Lost
Luke 19:1-10
Luke 19:1-10 (NRSV):
1 He entered Jericho and was passing through it. 2 A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. 3 He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. 4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. 5 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.” 6 So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. 7 All who saw it began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.” 8 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.” 9 Then Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is a son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.”
I think there is more we could take from this story, beyond a cutesy song about a grown man climbing a tree, which…I’m not sure what this teaches children. That climbing trees is Biblical? I suppose it gives kids some context, some plot, some imagery, before they reflect on what to actually take away from the story. I’ll tell you what I take away.
Zaccheus was lost. At least that’s what Jesus thinks. Jesus’s hearers may have felt the same, but maybe with more resentment? After all, a tax collector was one of their own, conspiring with a shared enemy–Rome–and one who also likely took advantage of folks, collecting more money than required…for himself. A sellout and a crook.
What thoughts, feelings, and images does the word “lost” evoke? Many of you grew up in churches where “lost”–bottom line–meant “not Christian” or “on a hellbound trajectory” due to not being Christian. That’s not even on Jesus’ radar, of course, since Jesus wouldn’t have known what a Christian was, and talked about “hell” mostly rhetorically, as a way to speak about how we should and should not treat each other.
When Jesus speaks of coming “to seek out and save the lost,” I think he has people like Zaccheus in mind. What makes him lost? Externally, I’d say it has something to do with being a tax collector, and more particularly, with being an ally of Empire and with taking advantage of people, financially.
Internally, that might be harder to pin down, based on a few verses. Something about Zaccheus indicates that he has lost the way, or lost the plot. Or that he’d hadn’t yet found the way, or the plot. But unlike the judge character in the parable of the persistent widow we examined two weeks ago, a man unredeemable in the context of that story, this story is presented as a story about a real person, who can and does change.
Consider the setup. People hearing this story and those within the story would probably recognize this guy as kind of the worst. An agent of the Empire. A wealthy man. Wealth that likely comes at the expense of Jesus’ hearers, since the perception is that tax collectors amass their wealth by taking advantage of folks. Whether that’s true in every case, that’s the perception; there’s no sense of innocence, like Zaccheus is just doing his job, making the most of the world he lives in, imperfect as it is.
Why does Luke point out that he’s short? While you might be body-positive, this is meant to be derogatory, here, right? I guess this detail, along with the tree, could just demonstrate Zaccheus’ resolve, but you wonder if Luke and his audience would be laughing at this point, even feeling some shared solidarity and relief in finding something or someone to make fun of. Sometimes legitimate critique turns to mockery in a way that goes too far; sometimes you laugh so you don’t cry.
There are so many surprises in this story.
Surprise 1: Jesus wants to hang out with him. This is not like, in modern terms, Jesus hanging out with someone visiting a food bank, but like hanging out with a predatory lender, or someone else, in that vein, resented by those on the margins. “Really”? People might have wondered. “Him? Why?”
Surprise 2: Zaccheus says he’ll give half his possessions to the poor and make repairs for harms caused. Does this response surprise Jesus? Maybe not. I suspect Jesus had a good sense of who people truly were and when someone was on the cusp of change. Surprise the crowd? Yeah, I think so.
Surprise 3: He’s a Son of Abraham, too. You’ve othered him, but he’s not an “other.” Jesus focuses on common ground. And without overlooking harm done, I’m sure. You can, at once, say, “we’re the same” and “oh, we’re very different.” You can, at once, say “this person deserves respect” and “this person has some serious work to do.”
Surprise 4: Jesus came to find, to save people like Zaccheus. “I thought you were here to save us,” others might say. And they’d be right! But people who are hungry or sick or under threat of violence are not “lost” in the sense of needing to reconsider their most sacred commitments. People who make life worse for others, from a position of privilege? I think that’s closer to what is meant here by…“lost.”
Let me put it differently: what does it mean to have lost the plot? To have lost the plot of what matters? To have lost the plot of Love? The plot of harmony, peace, justice? To have lost the plot of recognizing the sacredness of each, the good in everyone?
One of our most sacred commitments, here, is the commitment to seeing that of God in the other, and in ourselves. It doesn’t mean we aren’t discerning about the very real harm people cause, or that we let people off the hook; it’s that we do our best to look for the Love in others, or even the seeds, the beginnings, the inklings of Love.
Jesus recognizes and nurtures the seeds of Love within Zacchaeus. Maybe the seeds of greed and fear and unquestioning obedience are also present in Zaccheus, nurtured by others, who took advantage of him. I don’t think people are born to terrorize each other, but become that way, for many reasons. But I hold out hope that such people, who are lost, can find their way back. They may not find their way. But they can.
I’m using that story metaphor of “losing the plot.” But we can also think in terms of journeys, of being on a quest. Where are we trying to go? Are we on a path that will get us there? What if we have lost our way, and are no longer on a reliable path? How do we find our way back?
The tree in the story? I don’t think it’s such a big deal. Maybe it makes a good children’s story because kids like climbing trees, and–look this guy climbed a tree, isn’t that fun?
If I were asking kids a question about this, I might ask: “do you like climbing trees? Do you like climbing other things that aren’t trees? I wonder what makes climbing things so fun. Have you ever climbed up something and realized whoa, everything looks different from here? Like, you can see things you couldn’t see before?”
What drove Zaccheus to climb this tree? Curiosity, maybe, about the message or movement of Jesus? Maybe a sense of need or desperation, too? Whether because of his height or just the sheer size of the crowd, the literal path to Jesus is blocked. It’s not like Zaccheus does something boy-ish here; this isn’t cute. This is a person whose body type, or the attitudes of others who know who he is, might otherwise exclude him in a space where accommodations aren’t being made, who then does the self-affirming act of doing what is necessary to be included in an otherwise unwelcoming space.
For all the valid suspicions we might have of Zaccheus as a person, given his profession, and the practices needed to sustain that profession, it may not be wrong to conclude that this is a guy who is trying to find his way, trying to find the plot. That’s not to dismiss what he’s done, but to try to form a more complete picture of this person.
A child in our meeting, at a recent protest, had a sign that said “ICE is poo poo pants.” Now, this is…adorable, and the absolute best deployment of potty talk, but her sign is really a comment about the institution and practices of ICE, more than about the individuals who put on the uniforms and masks and go to work to do a job that shouldn’t exist, not because they’re fundamentally evil, but because…I don’t know…they’re lost? They believe they’ve no other choice? Cost-of-living is high? The seeds of disdain for immigrants have been cultivated, while the seeds of empathy and kindness have not?
“Salvation has come to this house, today.” I don’t think Jesus is talking about himself, though I could see that. I think he’s talking about an experience happening in Zaccheus. If he was lost, salvation, in this context, is about becoming unlost, about finding the way.
Zaccheus was lost, and he got saved. But this has nothing to do with the way contemporary Christianity often speaks about “the lost” or “getting saved.” Zaccheus was lost in that there is a path, a good path, a loving path, and it’s bigger than any one religion or culture.
Whatever you want to call that path, Zaccheus was not on that path. Maybe he was on the way and lost his way, or maybe he was never really on it. Maybe at times he walked the path, but perhaps as life went on, circumstances guided him far from the path. Maybe he wished to be on the path, but didn’t know how to find it.
And then he is saved–he finds the path. For him, it’s not just an internal shift, it’s about action. His path–not imposed on him but discovered by him–includes selling his possessions and giving to people who don’t have enough, people he hasn’t directly harmed; and also, taking stock of specific people he has harmed, and making it right.
Remaining lost, for Zaccheus, could mean keeping himself at the center, or ignoring the needs around him, or his responsibility to do something about those needs. Remaining lost might also mean doing nothing to address the harm he had caused. Zaccheus appears to discern that it’s not enough to just be better, moving forward, but is ready to go back, and revisit harms caused, and try, for his part, to make things right.
Now…there is a slightly different way to think about who is lost in this scene. Some scholars have suggested that the future tense here–“half of my possessions, I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much”–might actually be better translated in the present tense. Zaccheus could be saying, to people who have already decided he’s a monster, more because of his profession than from their personal experience of him, “hey, you’re right, I could do better, but I do give, as a regular practice, half of my possessions to the poor; and I did defraud people, it’s how I was trained, but it was a mistake, and when the opportunity to make repair arises, I do, and I pay them back four times as much.”
Now, I don’t know if that’s the most hermeneutically sound interpretation, but it’s an interesting one. It seems to suggest two important things: that while we shouldn’t overlook harm, sometimes we get people wrong; and that while the hungry need help, the people who perpetuate hunger, co-create policies that increase hunger, they need help, too, they need rescue, they need salvation. Jesus might say to irritated onlookers, questioning this impromptu dinner party: “listen…you may need to be saved from them, but so do they need to be saved from themselves.”
It may not only be Zaccheus being invited to change. Maybe listeners and onlookers are invited to change their perspective, their evaluation. Maybe the listeners have also lost the plot. Maybe it’s both, maybe everyone’s a little lost, in their own way, even if we feel like some are more lost. I don’t know if that interpretation speaks to you, but if you can’t identify with Zaccheus, in the ways he is lost, maybe it’s worth considering how our own conclusions about others can reflect that we too, at times, have lost the plot.
Queries:
How do you know when you or others have “lost the way” or “lost the plot”?
What is the way? What is the plot?
How do we find our way? How can we help others find their way?