Little Assumptions

Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost - Proper 26-Year C

November 3, 2013

Luke 19:1-10

He entered Jericho and was passing through it. A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax-collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. 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." So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. All who saw it began to grumble and said, "He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner." 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." Then Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost."

Just a few days ago we celebrated Halloween.  For some people it’s a holiday that is looked forward to and planned for months.  The picking out of decorations and costumes isn’t something that is done in one trip to the store; it’s something that is planned out long in advance.  Some people literally spend hundreds of dollars each year for their Halloween celebrations.

One of the things I’ve learned not to do, and learned the hard way not to do it, is to guess on some of the costumes that are being worn by the kids that show up at my door.  What I think looks like a princess is in reality a ballet dancer – and when I make the mistake of saying something about what a pretty princess, you can see the look of disappointment on their faces.  There is nothing worse than seeing the face of a child go from happiness to disappointment in an instant.  It can be hard sometimes to figure out exactly what a costume is from time to time, but asking them about their costume can be so much safer than guessing wrong, and breaking someone’s heart.

Imagine how you would feel if you had spent a long time planning your costume, deciding on the right accessories, how you were going to present yourself – all the details of Halloween, and then when you got to the door, the person didn’t recognize you as you.  I remember when I was in college, one of my classmates was challenged when she was student teaching about who she was – she was young looking, and people assumed she was a new student rather than the new student teacher.

We all make assumptions about people.  Sometimes those assumptions are based on what a person looks like.  We see the way they dress, the color and cut of their hair.  We see the people they are hanging out with.  We see the friends they have on Facebook.  Then, based on our minimal observations we decide who they are.  Sometimes we make the same assumptions because of other reasons.  We assume the engineer really likes computers.  We assume the stay-at-home mother loves to cook.  We assume the person driving the old, beat-up car can’t afford any better.  We assume the athlete on the field can’t talk about the beauty of Shakespeare’s sonnets.  We make assumptions based on what we observe from the outside.  Sometimes those assumptions are correct, but sometimes our assumptions can lead us down the wrong path.

There are times in our faith life when we make assumptions as well.  When I was in seminary my Greek teacher told us again and again that the value in learning to use Greek was that the experts who translate the Bible for us sometimes make translational choices for theological reasons, and sometimes those theological reasons may actually hide some of the wonder of the passage.  When we look at it in the Greek, the multiplicity of the translational possibilities become clear; and we may find that some of the assumptions we have held about texts may not be as persuasive as we thought.  Such is the case with these weeks Gospel lesson.

When I was growing up, one of our favorite songs in Sunday School was about Zacchaeus.  There is something about the story of a short person who has a hard time seeing over the shoulders of the adults that is attractive to children.  We sang with gusto how he was a wee little man who climbed up into the sycamore tree because he wanted to see Jesus as he was passing by.  It was an image that attracted us as children greatly.  We knew what it was like to not be able to see.  We knew what it was like to stand on the pews in church in order to see a baptism.  We knew what it was like to ask to get on someone’s shoulders so we could see a parade.  This was a guy like us.

The back story that Zacchaeus was a tax collector wasn’t as important as his height.  The message that the adults got about his life was dramatically changed because of Jesus calling out to him in the tree, went straight over our heads.  For us, it was that Jesus noticed the little guy, that Jesus saw the one who was so easily overlooked.  And this was the guy whose house Jesus went to, totally against the expectations and assumptions of the crowd.

Over and over again in the Gospels Jesus turns the tables on the assumptions of the community or the religious establishments.  Here again in this story we see Jesus turning our expectations on end, but perhaps not in the way we expect.

Perhaps the first thing we need to address is Zacchaeus himself.  For most of us we would miss the importance of the meaning of the name Zacchaeus itself.  His name means ‘clean’, ‘pure’ or ‘innocent’.  Zacchaeus was a tax collector, but not just any tax collector, he was the chief tax collector.  He was the one who was in charge of all the tax collectors under him.  We all know the reputation tax collectors had, and Zacchaeus was their chief.  Someone that I’m sure many people viewed as little more than a mob boss.  What a weird alignment of things – the one who is pure and innocent by name, is the one who is labeled as dirty and guilty by the community.  It’s not really an assumption that needs to be changed, but it is information that may be helpful when we look deeper into the text.

I know when I first came to this text, it was all about the power of Jesus to change people’s lives in extraordinary ways, and sometimes with barely a word being spoken.  Zacchaeus was a cheat, and then because of Jesus’ words and self-invitation he changed his ways – he was now the honest tax collector.  He was going to have perfect books, and if he had cheated anyone in the past, he was going to pay them back four times what he had cheated them of.  Wow!  Jesus’ was powerful, what an incredible testament to how people’s lives can be changed in an instant when Jesus enters their lives.

But, there’s a problem there.  We’ve made an assumption that isn’t there.  And, unfortunately, many of the translators of our Bibles have made the same assumption.  When Zacchaeus makes his statement, his words are not a promise of what he will do.  If they were a promise, they would be in a future tense: I will do this.  Greek is awesome in the way the words change a great deal depending on if they are past, present or future, and whether those actions are one-time events, ongoing or completed.  When we take a closer look at Zacchaeus’ words in the Greek we discover that the word is in the present active imperfect tense.  This is a complicated way of saying that when Zacchaeus makes his statement, a better translation would be: “Behold half of my possessions, Lord, I give to the poor, and if I defrauded anyone of anything, I give back fourfold.”  As in, this is something he was already doing.  He hadn’t suddenly changed his pattern of behavior because of Jesus paying attention to him.  Zacchaeus was already a standup guy.  It was the assumption of the crowd (and ours as well) that declared him as otherwise.

How often have we made similar assumptions?  How often have we allowed what we thought about a person to become what we ‘know’ about them?  How often have we said someone is not a child of Abraham, a fellow believer, a Christian, because of what they look like, what they dress like, who their friends are, what they do for a living?  One of the things that we often do when reading a passage is place ourselves within that passage; so where are you?  Are you Zacchaeus: judged and excluded, forced to defend yourself in the face of the anger and judgment of others?  Are you Jesus: recognizing the good in others when no one else can?  Are you in the crowd: judging and determining the value of others without really knowing who they are and what they do?  I must grudgingly admit that as much as I wish I could be the Jesus figure, far too often, in fact most of the time, I find myself in the crowd making assumptions about people, and then treating them accordingly.

In the story of Zacchaeus we are given the very difficult reminder that we cannot know what is in another person’s heart, only God can know that.  Traditionally, the Sunday following Halloween is All Saints Sunday, a day in the life of the church when we reflect and remember those members of our congregation and families that have joined the heavenly choir in the last year: the saints from among us.  We are thankful for their lives in our midst, and we are joyful for the promise of eternal life in heaven in the presence of God.

In the practice of Holy Communion, we experience the presence of God in a very intimate way, and we have a foretaste of the feast to come when we gather with all the saints (some known by us and some shunned by us) around the heavenly table.  In the breaking of bread together, in the sharing of a meal, we see and experience the boundaries between us coming down.  We eat from the same loaf; we drink of the same wine.  May the meal we are about to eat empower us to see others as God sees them, to treat others as God would have us treat them, to receive them as future saints in God’s kingdom.  Amen.