Thoughts on the Gospel Reading
Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time C
Luke 19:1-10 (see TEXT below)
We are sometimes offered the quaintly presented account of Zacchaeus, the “wee little man” coming to Jesus, but we would do well to remember that what is as stake here is more than a happy story we sing to Sunday's children, as important as this is. No, what is at stake is the picture of a person burdened down by personal sin and guilt, which opens to us perhaps the purest post-modern question of all, at least the major one of the TEXT: Where might today's sinner go to find relief from the burden of sin?
As we attempt to think this through I have the sense that it is not a problem of the same magnitude and degree of concern that it once was to this old world. In short, do post-modern people really seem to need a place to go for sin relief? Is sin real anymore and an actual burden to anyone? Notice, I am not asking if they (or we) are sinners, that answer seems self-evident. No, I am asking if they would see themselves as sinners in need, as the man in the sycamore tree saw himself. Here the answer is self-evident as well.
Said another way, to us religious types, and those of us who sometimes think about GOD, the problem of sin still registers on the radar of the heart, but I suspect that for the average person of the West, a burden about sin ranks as a fairly low level of concern. Now, we have scandal. In fact, as a voyeuristic culture -- we are mostly watchers -- we love to see the the dirt brought out in the open, but as to any sense of shame, well that seems to have gone out with high-collars and neckties.
Much has been lost here.
I now think I can hear the howls of the enlightened, but I say this even while understanding the damage done to the psyche of we moderns by vicious religious judgmentalism, a fact of reality and not myth, which I have consistently stood against for most if not all of my ministry (now over 34 years). But is it not also true that post-moderns are mostly immune to such damage, having seen through the parental and institutional guilt-trips, and having finally rejected them outright?
In the defense of the more religiously minded, we have come to see that there is a difference between true, moral guilt and guilt feelings. Guilt feelings are mostly trumped up charges against ourselves that feed false views of self, while true, moral guilt comes from deeds actually done. Thought about in a different way, true moral guilt is based in reality and conscience -- “I did this,” while guilt feelings are based upon false cognitive scripts that run in loops inside ourselves - “I'm a bad person.”
For post-moderns the struggle here comes at the point of conscience which is informed not by the Almighty, but instead by the latest rock star or movie heroine, so that what it means to be a person in the West has fundamentally changed and shifted off its historic base.
For some this is a cause for a joyful liberation -- the wicked moralists have lost their grip. You will forgive me if I do not share the joy. What is lost is personal responsibility and eventually the soundness of the soul. But notice what is also lost is the existential need for the Gospel -- the death, burial and resurrection work of Jesus -- to be applied to a life. Where’s the desperation, after all, for the sacrificial death of a Savior applied to someone's sinful heart if one no longer believes in sin?
True, there are some, even some post-moderns, who have wonderfully had the Gospel applied and discovered forgiveness, but the vast majority of thirty-somethings have left this version of world far behind. And let me say, if one does not see this as a problem then I doubt one is much in touch with those that people the culture today, or one has not much tried to apply the Gospel to the culture in a way that can be heard.
What then will be the basic appeal of the Gospel if we cannot offer forgiveness for sin? I do not have the answer, but I have a possible direction. Zacchaeus is offered forgiveness, yes, but he is also offered a new life and a new way to live. He is offered a life built for others which looks beyond the self. This is an appeal that many post-moderns can find truthful because they clearly see how the modern world has been lived for nothing but the individual self, and in this they find the ruination of the planet.
For example, many post-moderns have seen their parents split for reasons of self-fulfillment, leaving them and their siblings in the lurch of emotional poverty. And many of them have followed suit, but rather than seeing this as just the way things are, many are searching for a new way to live. Instinctively, they know that being a Western Christian does not offer this to them, but what they may not know -- because they have only heard a caricature of the Gospel -- is following the ways of Jesus ultimately leads them to a new place, to being part of a new people, to the life of wholeness.
For this newness to occur, the mystery of GOD must somehow be rediscovered, the GOD beyond the formulas and proofs. The GOD, who in fact, comes to your house, eats a meal with you and loves you just as you are -- sin and all -- and then demands you make new choices.
Luke 19:1-10
At that time, Jesus came to Jericho and intended to pass through the town. Now a man there named Zacchaeus, who was a chief tax collector and also a wealthy man, was seeking to see who Jesus was; but he could not see him because of the crowd, for he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree in order to see Jesus, who was about to pass that way. When he reached the place, Jesus looked up and said, "Zacchaeus, come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house." And he came down quickly and received him with joy. When they all saw this, they began to grumble, saying, "He has gone to stay at the house of a sinner." But Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, "Behold, half of my possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor, and if I have extorted anything from anyone I shall repay it four times over." And Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house because this man too is a descendant of Abraham. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost."
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