Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Robert Leo, OHC
Pentecost, Proper 26 C - October 30, 2022
A children's song
Zacchaeus was a wee little man And a wee little man was he.
He climbed up in a sycamore tree
For the Lord he wanted to see.
And when the Savior passed that way
He looked up in the tree
And said, (spoken) “Zacchaeus, you come down!
For I'm going to your house today!
For I'm going to your house today!”
There's more, but I'll spare you. You can Google this children's song and listen to it on YouTube. You can also purchase the sheet music for $1.99, and it comes with suggested hand gestures.
We all know the story, or at least we think we do. Here is Zacchaeus, another tax collector, one of those shady characters, collaborator with the Roman oppressors, making a living by skimming off of the taxes collected and amassing great wealth. But this is not just another tax collector. Luke tells us this was the chief tax collector. He was a pariah, an outcast in his community, but also someone given grudging respect not because of his work, but because of his power. Luke seems to delight in telling stories about tax collectors along with their unsavory fellow travelers: the prostitutes.
The story, as most of us know and as our little Sunday school ditty tells us, revolves around a wee little man. Zacchaeus is short, of small stature, maybe even tiny. This cannot have helped his social status in 1st century Palestine. Maybe he, like other short people who, by hook or by crook, make successes of themselves--however you define success--are dismissed as having a Napoleon complex or analyzed as having deep compensation needs. All rather unseemly.
I'm short. Not that short: I'm five foot six, though shrinking daily. But that puts me about three or four inches below the average height of males in America. I've learned to joke about that and work around it. But it is something that people who don't fit the average profile learn early in life...people who are short or obese or living with disabilities or otherwise not filling societal expectations of beauty, something that women know perhaps better than men. And there is a whole raft of social science research which documents the financial disadvantages of being short. On balance, all other things being equal, for every inch of height, a male earns something like $1000 a year. Perhaps not a huge advantage, but $6000 or $7000 or more a year can make a big difference. Think of compound interest over a lifetime.
There are all sorts of explanations offered for this disparity. Some see it as implicit bias. Others as a kind of deep sociobiological fact which rewards those who might be more successful in finding a mate and procreating and surviving. Some researchers note that it is the height advantage in the early teen years which makes a difference throughout the entire life cycle, that those who are taller at, say, 13 are more likely to be involved in group activities that require strength, such as sports, and which may serve as laboratories for leadership and self-esteem and self-confidence. Or maybe they just come from families with greater access to proper nutrition. Some even suggest that taller children are more curious and are in the end brighter than their shorter colleagues. I don't know what our brother Zacchaeus would think about all of this. I know what I think about it.
But there's a bit of a fly in the ointment concerning this story of Zacchaeus that I want to share with you. In 2004, Roberta Bondi, Professor Emeritus of Church History at Candler School of Theology, published a brief reflection on this Gospel passage. She quotes a Methodist pastor and dear friend whom she heard preach on the story of Zacchaeus. And here's the way he told it:
“There was once a bad, rich man in Jericho named Zacchaeus who heard that Jesus was coming to town and wanted to see him very much. When Jesus arrived, however, the crowds were thick, and Jesus was short so Zacchaeus couldn't see him. Then he hit on an idea. He would climb a sycamore tree.”
She asked the pastor how he decided that Jesus was the short one in Luke's story. He answered, “I can't prove that he was, but look it up in the Greek. You really can't tell who ‘he’ refers to. As far as I'm concerned, however, Jesus was the short one.”
Think about that for a minute. As heirs to a muscular Christianity, we're quite accustomed to thinking of Jesus as not only white but, shall we say, ripped. He's tall, he’s handsome, he physically stands out in a crowd, and he speaks with a booming voice. And people listen. But there's no evidence for any of this. It is sometimes said that God created us in God’s image…and that we returned the favor. In many ways, the same can be said of our view of Jesus. And that’s not altogether bad. Our mental image of Jesus almost inevitably reflects our view of ourselves and of what our culture values. I’ve been as deeply moved by images of Jesus as an African or Asian or Polynesian or Native American as I have been of him as a White man. But who really knows what an average Palestinian of 2000 years ago looked like exactly? If anything comes close, I’d bet on the image of Jesus as portrayed in early byzantine icons. Surely we need to see ourselves in Jesus, limited though we must be by the historical fact of his being a male. Yet even here, I have been moved by Christa, the controversial crucifix at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine that depicts Jesus as a woman on a cross.
But a short Jesus? Somebody so small that folks in a crowd have trouble seeing him? Could that be why he was always preaching on a Mount or from the prow of a boat? Maybe Jesus needed a bit of a boost to be seen and heard and followed. And as Scriptures teaches us, sometimes the Word comes to us in a still, small voice.
There’s a delightful story in our OHC history. It is related by Father Alan Whittemore who wrote a memoir of the early days of our order while he was marooned in Freetown, Sierra Leone early in 1947. It is an important record of our early members. Whittemore features the stories of some of the great men of those early days: the Father Founder, Father Hughson, Father Sill, Father Alan, and so on. But he also includes stories of less distinguished brothers. One of my favorites is Father Louis Lorey.
Whittemore begins his chapter with his dry, almost condescending, New England tone. He says: “God has room in his cloister for the little as well as the great. This chapter is about two ‘little ones’: Father Lorey and Father Webb. They were small in body as well as in intellectual caliber and they made an amusing spectacle when they stood together. The two were about the same height--or lack of it--but Father Lorey was old and Father Webb young; Father Lorey was fat and Charlie Webb, as we called him, was thin. But both were bald, and they both wore skull caps.”
He talks about Father Lorey’s decades-long ministry at Saint Andrews School in Sewanee TN which the Order founded in its early days. Father Lorey was known to the boys as ‘the teeny-weeny Father’ and was not much bigger than most of them. He had, as Father Whittemore says, “…a simple affectionate piety and such trust in human hearts as removed all prejudices.”
Whittemore relates going on a mission to a Southern parish. The Rector had asked them to speak to the men at a neighboring prison. One afternoon: “… after I had said my say, a bench was produced for Father Lorey to stand on. Otherwise the men could not have seen him. He clambered onto it and looked round him beaming. Then he launched forth and talked to them about their mothers, and about God's Love and His Cross. You could hear a pin fall.”
I find this deeply moving. Here is the voice of God coming from “the teeny weeny” father and moving the hearts of a very tough audience. I wonder if Jesus was like that. I wonder if Jesus needed a bench or a mountain in order to be seen or heard. But I don't wonder at the power of Jesus. Short or tall, Jesus looked up at Zacchaeus, this prominent social outcast hanging out in a tree so that he might get a look at Jesus, and called out to him: “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down for I must stay at your house today.”
This must have come as a shock to the crowd, not to mention to Zacchaeus. Why in God's name would Jesus stay with the chief tax collector, with this collaborator, with this sinner? We don't know exactly. What we do know is that Jesus came to Zacchaeus’ house and Zacchaeus’ was changed. He was transformed. He was converted. Zacchaeus was seen by Jesus in that tree. And he was seen as something more than a collaborator and a con man. Luke tells us that Zacchaeus stood in his house and said: “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor and if I have defrauded any one of anything I will pay back four times as much.” (Actually, the Greek says not that he will give to the poor but that he is already giving to the poor right now.) And Jesus says, “Today wholeness, healing, salvation has come to this house. Because he too is a son of Abraham.” Maybe it’s no accident or irony that the name Zacchaeus literally means clean or pure. Maybe Jesus saw in Zacchaeus a purity that neither Zacchaeus nor his community could ever dream of or imagine. And Jesus drew that purity out of him.
Jesus is always out visiting and calling, and we don't know when he's going to come to our neighborhood or to our house. We have a beautiful collect for the Fourth Sunday of Advent in which we pray that Jesus at his coming may find in us a mansion prepared for himself. But truthfully, how do you prepare your mansion for the coming of the Messiah? We may have fair warning and try, but sometimes Jesus just shows up and says, “Robert, come on down. I'm staying at your place tonight.” I protest: “Lord, my house is a mess, my mansion is in shambles.” And I hear Jesus saying: “Not to worry, we'll clean it up together.” I hope you can hear that as well.
“Zacchaeus was a wee little man, a wee little man was he.” Maybe. Whatever our stature, if like Zacchaeus we take a first small step, if we go out on a limb to see Jesus, if we climb the sycamore tree with our name on it, even if that tree that can sometimes look and feel like a cross…we may find that we have a house guest for the night and a mansion for all eternity.
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