Everything [in] between Righteousness & Mercy

Everything [in] between Righteousness & Mercy

Everything [in] between: Part 5
Series based on the Narrative Lectionary & Sanctified Art
April 6, 2025
Luke 19:1-10

Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through town.  A man there named Zacchaeus, a ruler among tax collectors, was rich.  He was trying to see who Jesus was, but, being a short man, he couldn’t because of the crowd.  So he ran ahead and climbed up a sycamore tree so he could see Jesus, who was about to pass that way.  When Jesus came to that spot, he looked up and said, “Zacchaeus, come down at once. I must stay in your home today.”  So Zacchaeus came down at once, happy to welcome Jesus.

Everyone who saw this grumbled, saying, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”

Zacchaeus stopped and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord, I give half of my possessions to the poor. And if I have cheated anyone, I repay them four times as much.”

Jesus said to him, “Today, salvation has come to this household because he too is a son of Abraham. The Human One came to seek and save the lost.”

Luke 19:1-10 (CEB)

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 Reflections by Rev. Jeff Chu

“God has a really bad habit of using people we don’t approve of,” Rachel Held Evans once said. “What makes the gospel offensive is not who it keeps out, but who it lets in.”

I might tweak Evans’s formulation and put it this way: God has a really bad habit of loving people we don’t approve of. Or maybe this: God has a really bad habit of showing mercy to people we don’t approve of.

Or maybe: God has a really bad habit of extending grace to people we don’t approve of.

All are true, as is evident in Jesus’s encounter with Zacchaeus.  In those times, tax collectors were loathed. The phrase “tax collectors and sinners” appears multiple times in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and in one testy exchange with the chief priests and elders, Jesus tosses a rhetorical grenade into their midst, saying, “The tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.”

Tax collectors were stooges of the Roman Empire. They betrayed their own people and enriched  themselves in service to the oppressor. And Zacchaeus was no average corrupt bureaucrat. He’d amassed immense wealth, climbing on others’ backs to the rank of chief tax collector. In other words, he was a senior deplorable.

So it especially galled the gathered crowds that, of everyone clamoring for Jesus’s attention that day in Jericho, he would choose to stay with that man. Can you believe it?

The good teacher would want to be in the home of that despicable, unrepentant sinner? I say “unrepentant” because, before Jesus invites himself over, the vertically challenged Zacchaeus has done nothing except climb a tree to get a better view, again setting himself apart from his people. He hasn’t admitted wrongdoing, resigned his position, or confessed his sin. Still, Jesus says, I will abide with you.

It’s striking that Jesus never called Zacchaeus out — no loud shaming, no public humiliation. Rather, this seems like the gentlest calling-in. Faced with Jesus’ tender warmth, Zacchaeus descends from the tree, rejoins the people, and immediately pledges restitution — a two-pronged act of reconciliation with both God and neighbor.

Confirmation of this remarkable turnabout comes in Jesus’s declaration: “Today salvation has come to this house.” Our ears might be tempted to hear an absolution of individual sin. But Jesus says “to this house,” not “to this man,” which hints at something broader. The Greek word σωτηρία (soteria), translated here as “salvation,” also means “deliverance.” Woven into σωτηρία is a suggestion not just of cleansing but also of wholeness. In the communal culture of Jesus’ day, salvation meant the wholeness derived from belonging. By repenting, Zacchaeus had been delivered from broken relationship with his people back into the wholeness of community.

We can’t know how Zacchaeus would have responded if Jesus had instead tried loud condemnation. We do know that what worked was winsome grace, gentle mercy, and a love so attentive — and so offensive — that it healed.

God of the Sinner

God of The Sinner

The God of Abraham - Part 5

Sunday, October 1, 2023
Genesis 18:16-33

The men turned away and walked toward Sodom, but Abraham remained standing in front of the Lord.  Abraham approached and said, “Will you really sweep away the innocent with the guilty  What if there are fifty innocent people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not save the place for the sake of the fifty innocent people in it?  It’s not like you to do this, killing the innocent with the guilty as if there were no difference. It’s not like you! Will the judge of all the earth not act justly?”

The Lord said, “If I find fifty innocent people in the city of Sodom, I will save it because of them.”

 - Genesis 18:22-26

Listen to this Week’s Sermon here:

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People are quick to use the story of Sodom & Gomorrah as a condemnation of entire people groups with whom they disagree.  When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, several so called Christian TV personalities claimed it was God’s judgment upon the city because they allowed the sins of Sodom to run rampant.    Even then, I  found the picking and choosing ironic, as I had lived through several devastating hurricanes in Florida and no one claimed God’s judgment on our small town. 

There is much we can learn from these infamous cities in Genesis, but this claim of divine wrath over some particular sin is not it.  In fact, God explicitly declares the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah through the prophet Ezekiel and it’s not at all what most people think.

This is the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were proud, had plenty to eat, and enjoyed peace and prosperity; but she didn’t help the poor and the needy (Ezekiel 16:49).

This is an age old story about pride, greed, inhospitality, rejection of the poor, and even violence toward those on the margins.  It’s a story that is repeated in every empire and nation throughout history as power becomes more and more corrupt.  Those in power will do anything to stay in power, even Christians.  How much harm has the church done throughout the centuries and even in our own day just to maintain some degree of cultural dominance, influence, and comfort?

The bigger question for today, however, is how we might respond to sinners less like a judge, jury and executioner rolled into one, and more like Abraham in his conversation with God, especially since we ourselves are among those sinners, no matter how righteous we think we are.

Abraham pleaded for mercy on this corrupt city, even for the sake of only 50 good people.  Eventually he went all the way down to 10.  He didn’t ask that only the righteous ones be protected, but that the whole city be saved for the sake of those few.  We might argue that God destroyed them anyway so it doesn’t matter, but notice that God shared Abraham’s heart for the guilty and innocent alike.  God did not argue with Abraham.  God was readily willing to extend mercy.  God wanted to show mercy. 

There is of course far more to this story, but for now let us consider two key points.

1. God desires mercy and wants us to desire mercy.

2. It only takes a few faithful people to save an entire city.  10 people is not some magic number, as though there were only 9 so the city had to burn.  Rather, it reminds us that every little bit of faithful love makes a difference. 

Seeing sinners through the eyes of love and mercy can truly transform the world.

Depth of Mercy

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Depth of Mercy
Dreaming God’s Dreams: Part 4
Sunday, November 13, 2022
Jonah 3:10-4:11; Matthew 9:13; Romans 5:8

God saw what they were doing—that they had ceased their evil behavior. So God stopped planning to destroy them, and he didn’t do it.

But Jonah thought this was utterly wrong, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord, “Come on, Lord! Wasn’t this precisely my point when I was back in my own land? This is why I fled to Tarshish earlier! I know that you are a merciful and compassionate God, very patient, full of faithful love, and willing not to destroy…

…"But the Lord said, “You ‘pitied’ the shrub, for which you didn’t work and which you didn’t raise; it grew in a night and perished in a night. Yet for my part, can’t I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than one hundred twenty thousand people who can’t tell their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”

Jonah 3:10-4:2, 4:10-11

Listen to this week’s sermon here:

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When I was a kid we used to play a game called "mercy."  I've also heard it called "uncle" and I'm sure it has gone by many other names in various places.  Basically two people interlock their hands and then try to twist each other's fingers until one person says "uncle" or "mercy", indicating that they can't take the pain any longer and they concede the match.  In some ways it's a simple test of strength like arm wrestling, except that it involves far more pain.

I haven't thought about that game in years, but as I consider the idea of mercy in our world, it speaks volumes.  Most often we are quick to want mercy for ourselves.  When life is tough, we pray the Lord might have mercy upon us, that he would put an end to our pain by whatever means necessary.  Sometimes we might even step in on behalf of a loved one who seems to have had more than his or her share of suffering and pray that they might find mercy.

"Blessed are the merciful," Jesus says, "for they will be shown mercy" (Matthew 5:7).

This idea is not dissimilar to the Lord's Prayer where we ask God to forgive our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.  Show mercy upon us as we show mercy to others.

But that's where things get tricky.  What about those people who we feel don't deserve "mercy"?  What about the ones who brought suffering upon themselves?  What about the ones who are not merely innocent victims of circumstance?  What about the ones who would never show mercy to us if the roles were reversed?

This is where that whole, "Love your enemies" teaching comes into play.

But why?

It's not because they deserve it, because truth be told, we don't deserve mercy either.  Rather, we must extend mercy even to the least deserving because God created them in the Divine Image and God still loves them as God loves us.

The prophet Jonah never quite learns this lesson.  The people of Ninevah are evil. They are known for their brutality in war and they show no mercy to those they conquer.  They are the least deserving people in the world.  God should wipe them off the face of the earth without hesitation or warning.

Yet Jonah is sent to warn them.  He is certain they will not respond positively.  They are too far gone.

But to Jonah's surprise and dismay, the people of Ninevah do respond.  They repent of their evil ways and they cry out to God for mercy.

"Too late", Jonah thinks.  "Should have thought about that sooner."

But God's mercy is patient.  It's never our place to decide when it's too late.

And here is the great tragedy.  When we decide that someone else is undeserving of mercy, we become unable to receive God's mercy ourselves.  God has been as merciful to Jonah for his own rebellion as he was to the Ninevites, but  Jonah is never able to recognize it.  Instead he wallows in self-pity because somebody else got what he didn't think they deserved.

Perhaps this is one reason we are called to work for God's dream of extending mercy to all, for only in granting mercy to others can we receive mercy for ourselves.

When we don't get what we deserve
That's a real good thing, a real good thing
When we get what we don't deserve
That's a real good thing, a real good thing

- Newsboys, “Real Good Thing”, 1994