicans, racist, LGBTQ, and any other folk deemed unworthy or wicked. In Luke 18, Luke tells that “all the people” see Jesus heal a blind man and praise God. No one is praising God when Jesus takes a traitor out to lunch. This kind of love is what Franz Wright speaks of which spoke the world into being, including Zacchaeus, before coming here to be tortured and executed by it.

 ⁸ But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.” ⁹ Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. ¹⁰ For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

Luke, the narrator, and Jesus, are in a hurry. But . . . Today – time is once again peaking out us. Or perhaps weaving around like a drunk person. When we look at “how” Luke tells the story the playful, playing with time seems paramount. Jesus isn’t supposed to stop, remember? He’s just passing through. And yet he does and demands to be a guest at Zacchaeus’ house “today.” Then, immediately, once the two have gone and all the crowd “bellows” there protest, before the table has even be set and the food prepared, we have this time-machine-like announcement of Zacchaeus announcing his intention to give away his possessions, payback four-fold anyone he has cheated, and Jesus announcing salvation.

What does this do to us as reader? Well, it once again, points to the fact that Jesus isn’t so interested in sin but transformation. He’s more interested in feeding the hungry than berating them for any reasons that have placed them in that state, which is highlighted by the time jump resulting in Zacchaeus’ immediate change of heart. By the way, I did read a silly commentary that Zacchaeus came down the tree and repented on the spot – that’s simply nonsense. Don’t read the Bible like a three year old. Second, it highlights a feature of Luke’s message which wants us to know that salvation isn’t so much some future in heaven but a change of heart resulting in relationship with Jesus and with others on the earth. “Today!,” Jesus announces, “salvation has come to this house.” So salvation involves a “now” element, a “this house” element, that is to be lived and not merely enjoyed in one’s heart.  Ugh. Are you starting to get the picture? Do you see how beautiful this is? Do you see that Luke is writing a story poetically? There so much more to say and now I’m running out of time but I’ll say one more thing and, don’t worry, I saved the hardest thing for last.

The word “salvation” is used rather sparingly in the New Testament given how often we use it currently in the church. The word doesn’t even appear in Matthew or Mark and only one time in John. Luke, however, uses it 6 times. Two times its used for Jesus himself as One who brings it. So, for example, Simeon, holding the baby Jesus, will declare, “My eyes have seen your salvation” (2:30). Three times it will be used for what God is doing through Jesus prophetically for the people of Israel but also “all people” (think Zacchaeus and “all the people”), concerning rescue from enemies (1:71), forgiveness of sin (1:77), and a prophecy of Isaiah in which God will metaphorically remake the landscape of the entire earth (3:6)- -it’s about justice, illustrated as a rich criminal making things right through restitution rather than punishment. The last mention of the term is Jesus using it concretely, realistically, in real time for an actual person. It begins with Jesus’ love and attention which flows into a renewal of relationships in which there are no more enemies because the one who has hoarded wealth now shares it, and results in an affirmation of a traitor’s dignity. The nowness and presence of salvation connects to Zacchaeus’ announcement about financial restitution which is about Zacchaeus relationship with others. It is not Jesus saying that “now” God loves Zacchaeus. It’s about Jesus’ love restoring Zacchaeus to others. It’s about friendship with one another and not simply me and God. That’s why conversion is a social enterprise because it involves money and not merely your soul, others and not simply where you go when you die.

Now, sit with how that makes you feel. What are you drawn to in this beautifully shaped story? What do you hear the Spirit whispering to you from Luke’s curious and careful words? What’s one beautiful snapshot that you will want to take away with you from this well-crafted, poetic story? This time I’m not going to read Franz Wright’s poem again as lovely as it is. Rather, I want to read Luke 19 for you one more time and invite you to hear it as a beautiful poem.