Drive By Mercy (5th Sunday in Lent; Luke 18:35-10; April 2, 2017)

Drive By Mercy

5th Sunday in Lent
Luke 18:35-10
April 2, 2017

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa

In this part of Luke and at this time of the year we are headed toward Jerusalem with Jesus. He has been clear about what will happen when he gets there. Just before our reading begins, Luke has this:

Jesus took the Twelve aside and said, "Look, we're going up to Jerusalem, and everything written about the Human One by the prophets will be accomplished. He will be handed over to the Gentiles. He will be ridiculed, mistreated, and spit on. After torturing him, they will kill him. On the third day, he will rise up." But the Twelve understood none of these words. The meaning of this message was hidden from them and they didn't grasp what he was saying.

To listen to some Christians, we still don't grasp much.

Jesus was headed to Jerusalem. This part of Luke takes on the character of an extended parade. It is coming up on the Passover, so he's not the only one who is going to Jerusalem. There is a lot of traffic on the road. Perhaps it's not as crowded as the airport terminals on the day before Thanksgiving, but it is really busy. People were in a holiday mood. Passover, after all, is not only a time of feasting; it is also a time for remembering, celebrating, and anticipating God's liberating work in human history. God delivered Israel from oppression in Egypt; God might deliver Judea from oppression in Roman Palestine.

People have heard of Jesus. He has a reputation for announcing the presence of God's dream in the real world, the one we live in, the one with hard objects that you can bump into. He also has a reputation for walking his talk. First he declares that God's dream has arrived and then he demonstrates that dream by healing the sick, lame, and blind, delivering people bound by evil spirits, and even raising the dead. If that were not enough, he made a habit of calling the rich and powerful to account and demanding repentance from people who thought they were just fine the way they were, thank you very much. There was going to be trouble in Jerusalem. You didn't even need to take Jesus' word for it.

People had heard about Jesus, so when they he was coming, the whole town turned out.
They lined the streets. It was like RAGBRAI. Vendors were selling lamb chops on a stick and hummus on matzo. It was like a party.

The beggars showed up as well. Remember that beggars were at the very bottom of the economy. Begging was the last thing the a person did before dying of some opportunistic infection brought on by being under and badly fed. That's the picture of a beggar who fell into it because they were no longer able to work as a day-laborer.

The blind beggar in our story was a partial exception to that rule. He was blind. Blind people were at a real disadvantage in that world. There was no Judeans with Disabilities Act to insure that workplace accommodations would be made so that they could hold a job. So they begged.

Our culture looks down on beggars. We assume, even without knowing anyone's story, that beggars beg because they are lazy. They are the very picture of the category of the "undeserving poor," a category Jesus never used. Granted, ancient society did not revere beggars. But there was a place for them in their economy and that place made a meager living for some beggars. Someone who was blind or had some obvious visible deformity would attract donations. To give to a blind beggar was an act of mercy and it had high social value. It led to a wealthy person's having a reputation for generosity and mercy. In a society that was suspicious of the wealthy, a reputation for mercy would go a long way toward increasing a wealthy person's honor. In that day honor not money made the wheels turn. People used money to buy honor and honor to acquire power.

So the begging transaction was a two-way exchange and each party benefited from it. The blind man got a meager living and the donor accrued a little honor. Location and timing were important, too. It was no accident that the blind man had staked out a place along the parade route that was also the pilgrimage road to Jerusalem. He was well-placed to take advantage of the traffic heading up to Jerusalem for the Passover. I don't know this for sure, but it would make sense to me that pilgrims at the major holidays (and Passover was the biggest) might have been looking to gain a little extra credit with the Almighty, much as a seven year old tries to maximize being good in the lead-up to Christmas. So the blind man knew how to play the game.

But when he heard that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by, the game changed. Instead of crying "Have mercy in God's name" or whatever he usually said, he switched to, "Jesus, Son of David, show me mercy."

Now, I don't know what the town worthies had planned for Jesus. Was there a list of people to meet? Were there local dainties to taste? Hands to shake? Babies to kiss? Whatever they had planned, the beggar was most certainly not part of it. With the same instinct that has led the authorities in Hawaii to move beggars away from tourist areas,
the town worthies tried to silence the blind beggar. To no avail. The more they cried "Hush!" the louder the beggar yelled.

What they feared most happened: Jesus noticed the man's cries and stopped. He asked the man what he wanted and he said, "Lord, I want to see."

Had he thought this through? I wonder. Being able to see was going to change his life. He wouldn't have to beg any more, but he wouldn't be able to, either. He would have to go to work. Doing what? I don't know. Did he have any skills? Did he have a family whose household he fit into? We know very little about him. Only that whatever the advantages and disadvantages there were to the blind beggar life, he wanted to be able to see. That's what he wanted from Jesus and that's what Jesus gave to him.

As Jesus walked further into town, the crowds continued. The rumors of the healing of the blind beggar flew faster than he could walk, so the crowd was really excited. They crowded the roadside, two, three, even four deep. So deep that a short man wouldn't able to see a thing, a short man like Zacchaeus. Maybe if he'd been a good man, a merciful and generous man, one inclined to use his wealth and power to benefit others, it might have been different. But he was a "ruler among tax collectors" and the people hated him. As he tried to work his way to the front of the crowd, people elbowed him the face, kicked him, stepped on his feet, all with plausible deniability, of course. Zacchaeus would not get a glimpse of Jesus that way.

So he ran up the road and climbed a tree, a sycamore tree, the tradition says, though I have no idea why this detail would be remembered. From that vantage point, he would be able to see. Of course, it would cost him some honor. Well, it would have cost him some honor if he had had any, but he didn't so he had nothing to lose. Jesus spotted him up a tree, as I suspect any parade participant today would spot a grown man in tree. None of this surprises. What surprises is that Jesus stopped and told Zacchaeus to climb down and go get ready to receive him and his followers as house-guests for the night. If that put Zacchaeus off, he certainly didn't show it. He was "happy to welcome Jesus" as our text says.

Zacchaeus was happy, but others were not. An epidemic of grumbling broke out. "Of all the people he could have stayed with--me for example--he picks a man like that. Grumble, grumble, grumble."

Then came the biggest surprise of all. Zacchaeus announced that he would make restitution. He would begin by giving away half of what he owns to the poor. Then, he would restore to anyone whom he has cheated four times what they lost. Salvation has come to this child of the Torah, this son of Abraham, says Jesus.

But this salvation is not free. To understand what Zacchaeus is promising, we need to remember how the tax system worked. It wasn't like our system. There are many problems with our tax system, but at least taxes in our system are calculable. You can figure out what you owe. You can plan ahead. Not so in the Roman system. The Romans began by figuring out how much they thought they could squeeze from a district. They rewarded well-behaving districts by relaxing taxes and punished badly-behaving districts by tightening. Judea was a badly-behaving district. Galilee wasn't much better.

Then, having decided how much money they wanted to raise, they let out contracts. Someone would contract to collect a certain amount. The Romans were not terribly concerned with who actually paid the taxes, how they were made to pay, or how much the tax farmer kept for himself. In Zacchaeus' case, he in turn broke his contract down into smaller pieces and contracted them. The tax collectors kept a share of what they raised and Zacchaeus kept a share for himself and the Romans not only got their taxes, but also managed to direct the hatred of the people to the actual tax collectors, a shrewd strategy on their part. Corruption was built into the system. No one was going to hire the goons needed to collect the taxes out of patriotism. Without corruption there would have been no profits at all.

So Zacchaeus' promise to give away half of his money and then make four-fold restitution for all the money he had cheated, was a promise to liquidate and give away everything he owned.

Like the blind beggar, Zacchaeus is out of job. In both cases Jesus' ministry has disrupted the status quo, not only bringing healing to two men, but also making their former lives impossible. And the effects go beyond them. Perhaps Zacchaeus' vacancy will be quickly filled by someone as ruthless as he used to be, but Jesus has as much as said that there is no salvation for any son of Abraham who participates this way in the Roman oppression of Judea. This is a deep indictment of the system.

Doubtless some other blind beggar will take over Zacchaeus' spot on the pilgrim road to Jerusalem. But the healing of Zacchaeus is also a criticism of a system that requires that disability be turned into a spectacle for the purpose of converting it into a commodity.

In both cases I am struck by the casual way in which Jesus turns expectations upside down. Jesus walks through Jericho and finds two people who were not on anyone's guest list and singles them both out for a special mercy that makes them whole and holy. In both cases I also note, it's the church folk who are upset by all that.

But that's the sort of God that we are dealing with, to borrow a phrase from Nadia Bolz-Weber. We are dealing with a God who steps outside of the mainstream, approaches people no one wants at their dinner table, and takes their particular needs very seriously. This is a God who turns things upside down. This may not be terribly good news for the right-side up,but it’s great news for the upside down!

And speaking of turning things upside down, wait until you see what happens next week!

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