The Economy of Grace
Luke 19.1-10
2 Thessalonians 1
Preached Canberra Baptist Church 4th November 2007

Of all the stories in the gospels the well-known tale of Zacchaeus is one of the most strange and enigmatic. It does not conform to any of the well known ‘forms’ of gospel story: it is not a healing or a miracle or a controversy or a pronouncement story. There are several critical issues, particularly in vss 9-10. It is very well known through its popularity in Sunday School, through the charming detail that Zacchaeus is short and has to climb a tree to see Jesus, a detail that has nothing to do with the point of the story.

But there is no preaching by Jesus or religious intervention of any kind other than the pithy saying that serves as the punchline. Jesus says nothing other than to invite himself to dinner, and then to announce salvation.  What is it that gives this story narrative power and what point is the author making for his gospel hearers?

It is worth retelling in point form so that we can see the way the story unfolds.

• Jesus enters Jericho and passes through it.
• A man named Zacchaeus was there: he was a chief tax collector and was rich.
• Zacchaeus wanted to see Jesus but he couldn’t see over the crowd because he was short.
• He runs ahead and climbs a sycamore tree from where he can see Jesus when he passes.
• Jesus looks up, and says: “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down for I must stay at your house today”.
• Off they go to Zacchaeus’ house where Zaccaeus receives him with great joy.
• All who saw it began to grumble and say “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner”.
• Zachaeus stands there and says half of my possessions I give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone I will repay fourfold.
• Jesus announces that salvation has come to this house, he too is a Son of Abraham – the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.

What is fascinating in this story is that Jesus doesn’t appear to do anything to bring about the transformation in Zacchaeus – no action, no word, no sign. He just invites himself as a guest in the man’s house. He doesn’t call Zacchaeus to follow him as he does the disciples. He doesn’t ask him to give away his money, as he does the rich young ruler. He simply asks to stay at the man’s house.

In fact it is this that this the main dramatic spring of the story. As the reaction of all who witness it makes clear, this is a radical and scandalizing act. It is this that leads to the transformation in Zacchaeus. It is simply because Jesus has drawn near to him, has befriended him, that he is remade as a person, that salvation comes to this house.

To understand what is happening you need to understand the background of the chief tax collector.  Romans farmed out their taxes to private entrepreneurs who would bid for the rights to collect taxes. “From this region I could gain so much in taxes.”  Individuals would promise so much a year, get the rights and then farm out smaller regions to local operators who would similarly bid for  the taxation rights to that region or send his own paid tax collectors in to do the collecting. They lived off the difference between what they collected and what they delivered to the authorities above them. They were collaborators with an invading military power, free-enterprise contractors (like Blackwater Security in Iraq !!) and taxation officials to boot – they had multiple hateful roles and were despised.  And it was such a person that Jesus singled out as the man he wanted to spend time with. No wonder Jesus staying with him caused such indignation.

Jesus lives out a grace that knows no social boundaries. He reaches out to all in the economy and social life of Israel. Think of the people you most dislike: Jesus would probably call them his friends and want to party with them! Probably the most radical force in a society is contact with people who are beyond the pale.

Just experiencing this inclusive welcoming grace, a grace that earns Jesus the displeasure of the crowd, is enough for Zacchaeus. He is converted – literally. The sign of his conversion is the re-deployment of what has been most important to him – his wealth. He responds to Jesus by re-organising his affairs. Note the two principles that he uses in changing the way his wealth.

• “Look, half of my possessions Lord I will give to the poor”.  The first principle by which he decides to give is a recognition of the needs of the poor. Half his wealth, straight away is dedicated to the needs of the poor, solely on the basis of their need: not their deserving, not his abundance, but their need.

• Then  “and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much”. The second principle is a recognition that part of his own wealth is the fruit of fraud and injustice. Very appropriate I hear you say: he was probably a crook, as were most of those tax collectors!

It is always difficult to acknowledge one’s complicity in the expropriation of the assets of other people, of taking their wealth. We are good people, basically honest people as far as I can tell.  And yet, like every people on the face of the earth, we are implicated in some way in the flow of wealth occasioned by empire and war, by chance and misadventure. Some of us are losers, and some of us are winners. My family are essentially Anglo-Celtic. We are the beneficiaries of the social wealth of the British Empire – people of Indian and African cultures may fell a little differently about the legacy of the British Empire. My ancestors ‘took up’ and farmed land in Victoria in the nineteenth century, land once the hunting grounds of Aboriginal Australians. My little passport and all the laws and consulates it unlocks, and the customs officials and detention centres that stand behind it mean that I can continue to enjoy the wealth of this country, while others are excluded if they do not fall into certain classes of persons.

I’m not consumed by guilt about this, for I am not personally responsible for the events, choices and laws over several centuries that have resourced where I now stand.  But I must acknowledge, and I think we as a people must acknowledge, that it is not just through merit and blessing that we have what we have. There has been injustice and expropriation and even some fraud in the complex web of history by which we find ourselves sitting here in one of the richest cities, of one of the richest countries on the face of the earth.

And that too is a principle by which we should consider how our wealth is deployed. It is not just need, but the moral obligations on those of us who have wealth and who realise that there is more than a measure of chance and good fortune in what we have. To know this is to know, as Zacchaeus knew, that there are moral demands on our resources, and that we should be investing in – and I mean investing - in processes of restitution, of making good. Resources put into the work of justice and peace-making are an investment in the future of the planet and of the future of

Personally, there are many things I dislike in the culture of the United States, the imperial power that currently dominates the world. But the culture of philanthropy is a wonderful thing. The rich there do have a sense of obligation and want to give away their wealth.

Principles by which we can organize our resources:

• The creation mandate: from early chapters of Genesis:   we are stewards of God’s creation and have an obligation to use and care for it….. “fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion” (Gen 1.28) have also been interpreted in a more exploitative sense…. Much theological work to be done here….
• The framework of law, of the Torah of the OT:  the principles of Sabbath rest and leaving the land fallow, of restitution in the Jubilee year, of tithes and offering to God and to the poor, of not gleaning the corners of the vineyard … there is a host of material in the OT law that we might draw on
• The prophetic call for justice, care for the poor and care for the earth, recognition that injustice blights the creation, brings drought and famine …..
• The teaching of Jesus:  the call to discipleship to leave everything and follow Jesus, his radical juxtaposition of the Kingdom of God with its invitation to an economy of gift and surrender over against the economy of Caesar with its markets, coins and taxes.
• The eschatological hope of the coming Kingdom of peace and freedom, the abundance of the great feast at the end of time, what the early church knew as ‘the wedding supper of the lamb’, something known from OT times and nurtured within the hearts of God’s people.

Then there is the principle Zacchaeus encountered, what we might call simply the economy of grace – that in the grace we experience simply by Jesus coming to us there is the motivation for a fundamental realigning of our life priorities, our investment decisions, our consumer choices!

This is not just in our private lives and private choices. It involves the major decisions of social policy that we engage. How do we frame the stewardship decision that we as a nation make? Now is the time these issues are before us all and the economy of grace touches them as well. Next week we want to explore another story of Jesus and think of what the economy of grace might mean for societies and the ordering of law and policy.

We tend to see salvation as a spiritual thing. We see it in religious statements and practices, in sacramental acts like baptism and in sharing in the Lord’s supper.  But Jesus often looked at economic behavior as the sign of people’s state of faith. Zacchaeus made financial decisions and Jesus saw it as salvation coming to his house. An old widow threw 2 copper coins into the treasury and Jesus saw an example of Kingdom accounting, how in the economy of God those copper coins were far more than all the wealth of the rich. Repeatedly in Luke’s  gospel the stories are about managers and money: parable of the corrupt manager, parable of the rich fool, the rich man and Lazarus, the parable of the talents. For Luke the economic aspects of discipleship and the futility of wealth were key themes.

Even Paul said of this supper that it is meant to reflect the sharing of wealth and food and resources within the household of God. The words we know as the words of Institution: if we eat and drink without ‘discerning the body’ we eat and drink damnation to ourselves.

‘Discerning the body’ : is it some hyper-spiritualisation that focuses on the bread we eat? Or is it that spirit of justice which focuses on the bread we share, the means of life that Jesus shared so abundantly with all who followed him?

I leave that to you to decide. I want to tell some amazing news! We are a motley crew. Some of us have got themselves up a gum treat various times in various ways.  Some of us are rich, and it may even be that some of us are frauds. Quite a few of us work for the government, and because of that alone many of our countrymen and women would be suspicious of us. Despite all this, Jesus wants to stay with us today!

So hurry down from whatever takes your time and energy. Attend to this basic, wonderful, amazing grace, that Jesus loves you and wants to spend time with you, invites you into the mystery of his kingdom and his grace in this world.