Readings: Wisdom of Solomon 1. 16-2.1, 12-22, James 3.13-4.3, 7-8a, Mark 9. 30-37
A recent production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni featured a set which represented a large house taking up most of the stage with a variety of rooms on several levels. It soon became apparent that this house was not only where the Don lived; it also represented his mind. His external circumstances represented his inner state of mind. At the end, instead of being dragged down to a flaming hell as in more conventional productions, he sits huddled up in the street outside his house – literally cast out of his mind.
The connection between who we are and the buildings we frequent is also of concern to the prophet Jeremiah. It seems the phrase, ‘The Temple of the Lord’ is often heard on the lips of the people of Jerusalem. They love to go there, they love to be seen there. And yet who they are in their minds and the way they live their lives has turned this building into a ‘den of robbers’. Jeremiah sees not a great building of stone and cedar wood and gilded decoration, he sees a place pilled high with spoil where greedy and dishonest men and women hide from their victims and from the pursuit of the law. The Temple has become a place for concealing not informing the moral conscience.
The home of Zacchaeus is on a much smaller scale also a morally complex building. Zacchaeus is a man of unusually small stature and perhaps to compensate for his size he has built himself up as a man of wealth. He is a collector of taxes on behalf of the Romans, and like all tax collectors in the Roman system he has abused his position to build up a fortune for himself. He is therefore doubly despised for his shape and the treacherous source of his income; he is a social outcast, whose home has few guests – a place to hide and commune only with his own possessions. It is from this starting point that we see developing an unusually detailed parable of grace – the saving of a mind and a building.
Grace comes with the rumour that Jesus is entering the town. Zacchaeus chooses a tree on the route he knows Jesus must take. The tree helps him to see but also to hide above the heads of the crowd. But Jesus sees him. And so consequently does everyone else; but just as they are about to break into an orgy of mockery, pointing and laughing at this ridiculous little man, Jesus issues an unexpected order; ‘It is necessary that I stay at your house today.’ which is what a literal translation would say, though in our text we read, ‘I must stay at your house today.’ It is necessary for the transformation of Zacchaeus’ mind and home that he must entertain this unexpected guest. And so grace gets to work. Zacchaeus comes down from his tree as the crowd start to condemn Jesus for wanting to enter the house of a sinner. And before Jesus can cross his threshold grace has done its work. The poor become the guests of half his possessions and with extravagant generosity Zacchaeus puts an end to the possibility of his ever being called a cheat again.
He has rediscovered what we might now call his true self or his real identity; or as Jesus puts it, ‘Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham.’ Jesus recognises that salvation belongs not only to persons but to the places where they live. The outsider, cast out from the community, has been brought back in because grace has become his guest and so he has become the guest of grace.
It may be because of this connection between places and people that these readings have been given to us for the day on which a church celebrates its feast of Dedication – the day on which a church gives thanks for the building it inhabits and reflects on the life of the people who gather in this building. You sometimes hear people say that a building has an atmosphere – that a church feels prayed in. I’m not sure whether that is just a reaction to architecture or to a place that looks cared for; but at least it points to the connection between a building and the people who inhabit it.
In the production of Don Giovanni I began with, there were points at which hand writing was projected on to the walls of the Don’s house writing out the lists of his conquests, the women whose lives he had ruined. Jeremiah describes some of the things which might be projected onto the walls of the Temple: the oppression of the alien, the fatherless, and the widow, the shedding of innocent blood and the worship of other gods. One might wonder what should be projected onto the walls of this building? Perhaps a mixture of prophetic judgement on the things we get wrong, and Zacchaen grace, because individuals may have found here an expression of grace which has changed their lives – a sense of Jesus Christ wanting to be with them.
When I first looked at the lessons for this evening and saw that the Jeremiah reading ended with the text which Jesus quotes when he comes to the Temple on Palm Sunday, I assumed that would be the second reading. But instead of hearing Jesus accusing the traders in the Temple of turning it into a den of robbers, we heard of grace coming to Zacchaeus and his immediate response of financial generosity. Something precious was freely given to him so he responded in the best way he could with something precious. And that is an important text for a Dedication Festival which is so often connected with an appeal for increased funds for the church. Charity, stewardship, financial generosity to the church, is not to be seen not as a response to a request, but a response to grace. Being generous with what you have is a way of saying thank you, as Zacchaeus says an extravagant thank you to Jesus for recognising him and wanting to be with him. A building is made generous by the grateful generosity of the people who worship there. Amen