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Surprised by Joy: Zacchaeus

Luke 19:1-10

November 4, 2007

Sermon by Peter Terpenning

            CS Lewis, the British writer Christian apologist wrote the story of his early life and gradual conversion to Christianity in his book, Surprised by Joy. In it he tells of what he describes as a “memory of a memory”, his first experience of Joy, which is his word for the experience of the infinite. He was standing beside a flowering currant bush on a summer day when there suddenly arose in him, without warning, “as if from a depth not of years but of centuries, the memory of that earlier morning” at the Old House when his brother brought him a special gift of a miniature garden on the lid of a biscuit tin. “It is difficult,” he wrote, “to find words strong enough for the sensation which came over me; Milton’s ‘enormous bliss’ of Eden comes somewhere near it. It was a sensation, of course, of desire; but desire for what? Not, certainly, for a biscuit tin filled with moss, nor even for my own past. And before I knew what I desired, the desire itself was gone, the whole glimpse withdrawn, the world turned commonplace again, or only stirred by a longing for the longing that had just ceased. It had taken only a moment of time; and in a certain sense everything else that had ever happened to me was insignificant in comparison.”
            He is describing what could be called a mystical experience, a glimpse into a deeper reality of God or the infinite. Many people have had such experiences, short glimpses, and struggled, as Lewis did, to describe what can not be fully expressed in human language:  a flock a geese flying overhead, a time spent sitting with one who is dying, or has died, a sunset long remembered, a view of your own face in the glass of a bus or train on a long journey. Glimpses of the infinite. They surprise us, they can be the beginning of journey of faith, they will be told only to intimate friends, precious memories. I like Lewis’ description of such times as experiencing Joy! Pure joy.
            Zacchaeus went looking for a glimpse of something infinite. He was tax collector in Jericho. Not just any tax collector, but the head tax collector in wealthy district, Jericho. Roman tax collectors were recruited from the local populous to collect Rome’s money. They could collect as much as they wanted, and a certain amount was owed to Rome. Anything in excess, they kept as payment. The Romans in turn protected the tax collectors from the wrath of the people. It was a system designed to ensure that Rome got its money, and one can only imagine the less than scrupulous people it attracted. Dishonest people could become very wealthy as tax collectors. In Palestine, they were hated, not only for their dishonesty and growing rich on the backs of the poor, but also for their collaboration with the Roman overlords. So Zacchaeus was one of the richest people in Jericho and was probably not a very nice person.
            This is the man who went looking for Jesus that day. He joined the crowds that thronged the streets that day, hoping to catch a glimpse of this teacher, this healer that everyone was talking about. I wonder why he went. What did he hope to find? Was he hoping for a glimpse of the infinite: forgiveness for his lifestyle was he grieving for a loved one, was his wife sick? People go looking for Christ for all kinds of reasons. Usually we don’t admit that we might be hoping to find Christ. We meditate, we go to church, take classes, do yoga, hike in the mountains, hoping to find what? I think we go to find again experiences like CS Lewis had that day. I sometimes wonder what brings people to church. A crisis in their lives, habit, curiosity? I think many of us keep coming here hoping, like Zacchaeus, that we’ll catch a glimpse of the infinite, of Jesus. We hope that many we’ll hear something, or feel something that will renew our faith.
            You know that feeling you have when you walk through the elementary school you attended as a child? Have you ever revisited a place that was special to you in the past, a house, a school, a college campus, a neighborhood? What are we looking for? Someone wrote that we searching for ourselves. Or maybe we’re searching for God.
            Anyway, Zacchaeus went and joined the crowd, and he happened to be a very short man and couldn’t see over the crowd. So he climbed a tree, sort of a humorous bit that Luke included in the story. For me it adds a note of realism, that this was an actual event that someone told to Luke years later, perhaps Zacchaeus himself, or one of his children. He climbs the tree and Jesus walks by, right under that Sycamore tree. He looks up and, though he doesn’t know him as far as we are told, he calls him by name, and tells him to get out that tree, for tonight he will eat at Zacchaeus’ house. Zacchaeus is surprised. Whatever it was he was looking for, he found Jesus, or rather, was found by Jesus, and his life would never be the same.
            That evening at dinner Zacchaeus does something that surprises everyone else and maybe himself as well. He gets to his feet and announces that he is going to give ½ of all his possessions to the poor and pay back anyone he owes money to. Money, the central concern of his life, becomes his tool to transform his life. Zacchaeus was transformed by his encounter with Jesus. He went looking for something, maybe God, maybe forgiveness, maybe healing, but he is found by Jesus and confronted by the fact that God loves him. It is incomprehensible, it is impossible, but that’s the message Jesus had to share.
            We go looking to find the infinite, we catch glimpses, but sometimes, we are found ourselves. Sometimes we are surprised by Joy. In that moment that we know God is present and we realize that we are loved. Then somehow we must respond with love. Like Zacchaeus, we are called to some kind of response. We are called to love God, love this gift of life, and then love those around us and have compassion on all life.