Sermon for the 4th Sunday before Advent: Transformation and Repentance – preached at the Eucharist, Sherborne Abbey, on Sunday, 30 October 2022 by Canon Charles Mitchell-Innes. (Isaiah Ch 1: v 10 – 18; Luke Ch 19: v 1 – 10)
The rather charming story of little Zacchaeus climbing a tree to get a better view of Jesus, and the far from charming, gritty and punchy divine rhetoric that we have heard in Isaiah, both have significant things to tell us about repentance and forgiveness.
Let us turn our sights on Zacchaeus first. St Luke says “he was a chief tax collector, and rich.” The implication is that, when his sums did not add up – as usual – it was never he but his customer, or rather, victim, who came off worse financially. Of course tax gatherers in the Roman world had a delicate tight-rope to walk. If they overcharged excessively, especially in remote rural areas, they might quietly disappear. Could that be another reason why Zacchaeus was up a tree?
It seems, at any rate, that he had been pondering long and hard about his business practices and lifestyle, and had come to the conclusion that he didn’t care for them. So when Jesus arrived in Jericho that day Zacchaeus knew that here was someone of integrity and compassion in whom he could confide his concerns and who could help him to put things right. And that is just what happened. You may note that Zacchaeus was so relieved and grateful at having his burden of guilt lifted that he promised to restore to anyone he had defrauded not simply the whole amount + ⅕, as the law required (Numbers 5: 7), but a fourfold restitution. In addition he would give half his goods to the poor – a magnificent and liberal acknowledgement that his life had been turned around.
As a devout Jew, Zacchaeus would have been well aware of the bidding of the Lord God to the people of Jerusalem in Isaiah’s prophecy: “Wash yourselves … remove the evil of your doings … cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow” (Isaiah 1: 16 – 17). To put this in its very dramatic historical context: in 701BC most of the towns and countryside of the land of Judah had been destroyed by Sennacherib and the Assyrians, who, in Byron’s colourful poem “… came down like a wolf on the fold, And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold; And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.”
Jerusalem, by a political deal, was untouched, though isolated. That led its rulers to think that their escape was all part of God’s plan, forgetting the catastrophe that had befallen the country as a whole. Here they are being reminded that this is no special divine favour, but a wake-up call to repentance and reform. They must no longer think that their rituals alone are the path to salvation: the moral truths that underlie them must also be put into practice, and lived. Similarly our own ways of worshipping God – in singing praise, in making confession, in receiving the Eucharist – become valid when transformed into godly action and moral integrity of lifestyle, as well as in our relationship with God through Jesus.
Zacchaeus’ journey of repentance and forgiveness did not involve a complete about-turn; he did not, for a start, give up his tax collecting. It was rather a transformation from his grasping and self-centred characteristics into that more generous nature which Jesus potentially saw in him, and brought out.
There is a story about John Ruskin which may illustrate this in a visual way. A friend of his showed him one of her most beautiful lace handkerchiefs. A drop of indelible ink had fallen on it, and she was saddened to think it was completely ruined by the ugly blot. Ruskin asked if he might borrow it, and she agreed, somewhat mystified. A few days later he returned the handkerchief; on it, beginning from the blot, and making the blot the centre of the pattern, he had drawn the most intricate and beautiful design.
The bystanders in Jericho were horrified that Jesus was going to stay and dine with Zacchaeus: “He has gone to be the guest of a man who is a sinner,” they muttered. But they saw only the outside. Jesus perceived that inner person and saw how he was ready to be transformed by the power of God’s love. I wonder whether perhaps George Herbert had that particular verse in mind when he wrote his well-known poem, Love.
Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lacked anything.
‘A guest,’ I answered, ‘worthy to be here:’
Love said, ‘You shall be he.’
‘I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
I cannot look on Thee.’
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
‘Who made the eyes but I?’
‘Truth, Lord; but I have marred them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.’
‘And know you not,’ says Love, ‘Who bore the blame?’
‘My dear, then I will serve.’
‘You must sit down,’ says Love, ‘and taste my meat.’
So I did sit and eat.
George Herbert (1593 -1633)