We are a small Episcopal Church on the banks of the Rappahannock in Port Royal, Virginia. We acknowledge that we gather on the traditional land of the first people of Port Royal, the Nandtaughtacund, and we respect and honor with gratitude the land itself, the legacy of the ancestors, and the life of the Rappahannock Tribe. Our mission statement is to do God’s Will in all that we do.

Sermon, Oct. 30, 2022 – Pentecost 21 – “Zacchaeus”

Who in here likes donuts?  I’d never given serious thought before to how doughnuts ended up having a hole in the middle,  but according to Bishop Douglas Fisher from The Diocese of Western Massachusetts, donuts date way back to Ireland and early Christian traditions there. 

For the Irish Christians, All Saints’ Day was a day on which prayers for all the saints were offered, and people had a feast to celebrate the day.  But many people in Ireland were too poor to put enough food on the table for their feast, and so the night before,on All Hollow’s Eve, they’d go out and knock on the doors of houses and beg for food.  As time went on, this practice evolved, and the beggars at the doors would promise to offer prayers for the dead on All Saints ‘Day in exchange for food. 

One woman wondered to herself—“Are these people I’m giving food to really remembering to pray for my dead relatives?” So she decided to start giving those who knocked on her door cakes with a hole in the middle.  The person eating the cake would get to the hole in the middle of the cake and remember to pray for the deceased. 

And so the donut was born. 

Who knows whether or not this is really how donuts came to be, but that’s a good story. 

Bishop Fisher connects this Halloween story of the donut to what happens in the story about Jesus and Zacchaeus. 

Zacchaeus was not only a tax collector, but a chief tax collector.  Zacchaeus was rich.    He had everything he needed and more than enough.  He could make as much money as he wanted at the expense of the people from whom he collected taxes.  The Roman oppressors, who ruled Palestine, hired people to collect the taxes, and in return, the tax collectors could collect whatever they wanted from the people in addition to the actual tax to pay themselves for doing their job.  So not only were the people having to pay taxes, but they were also having to pay whatever  the tax collectors demanded for themselves—talk about a corrupt system!

So certainly, Zacchaeus was not a popular person in his community by any stretch of the imagination.  

I can just hear the derisive laughter when this rich little man went racing through the streets, shedding his dignity out of his desperation to see who Jesus was,  trying to barge his way through the crowd, but I’m sure that no one in the crowd was about to let him get to the front to see anything. 

So Zacchaeus resorts to climbing a tree by the roadside (more laughter)  hoping that from that vantage point, he’ll be able to see Jesus.  The other advantage of being up in the tree is that Zacchaeus is now still, and waiting, rather than rushing and in a frenzy. 

So here comes Jesus down the road, surrounded by the crowd.  Zacchaeus holds his breath up in that tree.  Finally he is going to see this man he’s heard so much about.  Maybe he’s even mesmerized. 

Here’s what I love about this story.  Zacchaeus wanted to see Jesus, and he got more than he bargained for, because when Jesus saw Zacchaeus, Jesus saw more than a rich little man in a tree.

Jesus could see inside Zacchaeus. 

And what Jesus saw was that Zacchaeus had a big old hole in his heart, a hole so deep and wide that all the money in the world couldn’t fill it. 

And Jesus, being the healer that he was, did some open heart surgery to repair that hole in Zacchaeus’ heart right there on that dusty road when he said,

 “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.” 

What healing grace and mercy this must have been—

Jesus saw Zacchaeus. 

Jesus knew his name. 

Jesus wanted to come to his house. 

The people in the crowd did not like this—that out of all of them around Jesus that day, Jesus would welcome the loser, the despised tax collector, the unclean one, instead of one of them. 

Jesus simply says to them that he has come to seek out and save the lost.  Jesus has come to do open heart surgery, to heal hearts, to repair and fill the holes that nothing else can fill. 

St Augustine described the hole in all our hearts when he wrote this famous line in his Confessions.  “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.” 

That’s the God shaped hole in our hearts, that nothing else can fill.  No matter what we try to put in that hole—money, other people, hobbies, food, our addictions– all of these things will eventually let us down—nothing will ever fill that hole in our hearts except God. 

And as Jesus makes clear in this story, God is a big believer in second chances.  Clearly, Zacchaeus was a sinner—having taken advantage of his fellow citizens for his own gain. 

It’s as if Zacchaeus is knocking on Jesus’ door, begging, and when Jesus welcomes him in, Zacchaeus, out of gratitude, says that he will give half of what he has to the poor, and to go back and repay anyone he’s defrauded four times as much as he has taken. And Zacchaeus welcomes Jesus into his house. 

And his heart is healed and filled with the only thing that can satisfy his longing—his heart is filled with Jesus. 

The first verse of that old gospel hymn, “I love to tell the story” whose words were written by Katherine Hankey,  goes like this. 

“ I love to tell the story of unseen things above, of Jesus and His glory Of Jesus and his love, I love to tell the story, because I know it’s true, it satisfies my longings as nothing else would do.” 

So here is what I hope you’ll remember about this story of Jesus and Zacchaeus. 

Not a one of us is perfect.  We all need healing.  We all need second chances.  Jesus  sees us, full of hurt, full of holes, full of longing.  We all need open heart surgery.  

Zacchaeus reminds us to go in haste,  to climb up a tree if we must and  to  get still and wait for Jesus, because Jesus is coming down the road toward us, his hands full of healing love, ready to give us what we need—his acceptance, and his presence in our hearts. 

If we’re looking and waiting, Jesus will see us.  Jesus knows our names, and Jesus wants to come home with us today.  Jesus wants to fill that hole in our hearts.  Jesus wants to give us a second chance. 

And in gratitude for all that Jesus gives to us, may we go out and do likewise for one another—to accept one another, to fill one another with God’s love, and offer that second chance for those who have wronged us. 

Next time you eat a donut, remember Zacchaeus. 

Remember to pray for someone who needs your prayers when you get to the donut hole. 

And remember to pray that God will come and fill the hole in your heart. 

 

Zacchaeus: When We Find our Sycamore Tree

From the Bishop’s Blog

“You know the story. Zacchaeus, “chief tax collector and rich”, hears Jesus is coming to town. He goes to see if he can get a glimpse of him but the crowd is dense and he is short. He climbs a sycamore tree to see above the crowd. Jesus sees him, goes to the tree and tells Zacchaeus that he wants to have dinner with him. At dinner Zacchaeus appears to have a great conversion and promises to give half his wealth to the poor and if any are defrauded he will repay them back four times as much. But, and here’s the key, some linguists say the text should not be, “I will do this” but, “I already do this.” Zacchaeus is telling Jesus he already gives half his possessions to the poor. He already repays defrauded people four times what they are owed. In other words, he is a good man. But he is still unhappy. There is still something missing. There is an emptiness in the middle of his soul.

And that is true for all of us. We are built with an inner emptiness and we try to fill it in so many ways. Some of those ways might be self-destructive. Some of those ways might be good – like giving half of what we have to the poor. But nothing will ever fill that hole except a relationship with the Living God. That is why Jesus can say to Zacchaeus, “Today salvation has come to this house.” Now Zacchaeus is connected to the source of all life.

Theologians have expressed this in many ways through the years. St. Augustine wrote, “my heart is restless until it rests in You.

We are saved by relationship with the Living God. Forever. The emptiness is addressed when we find our sycamore tree, that place that allows us to see and meet God. For some of us that place might be our local church.

Zacchaeus, the Chief Tax Collector – What does this mean ?

Who is Zacchaeus? His name is a form of Zechariah, which means righteous one. We find him only in Luke’s Gospel account, and then only in Luke 19. We are able to understand that he at least heard about Jesus, if he hadn’t already met him. He is a short man, and, because he cannot see Jesus passing by, he ran ahead of the disciples in order to climb a tree and thereby get a glimpse of Jesus over the heads of the crowd, as Jesus and his disciples passed by. One has to wonder what this is all about. It seems from the text that the Lord looked for him, because he says he must stay at his home overnight, as though he had a prior appointment with him.

In Luke 19:1 we are told that Jesus had entered and passed through Jericho. At this time (Luke 19:2) Luke introduces Zacchaeus to his readers. Zacchaeus is a chief tax-collector. We are not told in the narrative what it meant to be a chief tax-collector, but we are able to add meaning to Luke’s narrative by defining Zacchaeus’ office from history.

“Large-scale bankers included tax farmers (publicani) doing private business. Among their customers were government officials in the provinces who cashed government bills of exchange with them.” [James S. Jeffers: “The Greco-Roman World of the New Testament Era”; page 24]

“During the late Republic, when most of its provinces were added, Rome used private enterprise to handle tasks such as tax collection. Companies formed by the second rank of Rome’s aristocracy, the equestrian order (senators were forbidden to engage in this kind of enterprise), would bid for the right to collect taxes in a certain province. The highest bidder would then send out his agents, called publicans (publicani) or tax-farmers (so called because they raised tax revenue for Rome like a farmer raised crops), to make the collections. They were named for the Roman public treasury (publicum). They had to collect enough money to cover their bid before they could begin to make a profit, and Rome did not limit the amount they could collect over their bid. The Roman general, Pompey, after his conquest of Palestine used local officials as their tax collection agents.”

“…Zacchaeus, called a “chief tax collector”, may have been the contractor for the revenues of Jericho and may have supervised a number of collectors. At the least he supervised a collecting district. Most of the New Testament publicans, like Levi / Matthew (Matthew 9:9; Mark 2:14; Luke 5:27), were lesser officials. Levi, for example, may have been a local customs official, collecting taxes for a local treasury rather than for Rome. They might have their “place of toll” located where the residents could not easily avoid them: by city gates, on public roads or on bridges. Levi’s post at Capernaum probably was near the sea on the important trade route entering Galilee from Damascus.” [James S. Jeffers: “The Greco-Roman World of the New Testament Era”; page 144-146]

I believe that Jesus’ Parable of the Pounds (Minas in some translations) as told to us in Luke 19:11-27 is modeled after Zacchaeus’ office as a chief tax-collector. He may have had to go to Rome (the ‘far country’ alluded to in the parable) to bid on or formally receive the territory he wished to govern and collect its taxes for the Emperor. He would have had several publicans executing his office as tax collector, because such a responsibility couldn’t be accomplished by a single man. Publicans would need to have been stationed at key points like city gates and, in the case of Jericho, at the bridge or ferry across the Jordan River that connected Mesopotamia to the highway leading through Jericho to Egypt. Taxes, right-of-passage, currency exchanges and business and private loans were responsibilities of the chief tax-collector, who executed those duties through his publican servants.

Setting the Table, by Diana Butler Bass

“While writing Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks, I reread Luke’s account of Zacchaeus. Like many Christians, I knew the story from Sunday school — the “wee little man” who climbed a tree to see Jesus. I thought of it as a charming tale that taught us to go to any length to catch a vision of God. But researching Grateful convinced me that gratitude was at the center of an important political tension in the Roman world regarding debts and obligation. The story of Zacchaeus transformed from a children’s story to a powerful encounter between Jesus and an unjust system of quid pro quo. Corrupted gratitude can snare us, or, as Jesus taught, a renewed vision of gratefulness can liberate us. The Zacchaeus story shows us how.

“Zacchaeus thought that gratitude was a political structure of benefactors and beneficiaries that he could manipulate for his own benefit. Then Jesus called him down from that tree and invited him to a table. “Stop climbing, Zacchaeus. Come and sit.” Whereas Rome practiced gratitude as a hierarchy of political and economic obligation, of debt and duty, Jesus envisioned gratitude as hospitality of mutuality and relationship, of gift and response. Jesus opened the door for Zacchaeus to “come down” from his old life, to stop participating in a corrupt system of gratitude that oppressed his own people. In a moment, Jesus turned his world upside down: Who was the guest and who was the host? The Roman structure of gratitude collapsed when assigned roles disappeared and the conventional gifts of hospitality could not be repaid. Instead, Jesus imagined a place where oppressed and oppressor leave their “stations” and meet as friends, where forgiveness is practiced and gratitude expresses itself not in debt payment but in passing on generous gifts to others.

“At the end of the story, Jesus explains that he did this because “the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10). Jesus came to deliver those ensnared in the punishment and privilege of gratitude and to set them free from quid pro quo patronage. In its place, he established a table of hospitality where all are guests and no one owes anything to anyone else. Around this table, gifts pass without regard to payback or debt. Everyone sits. Everyone eats. And, recognizing that everything is a gift, all are grateful. Tree or table? Climbing to get ahead or reclining with friends? Choose. What you choose results in either slavery or abundance.

“This is the ancient wisdom of gratitude, told in a Jewish political context by early Christian writers. But we can see beyond its unique religious frame to the story’s larger relevance for today. Who wants to be part of a system of gratitude based on hierarchy?

“To be obligated to repay every favor done? Who wants to perpetuate a system that rewards privilege and is held together by indebtedness? A structure where we are pretty sure that the people above us cheated us to get there? Think of how we depict Thanksgiving — people around a table eating a meal.

“In the United States, it is the romanticized image of our most primal gratitude myth: Europeans and Natives sharing around a table. Of course, it did not happen that way. But that is what myths are — stories that express something we desire, what we hope will be, and how we dream of happiness and peace. There is something in our hearts that longs to banish quid pro quo to the pages of dusty history books forever and instead create a common table where we pass gifts to one another without regard for station or status, where boundaries dissolve around plenty. That is the way of salvation. We know this, and, like Zacchaeus, many of us long for it. We just do not know how to come down from the tree.”

Diana Butler Bass is the author of eight books on American religion, including “Christianity After Religion,” “Christianity for the Rest of Us,” and “A People’s History of Christianity.” This is excerpted from “Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks.” Copyright © 2018 by Diana Butler Bass. Published by HarperOne.

Sunday Links for Pentecost 21, Oct. 30, 2022

Those lovely yellows in fall

Oct. 30, 11:00am – Holy Eucharist, Pentecost 21, Zacchaeus

  • Holy Eucharist, Sun. Oct. 30 YouTube link Oct. 30
  • Lectionary for Oct. 30, 2022, Pentecost 21
  • Bulletin for Oct. 30, 2022, Bulletin
  • Sermon for Oct. 30, 2022, Sermon
  • Compline, Sun. Oct. 30, 6:00pm Compline Link
  • Morning Meditation , Mon, Oct. 31, 6:30am Zoom link Meeting ID: 879 8071 6417 Passcode: 790929
  • Ecumenical Bible Study, Wed., Nov. 2, 10am-12pm. Reading lectionary of Nov. 6
  • October, 2022 newsletter
  • All articles for Oct. 30, 2022

  • This Sunday, Oct. 30, 2022, was Youth Sunday (every 5th Sunday) reflected in the prayers with a prayer on youth and in the sermon on Zacchaeus. We had about 10 youth present out of a congregation of 26. It was a beautiful Sunday with the trees moving to a matured fall. Fall was all around us – in the church in the graveyards, in the trees, and on the river

    End of Oct., Early Nov.

    The End of October, Early Nov. – a summary

    Halloween originated in Celtic cultures the day before Samhain, the beginning of the Celtic winter. It focused on death blending in the supernatural. The Catholic Church incorporated non-Christian traditions into its holidays to bring people to the church. It scheduled All Saints (Nov 1 ) and All Souls (Nov. 2) after Halloween. All Soul’s focused on those who had died without the supernatural. All Saints celebrated all who believed and were baptized The word saint originally meant “holy”. Later it became a feast day commemorating all martyrs.

    Reformation day, Oct. 31

    The Reformation began Oct. 31, 1517

    Reformation Day is a religious holiday celebrated on October 31, alongside All Hallows’ Eve, in remembrance of the Reformation, particularly by Lutheran and some Reformed church communities. It is a civic holiday in some German states.

    It celebrates Martin Luther’s posting of the 95 theses on the church door at Wittenberg in Germany on Oct. 31, 1517. The event is seen as sparking the Protestant Reformation.

    There are some questions of fact. The event was not publicized until 1546 by Philipp Melanchthon and no contemporaneous evidence exists for Luther’s posting of the theses. At the time, it was common for scholars to post their debate points on the door where people could read them. Copies of Luther’s theses and his fiery follow-up sermons were mass produced on a relatively new invention the printing press.

    Luther’s movement began as a criticism of Catholic practices, not to split off from the Catholic church. Sinners could buy God’s forgiveness by purchasing an indulgence. Luther preferred justification by faith.  He also wanted people to read the Bible in their own languages and not just in Latin

    The Reformation led to the split from one Catholic church to Protestant ones. There are now nearly 45,000 Protestant denominations around the world, including mainline Protestants, Anglicans, Evangelicals, Pentecostals and more.

    It has been seen as the most significant event in Western Christian history and mirror in which we measure ourselves today.  Many of the differences that promoted the reformation have been solved – indulgences, justification by faith and having the Bible printed in multiple languages. Others such marriage of priests, same sex marriages are still divisive.  Will they be able celebrate communion together ?  That may take another reformation.

    Here is an impromptu performance after the 11am service on Oct. 27, 2019 of part of Luther’s famous hymn. He wrote the words and composed the melody sometime between 1527 and 1529:

    Links

    1. PBS (video and transcript)

    2. How Martin Luther Changed the World

    3. Reformation Day

    4. Transcript from Christianity: First 3000 years

    5. The English Reformation extended from this event which created the Church of England, the ancestor of the Episcopal Church. Henry VIII was made Supreme Head of the Church by an Act of Parliament in 1534. The country was still Catholic but the pope’s power had been ended. By the time of his death in 1547, the Lord’s Prayer was said in English in the English Bible (written in English) and the monasteries have been dissolved. The first prayer book was in 1549 in the time of Henry’s successor Edward.  Read More