Readings: 2 Samuel 2. 1-11, 3.1, Luke 18.31-19.10
Our reading from Luke this evening, is the latter part of a series of stories and teachings about revelation; about how Christ’s nature is revealed and our response to that revelation.
We need to go back to the start of chapter 18 which begins with the puzzling figure of the Unjust Judge who is pestered into righteousness by the persistence of the widow. Fortunately, I don’t have to try to explain that story tonight; I only want to quote its ending where Jesus asks “When the son of man comes, will he find faith on earth?” The following stories enlarge on that question.
The first is that of the Pharisee and the tax collector praying together; the former self righteous closed up in his minute observance of the Law; the latter guilty, self deprecating but open to the possibility of forgiveness and new life. Next Jesus welcomes children saying “whoever does not accept the kingdom of God as child, will never see it”. Then a young man approaches; he has kept all the commandments from his youth; he is open and seeking but dismayed when told he must sell and give all his wealth to the poor; this prompts Jesus to remark that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Happily, I don’t have to explain that one tonight either. Peter’s reaction to this stark saying is to point out that he and the other disciples have left all their worldly possessions and family ties behind; Jesus promises them reward in heaven.
Then we come to tonight’s reading starting with Jesus’ prediction of his suffering and death as a fulfilment of all that was written in the prophets; the disciples cannot understand. The meaning is concealed from them. Concealment, revelation and release are taken up in the story of the blind man who nevertheless recognises Jesus as “the son of David”and the promised messiah. We must suppose the disciples had read the scriptures, but they hadn’t understood, or could not marry their understanding with the reality of Jesus and his predictions of suffering. The beggar outside Jericho, like the children can understand despite blindness, inexperience and lack of learning.
On entering Jericho Jesus encounters Zacchaeus and the parallels here between the penitent tax collector and Pharisee and the rich young man are more obvious and I only observe that Jesus tells the newly generous Zacchaeus; “Salvation has come to this house today!-for this man too is the son of Abraham and the Son of Man has come to seek and save what is lost.”
The obvious point here is that wealth, worldly connections, even home and family, even growing up and simply experiencing the world may prevent us from recognising Jesus, but despite even the earthly disability of blindness or just being rather short, despite great and ill-gotten wealth, vision and understanding are possible and will bring the happiness and the fullness of life enjoyed by that unlikely pair the beggar and chief tax collector in Jericho.
Perhaps I should stop there with that comforting thought. But I want to go on because I think the point of these stories goes deeper; they extend beyond the personal experiences of the beggar and Zacchaeus and have something to tell us about a more profound nature of salvation. The difference is I think, something like the difference between living a good life, loving ones neighbour, keeping the commandments etc., and doing so because motivated by an understanding of God’s love for his creation, and one’s own part in that huge story.
Most of these stories contain more or less detailed references to the Law and its observance and to the scriptures, or the prophets; the beggar sees Jesus as Son of David- the messiah understood to promised by the prophets; Zacchaeus is called “a true son of Abraham”; heir to the tradition of law and prophecy; this link to the Law and the Prophets- in a word, to the “Old Testament”, is more obvious in the stories which precede our reading; the Pharisee the strict observer of the law and the tax collector and the rich young man who again kept the commandments from his youth. But in both cases strict observance is not enough.
But our reading gives a twist to the prophets too. The prophecy which Jesus seems to be alluding to, as he predicts his suffering and death, is from the latter half of Isaiah; specifically from the Servant Songs – enigmatic poems depicting the suffering of a figure who might be the prophet himself, or an embodiment of Israel or a Messiah figure, but more of an outsider or scapegoat than the Messiah as more conventionally imagined in the prophets. Jesus, or Jesus as portrayed by Luke, has a particular affinity with Isaiah’s Suffering Servant, but the disciples may be forgiven for not seeing Jesus’ future suffering as something predicted in the Scriptures; on the whole, it is not, not at least superficially.
Put together these stories seem to be saying that despite the obstacles put in our way like physical blindness and the physicality of our nature more generally, and despite wealth and worldliness more generally, we can nevertheless recognise Jesus as the son of God, the messiah at work in the world. And we should link that recognition to the gradual revelation of God and his engagement with his creation as recounted by the Prophets and the history of Israel as defined and described in the Law. But Jesus re-describes that relationship in two ways.
On a personal level Jesus brings life that can be lived to the full (the experience of the beggar and Zacchaeus) and this entails a genuine or honest response to moral questions and not merely lip service to rules and tradition ; it requires whole hearted acceptance of the imperatives behind the law and entails for the rich young man the sort of generosity which Zachaeus actually achieves. It comes I believe from recognising that the creator’s love for his creation is that imperative and in attempting, however feebly, to realise that love in our lives.
But recognising those imperatives requires a wide and more corporate approach; it is to understand not just the love of God recounted in the Law and Prophets as conventionally read but to see in the person of Jesus the extent to which that love is capable of engaging itself with its own creation. That is the full empathy of God for his world as foretold for the Suffering Servant and realised in the crucifixion. To understand that is indeed hard; we know the disciples did not at that stage manage it and maybe the beggar and Zacchaeus did not either, although from their reaction to Jesus’ intervention in their lives, we get the impression the groundwork was beginning for such a revelation. Let us pray that such experience, and the capacity to see as the beggar and Zacchaeus did, may come to us too. Amen.