Jesus, remember me

A Sermon for Good Friday, 18 April 2025 

Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

Luke 23.42-43

Then the criminal who was dying on the cross alongside Jesus
            uttered his last words:
            "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."
 
As famous last words go, they’re pretty good.
            After all, not everyone gets their final words recorded in the Bible.
 
As a slight digression,
            I spent a few minutes looking up other famous last words,
            and I wonder if you can guess who said these:
 
·      “Friends applaud, the comedy is finished.” - Beethoven
·      “Tomorrow I shall no longer be here.” - Nostradamus
·      "I’m bored with it all.” - Winston Churchill
·      “I should have never switched from Scotch to Martinis.” - Humphrey Bogart
 
·      "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." - ???
 
Well, we don’t know his name, or his crime,
            merely that he died alongside Jesus,
            and that he had a moment of profound insight
                        as he faced the hour of his death.
 
I don’t know if you’ve given much thought to what happens when you die?
            It’s one of those things that personally, on the whole,
                        I try not to think about too often.
 
            I mean, I am aware that one day I shall, as Shakespeare put it
                        in Hamlet’s great soliloquy on death,
                        ‘shuffle off this mortal coil’…
            But what then…?
                        What next…?
 
Some say that we go straight to heaven, and they might be right;
            some say that we go to Limbo or to Hell,
                        and I’m less sure that they’re right.
 
But I’m still none the wiser as to what it all really means,
            because I’m not sure I really know what heaven is anyway.
 
As Jesus replied to the Pharisees,
            when they asked him their trick question
about what would happen to the one bride for seven brothers,
            ‘It’s not like that’…. (Luke 20.27-40)
            (And here, you understand, I am paraphrasing slightly).
 
It seems to me that a healthy agnosticism about the nature of the afterlife
            is both biblical and Christ-like.
 
Sometimes, not being quite sure
            is infinitely preferable to being very sure,
and some of the most terrifying Christians I’ve met over the years,
            are those who have certainly
            about where people are going, or not going, when they die.
 
Better, surely, to trust to God’s love and mercy,
            and then live in the light of that.
 
As Jesus did say,
            ‘God is God not of the dead, but of the living;
            for to him all of them are alive.’ (Luke 20.38)
 
And so we come to the last words
            of the criminal on the cross, and to Jesus’ reply.
 
"Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."
            "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise."
 
And I’ve been wondering this week, as I’ve been preparing this sermon,
            what it might mean for us to be remembered by Jesus.
 
What does it mean for us to exist, eternally, in the memory of God,
            who enters into our humanity,
                        dies our death,
                        and never forgets any of it.
 
There is a way of thinking about death
            that sees our souls fluttering away from our bodies,
                        like caged birds set free,
            flying up to heaven to be with Jesus on a cloud.
 
But the problem with this is that this owes far more
            to the ancient philosophy known as dualism
            than it does to the Jewish-Christian tradition.
 
Dualism suggests that there is a fundamental separation
            between our souls and our bodies,
that our bodies are merely temporary homes
            for the eternal spark that is our souls.
 
And whilst this is a very ancient way of looking at things,
            coming from Greek philosophy and the teachings of Plato,
it isn’t something we find clearly in the Christian scriptures.
            You kind of have to read it in,
                        if you’re going to see it there.
 
The Jewish tradition, from which Christianity emerged,
            has a far more unified view of the human person.
 
We are not a mortal body containing an immortal soul,
            but rather each of us is a person, body and soul in unity,
            created and loved entirely and eternally by God.
 
So when we die, it is the entirety of our being that enters into God’s eternity.
 
In his first letter to the Corinthians,
            Paul speaks of the resurrection body being like a plant
            that grows from a seed that is sown into the ground.
 
The physical body, the body we have in this life,
            is like the seed,
and the physical death we must all face,
            is the action of being cast into the ground,
and the resurrection we share with Christ,
            is both as continuous and yet different
            as the beautiful flower that grows from a tiny seed.
 
As Paul says,

‘It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body.
If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body.’ (1 Cor 15.44)
 
This is not some dualistic discontinuity;
            rather, who we are in eternity
            is in direct continuity with who we are temporally.
 
Our eternal existence, our spiritual body,
            is as unrecognisably different as the plant is from the seed,
            but it is still the same being.
 
We do not cast off our earthly bodies,
            to get new ones in heaven.
 
Rather, who we are eternally
            arises directly from who we are today.
 
And so we are back to the criminal’s last words from the cross:
 
"Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."
"Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise."
 
John Polkinghorne, the brilliant physicist and Anglican clergyman,
            who has offered some profound insights
            in the unity of spirituality and quantum physics
once said:
 
‘I believe it is a perfectly coherent hope, that the pattern that is me
            will be remembered by God
and its instantiation will be recreated by God
            when God reconstitutes me
            in a new environment of God’s choosing.’
 
In other words, who we are is remembered by God,
            and held fast eternally by God
            as part of God’s creative, dynamic being.
God remembers us,
            and everyone who has ever lived has a place in God’s mind.
 
In his second letter to the Corinthians,
            Paul speaks of those who follow Christ as being ‘in Christ’,
and he says,

‘If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation:
everything old has passed away;
see, everything has become new!’ (2 Cor 5.17)
 
We are in God through Christ,
            we are remembered by God at the hour of our death,
            as Jesus remembered the criminal dying on the cross alongside him.
 
Nothing is lost, everything is redeemed,
            all sins are forgiven,
            and eternity is ours.
 
As we remember the death of Jesus
            through broken bread and shared wine,
so he remembers us in our hour of weakness.
 
"Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."
"Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise."

Come to This Easter Table

A Communion Liturgy for Easter Sunday

For Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

20 April 2025

Invitation to the Table

Come to this table,
            not because the tomb was filled with certainty,
            but because it was empty.
 
Come, not because we fully understand resurrection,
            but because we remember the One
who broke bread with friends,
            even as the world broke him.
 
Come, not to escape the world,
            but to receive strength to live within it—
as resurrection people
            in a Good Friday world.
 
Come to this table,
            you who are perplexed,
you who remember,
            you who bear witness,
you who long for life
            in the midst of death.
 
This is not our table.
            This is Christ’s table.
And all who hunger for his presence
            are welcome here.
 
Prayer of Thanksgiving
God of the living,
            we give you thanks for Jesus Christ,
who shared our human life,
            who walked the dusty roads,
ate with outcasts,
            touched the unclean,
and loved with a love that cost him everything.
 
In him,
            you turned the world upside down.
In him,
            you showed us that death does not get the final word.
In him,
            you drew near to us
            and taught us to remember.
 
And so,
            on this Easter morning,
we give thanks not only for the empty tomb,
            but for the broken bread
            that still feeds us.
 
For the cup poured out,
            that still quenches the thirst of justice.
 
For the community gathered,
            that still bears witness
            to the presence of the risen Christ.
 
With all your saints,
            and all your creation,
we lift our voices in praise:
 
All:
Christ is risen.
He is risen indeed.
Alleluia!
 
Words of Institution
On the night he was betrayed,
Jesus took bread,
            gave thanks,
            broke it,
and gave it to his friends, saying:
 
“This is my body, broken for you.
            Do this to remember me.”
 
And after supper he took the cup,
            saying:
“This cup is the new covenant in my blood,
            poured out for you and for many
            for the forgiveness of sins.
As often as you drink it,
            do so in remembrance of me.”
 
So, as we break bread and share the cup,
            we proclaim not just his death,
            but his rising.
 
We proclaim not only his absence,
            but his presence.
 
We proclaim not a return to the old,
            but the beginning of something new.
 
Christ has died.
Christ is risen.
Christ will come again.
 
Prayer of Consecration
Send your Holy Spirit, O God,
            upon us and upon these gifts of bread and wine.
That they may be for us
            the body and blood of Christ.
And that we—your people—
            may be the body of Christ in the world:
 
Disrupted and resurrected,
            broken and shared,
            poured out and alive.
Amen.
 
As we break bread and drink wine together,
            all are invited to share with us in this food that comes as a gift from God.
 
If, however, you would rather not take communion this morning,
            please just let the elements pass you by.
 
Please eat the bread as soon as it has been served to you,
            but retain the cup of wine until all have been served,
            so that we can all drink together.
 
The Sharing of Bread and Cup
The bread we break
            is a sharing in the body of Christ.
Though we are many,
            we are one body,
for we all share in one bread.
 
<Bread is distributed and eaten>
 
<The cup is raised for blessing>
 
This cup we bless
            is a sharing in the life of Christ.
 
<Wine is distributed>
 
May this wine nourish us
            to live resurrection.
Drink, for all is now ready.
 
<Wine is drunk>
 
Prayer After Communion
God of the empty tomb,
            we thank you for feeding us
with the bread of presence
            and the cup of promise.
 
Send us out
            to be witnesses of resurrection:
to challenge what is dead,
            to speak what is silenced,
to remember what is true,
            to live as your body in the world.
 
In the name of the Risen Christ,
 
Amen.

Marching for a new world

A Sermon for Palm Sunday 13 April 2025, 
Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

Psalm 118.1-2, 19-29 

Luke 19.28-40

Imagine, if you can, a population that has lost faith in its national leaders…

            Imagine a country where political instability is the order of the day,

                        and those who govern cling to power using a toxic mix

                        of deceit, bullying, and outright coercion.

            Imagine a country where the alternatives aren’t much better.

 

Imagine a vast crowd, marching through the streets of the capital city,

            chanting and laughing and crying out

                        that the way things have turned out

                        is not the way any of them wanted things to be.

Imagine a crowd longing for an alternative, a new leader,

            who will finally do things differently.

 

And, of course, there are others who aren’t so convinced,

            who watch the crowd from a distance, fearful of the power of the mob,

            those who want the crowds to disperse,

                        to allow the processes of government to proceed,

                        for better or not, in good order;

            those who are afraid of making things worse by pandering to populist opinion,

                        who see the rule of law, and due process, as paramount.

 

Welcome, to first century Palestine.

 

And as you retrace the steps of Jesus from Luke 19,

            taking the road from Jericho to Jerusalem,

            you find that it’s uphill all… the… way…

 

Jericho is 258 metres below sea level,

            part of the Dead Sea depression

            that forms the lowest point on the surface of the earth.

Whilst Jerusalem is 754 metres above sea level,

            giving an elevation change of over a kilometre,

            all to be climbed, in the first century, on foot in the desert heat;

                        a very different experience from the air conditioned minibus

            that we were fortunate enough to have at our disposal

                        when we made this same journey a couple of years ago.

 

By the time Jesus got near to Bethphage and Bethany,

            situated on the Mount of Olives facing Jerusalem,

                        just the other side of the Kidron Valley,

            he and his disciples had already put in

                        a couple of days’ of hard uphill slog.

 

And then Luke tells us about this slightly strange scene

            where Jesus sends his disciples on ahead into the village

                        to find a young male horse that has never been ridden,

                        and bring it to him.

 

It quickly becomes clear that this is something Jesus has been planning for a while,

            because it seems there’s some prior arrangement with the people in the village

            to let his disciples take their animal without challenge.

 

And so the colt is brought to Jesus,

            the disciples throw their cloaks on it, Jesus jumps on,

                        and they all set off across the Mount of Olives,

                        making their way towards Jerusalem.

 

And then, suddenly, the handful of disciples

                        who had come up with Jesus from Jericho,

            become a multitude of disciples, praising God joyfully with loud voices,

                        loud enough to be heard across the valley

                                    and attract the attention of the Pharisees

                                    who quickly come to see what’s going on.

 

And then, equally suddenly, and for the first time in the gospel,

            Jesus gets a new title.

 

‘Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!’,

            people start to chant.

 

After a whole ministry of assiduously avoiding the title ‘King’,

            unexpectedly, sitting on a colt on the Mount of Olives,

            Jesus is loudly hailed as ‘King’ by his own disciples.

 

The whole thing has the air of being a massive setup.

            This isn’t happening by accident:

                        A suspiciously large crowd of disciples,

                        the pre-arranged availability of symbolically important horse,

                        and a new chant which takes things to a whole new level in terms of impact.

 

It’s all starting to sound very Zechariah chapter 9 verse 9.

 

Let me remind you, in case you’ve forgotten.

 

The book of Zechariah, one of so-called ‘minor prophets’ of the Hebrew Bible,

            was written some time after the Jewish return from Babylonian exile,

and it speaks, tantalisingly, of a hopeful future:

            of a time when Israel’s political strength would be restored,

            when the economic stability of its capital city would be re-established,

            and when its rebuilt temple would have religious superiority once again.

 

And as part of this hope for a new world order,

            of a renewed political, economic, and religious ascendancy for the people of Israel,

Zechariah painted a picture that profoundly shaped Jewish theology

            for the next five hundred years,

giving shape to what became known

            as the hope for a future messiah.

 

Zechariah said (in chapter 9, verse 9),

 

“Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!

Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he,

humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

 

The Jews of the first century knew full well

            what their Messiah was going to look like,

and Jesus and his disciples

            deliberately enact that scene almost to the letter.

 

What on earth is going on here?

 

Well, I think it sounds like what, in community organising terms,

            we would call an ‘action’.

 

Many of you will know that Bloomsbury is an active part

            of the community organising network London Citizens,

            which seeks to make our city a more just place.

 

And one of the key lessons of community organising,

            is that you only get the change in society

            that you have the power to demand.

 

You can shout about injustice until you’re blue in the face,

            but if you don’t have enough power

                        to persuade the-powers-that-be to change,

            nothing is likely to change.

 

The Citizens method suggest that there are three kinds of power in the world:

            financial power, political power, and people-power.

And if you don’t have a lot of money,

            and if you don’t have politicians in your pocket,

            then the way to bring about greater justice in society is to organise people.

 

So you network people together, drawing in churches, mosques, synagogues,

            schools, universities, and community groups,

until you have enough people who care about injustice

            to begin to make a difference.

 

And then you plan what’s known as an ‘action’:

            a deliberate act, involving people in sufficient numbers to get noticed,

to draw attention to the injustice you want to challenge,

            and to put pressure on the gatekeepers of power.

 

So, for example:

            A business that is not paying the living wage,

                        may find a large group of people outside its head office

                                    on the day of their AGM,

                        visibly drawing attention to the fact

                                    that they are not treating their employees with dignity.

 

            Or a City Hall might find a large group of people

                        making a tent camp on its doorstep,

                        on the very day they are taking decisions about affordable housing…

 

You get the idea.

 

And I think that what we have going on here in Luke’s story of Palm Sunday,

            is Jesus undertaking what we would, today, call an ‘action’.

 

He’s done his power analysis,

            and he knows what he is setting out to challenge:

He is setting his face

            against the economic corruption of the Herodian regime,

            and against the political domination of the Roman empire,

            and against the religious compromises of the Pharisees.

 

Just like Zechariah before him,

            he identifies in his society the unholy trinity of power

                        that is economics, politics, and religion

                        all in each other’s pockets;

            and he can see that each of these has become corrupted,

                        so that it no longer serves the people,

                        but rather controls and oppresses them.

 

So Jesus gathers his crowd, and enacts his action;

            deliberately modelling his entry into Jerusalem

            on the archetypical messianic text from the Jewish Scriptures.

 

“Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he,

humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

 

Zechariah would have been proud.

 

Sometimes, on Palm Sunday, we emphasise Jesus going to Jerusalem to die,

            setting his face towards the cross,

            to sacrifice himself for the sake of humanity.

 

But today, I’d like to suggest that we look at it slightly differently.

 

This isn’t Jesus going to Jerusalem to die,

            although clearly that is a possible outcome.

But rather, this is Jesus going to Jerusalem

            to announce his kingdom.

 

Just as Martin Luther King never set out to be assassinated,

            but nevertheless recognised that his actions were endangering his life

            as he spoke and acted against the oppressive powers of his day;

so Jesus didn’t set out to be crucified,

            even though his actions to call out the abuses of power

            were certainly making that a possibility.

 

This is not a death march,

            this is not a dead man walking.

 

This is Jesus symbolically embodying

            all the things he had been talking about

            over the past years of his public ministry.

 

All the parables, all the healings, all the exorcisms,

            had been pointing to one thing:

which is that the old world of power and domination

            was not going to get its way for ever,

because a new world is coming into being,

            where evil will be cast out, where corrupt power will be challenged,

            and where those who have been diminished will be raised up.

 

It’s no wonder the crowd started to go wild,

            the thing they’ve been waiting for, for five hundred years,

            is finally happening.

 

And the timing couldn’t have been better,

            Jesus is entering Jerusalem in fulfilment of Zechariah’s prophecy,

            in the precise week of the great Passover celebration,

which introduces a whole other layer of symbolism to Jesus public ‘action’:

 

The original Passover, you will remember,

            was the final act of God in persuading the Pharaoh

            to release the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt.

 

After the plagues of frogs, locusts, and the like,

            the angel of death visited the houses of the Egyptians

                        taking the lives of their firstborn children,

            but passing over the houses of the Israelites

                        who had marked their doorposts with the blood of a lamb.

 

And Jesus’ symbolic entry to Jerusalem

            is timed to coincide with the annual celebration

            of Israel’s release from slavery.

 

The point couldn’t be clearer:

            this is God’s new exodus, it is God’s great Passover,

Jesus has come to bring into being a new world,

            where the powers of empires like Egypt and Rome

                        would be challenged at their very core,

            and where the corruptions of religious compromise and economic exploitation

                        would be named and shamed,

            opening a new path to freedom for those enslaved.

 

And so the crowd shout words from Psalm 118.26

 

"Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!

Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!" (19.38)

 

giving us yet another highly symbolic reference from the Hebrew Bible.

 

Psalm 118 was a traditional song sung by pilgrims on the way to Jerusalem,

            it is a hymn of praise to the God who defeats all his foes,

                        and establishes his kingdom.

And the crowd around Jesus start chanting it,

            pinning yet more hopes on Jesus

                        as the fulfilment of all the nation’s deepest longings

                        for justice, renewal, and restoration.

 

And so Jesus enters Jerusalem,

            taking the path from the Mount of Olives,

            though the Kidron Valley

            and back up the hill on the other side to the city of David.

 

And although Luke doesn’t record it,

            I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to hear the crowds

            still singing Psalm 118 as they draw near to the city gates:

 

“Open to me the gates of righteousness,

that I may enter through them and give thanks to the LORD.

This is the gate of the LORD; the righteous shall enter through it.” (118.19-20)

 

I spoke a few minutes ago about how public actions

            are designed to challenge the gatekeepers of power,

            to bring about the possibility of change.

 

Well, the triumphal entry of Jesus to Jerusalem is just such an action,

            and by anyone’s measure it was supremely effective.

 

We get the initial response within our passage from Luke’s gospel,

            as the Pharisees who have joined the crowd

            tell Jesus to order his disciples to stop.

 

But of course, Jesus is having none of it,

            the moment of his great public action has arrived,

            and nothing is going to get in its way.

 

So he tells the Pharisees that it’s useless

            to try and put a plug in the dam once the crack has appeared,

            and that the flood of God’s new kingdom is coming whether they like it or not.

‘If these disciples were silent, the stones would shout out’, he says.

 

And, of course, so it proves to be.

            The revolution is coming, and nothing, nothing at all, can stop it.

 

Of course, as we who have heard the story before know very well,

            the revolution doesn’t come in the way that the crowd around Jesus expected.

There’s the horror of Good Friday to get through

            before Easter Sunday dawns.

 

But the tide has turned, the dam has cracked,

            the possibility of a new way of being has been glimpsed,

and the good news of the in-breaking kingdom of God

            will not be silenced.

 

People are going to find release from their sins,

            those who are bowed down by the powerful trinity

                        of politics, economics, and religion,

            are going to find a way through the darkness

                        to new life and new hope,

            as they encounter a new trinity of faith, hope, and love.

 

The revolution that Jesus brought to Jerusalem

            wasn’t, in the end, the revolution the crowd were shouting for.

He didn’t take David’s throne, overthrow Rome, depose Herod,

            and send the Pharisees packing.

 

He did something far more significant.

 

The kingdom that Jesus inaugurated,

            was not a renewed kingdom of Israel,

            based in Jerusalem and defined by geographic limits.

 

It was the kingdom of God,

            which extends to all people, in all places, in all times.

 

It was the universal kingdom of love

            which always, in all places, and in all times,

                        offers a persistent, unquenchable challenge

            to those unholy powers that seek to deny love,

                        and to require people to live in fear.

 

And so we come to ourselves,

            gathered here in central London,

celebrating the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem.

 

And I wonder what the significance of this event is for us?

            What is the good news of the in-breaking kingdom for us, in this place?

 

Lent and passiontide are probably the most depressing

            season in the Christian year.

 

Some of us might have been echoing

            Jesus’ fasting in the wilderness for 40 days and nights,

            by denying ourselves of something through Lent.

 

Some of us have already fixed our sights on the cross of Good Friday.

            We know the desolation of Easter Saturday is coming.

            We know there is a journey of suffering before we get to Easter Sunday.

 

And yet, what do we meet today on Passion Sunday,

            Palm Sunday as it is sometimes called?

Here at the start of the Octave of Holy Week?

 

We meet Jesus triumphant!

            We meet Jesus entering the city

                        to a fiesta of praise and acclamation

            as the crowds cast their cloaks before him

                        honouring and praising him

                        as the king who comes to bring good news to the city.

 

And I can’t help but think, sometimes,

            that if Jesus, the week before his crucifixion,

            with the weight of the world on his shoulders,

can enter the city and share in the joy of its citizens at his arrival,

            then maybe we too can find joy in the midst of the troubles of our lives.

 

You see, another one of the lessons of community organising,

            is that changing the world should be fun.

 

Laughter is a powerful tool for healing hurt and defusing tension,

            a smile can unlock gates that no battering will shift.

 

And you don’t need me to tell you this morning

            what the problems are in our world.

 

Death and despair, politics and power, suffering and starvation

            confront us every time we turn on our TVs

            or open a newspaper or news app.

 

And Jesus knew all about the difficulties and dramas of human life,

            he knew what the Romans were doing to people,

            he knew that Herod had betrayed his people

                        in exchange for money and power,

            he knew that the religious leaders

                        had sold their souls in exchange for security.

 

But that didn’t stop him from entering into the triumphant joy

            of his people at the coming of their messiah.

 

We often speak of the gospel of Jesus,

            we often proclaim the good news of his coming.

 

But all too often we live as though the message he proclaimed

            was one of middle class guilt and mild self loathing,

rather than one of triumph in the face of death,

            and joy in the face of sorrow.

 

There is good news to be found on Palm Sunday,

            there is joy to be found in following Jesus into Jerusalem.

 

Sure, it may not turn out as we expect,

            and I’m pretty sure that this time next week,

                        even after we have lived through the cross and got to resurrection,

            there will still be news of corrupt politicians,

                        morally bankrupt economics, and religious compromise.

 

But this is what Jesus came to challenge,

            and he invites us to join him, not just in sorrow,

but in the moments of joy and laughter

            that summon into being a new world.

 

He calls us to create with him a world

            where power is transformed, where oppression is challenged,

                        and where the mourning of death

                        is turned to the bright day of new life.

 

So as we march together over the threshold of Palm Sunday

            and enter the sacred, powerful ground of Holy Week,

as we open the gates to a future unknown and unchartered,

            which certainly includes suffering and death

            every bit as much as it includes resurrection and new life,

let us do so with joy,

            because we are following in the footsteps

                        of the one who came to Jerusalem

            to enact a message of good news for all people.

Through the Eye of a Needle: Zacchaeus and the Call to Generosity

Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

6 April 2025

By http://www.svtluka.com/dushe-poleznoe-chtenie/images/33_Nedelya_po_50ce_14.jpg, 

Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=55735250

Luke 18.18-27; 19.1-10

Today’s story from Luke’s gospel is one
            that I think I’ve known my whole life.
 
I can remember as a little child in Sunday School
            learning that song about Zacchaeus
                        who, apparently, was a very little man
                                    and a very little man was he.
            He climbed into a sycamore tree,
                        for, in defiance of the normal conventions
                                    of conversational grammar,
                        the saviour he wanted to see…
 
Well, we all know Zacchaeus, don’t we?
            Good old Zacchaeus, good old tiny little Zacchaeus.
 
But the question that occurred to me,
            as I was preparing this sermon, was this:
                        Exactly how little was he?
 
We don’t know very much about this pint-sized hero
            of the opening paragraph of Luke 19.
But I’d like to know
            just how vertically challenged he was.
 
I mean, would our fun-sized tax collector
            be tall enough
            to see over this lectern?
 
Or would our well endowed Lilliputian
            be diminutive enough
            to walk under the communion table?
 
Or would our arboreal Borrower
            be petite enough
            to slip into my pocket?
 
Or would Zacchaeus be small enough, possibly,
            to pass through the eye of a needle?
 
You see, we cannot read the story of Zacchaeus
            in isolation from that of the rich young ruler
            from the previous chapter.
 
In the rich young ruler, we meet a good man,
            a law-abiding and godly man,
who ultimately goes away saddened by his encounter with Jesus,
            because he discovers that he loves his possessions
                        too much to be parted from them.
And then Jesus says,
            "How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! 
            Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle
                        than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."
 
So who then, we are left wondering,
            can enter the kingdom?
Is it only those who give away all their money?
            Are the righteous only to be found among the penniless?
 
I hope the answer to this is ‘no’,
            because I, along with many others, am far from penniless.
 
And so we come to Zacchaeus,
            a small man who has received something of a bad press over the years.
 
I started the sermon with a passing observation
            about the importance of grammar,
and I’m afraid we have to spend a moment or two
            on a technicality of Greek grammar
because it affects the way we read our passage.
 
Normally, Zacchaeus is presented as a bad man, a corrupt man,
            someone who has grown very wealthy by defrauding others
            and collaborating with the Roman occupation of Israel.
 
And his encounter with Jesus is normally understood as a conversion story,
            with his decision to give away half his money
                        and to repay those he has defrauded
            providing the evidence of his repentance and salvation.
 
And the Bible version we use here at Bloomsbury, the NRSV,
            certainly translates the story in this way:
 
⁸ Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord,
            "Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor;
            and if I have defrauded anyone of anything,
            I will pay back four times as much."
 
But the difficulty here is that this passage, in the original Greek,
            is not in the future tense at all.
 
It’s in the present tense…
            In other words, Zacchaeus isn’t promising
                        to change his ways from here on in;
            rather, he is explaining that this is already his practice!
 
The RSV captures this sense much better:
 
And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord,
‘Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor;
and if I have defrauded any one of anything, I restore it fourfold.’
 
He isn’t so much repenting,
            as he is attesting his righteousness.
 
And if this reading is right,
            a very different Zacchaeus starts to emerge from the story.
 
He’s not the bad man who repents,
            rather, he’s a man trying desperately to be good,
            in the midst of a financial system
                        that tends towards corruption at every turn.
 
After all, he is a tax collector, and a chief tax collector at that!
            He’s the big cheese at the top of the tree,
                        and the tree he’s at the top of is pretty dirty in places.
            He’s a man who has managed to climb his way to the top,
                        but who knows that the climb has left his hands somewhat soiled.
 
            And so he already has a system in place
                        to ensure that his money doesn’t own him,
                        to ensure that his money doesn’t corrupt him.
 
            He gives half his money to the poor,
                        and if he defrauds someone, knowingly or not,
                        he repays them four times as much.
 
Tom Wright sums up the problem facing Zacchaeus,
            and it’s the same problem faced by so many of us…
He says, ‘Wherever money changes hands,
                        whether across a grubby table in a tin shack
                        or across a sparking computer screen in a shiny office
                                    on the ninety-ninth floor of a Wall Street skyscraper,
                        the hands all too easily get dirty.
            Whenever money starts to talk,
                        it shouts louder than the claims
                        of honesty, respect and human dignity.’
 
In the eyes of his society,
            Zacchaeus the chief tax collector was a negative figure.
The game of ‘bash the banker’ is clearly nothing new,
            with those who succeed financially
            having always been an easy target
                        for those further down the pyramid.
 
Jericho was a centre for the collection of taxes,
            and the Romans worked with the Jewish tax authorities
            to ensure that not only were the taxes collected
                        for the local government of Judea,
            but also that taxes were taken
                        to pay for the Roman occupation of the land,
                        and to fund the wider regime of the Roman empire.
 
The Jewish population massively resented paying taxes to Rome,
            and regarded those who were involved in the taxation system
                        as traitors to their nation,
                        as collaborators with the Romans.
 
And so Zacchaeus would have been ostracised by his own people,
            pre-judged as a sinner
            because of his profession and his success.
 
Zacchaeus could protest his personal ethical code all he liked,
            but in the eyes of his own people,
            he was no longer fit to be called a Jew.
 
He was, to put it another way,
            lost to the house of Israel.
He had been crowded out
            by those who would belittle and demean him.
 
‘Zacchaeus was a very little man, and a very little man was he’
            you can almost hear the local children chanting,
            as he is diminished in their eyes.
 
Crowd-mentality can be an ugly thing, can’t it?
            As we collectively decide who’s in, and who’s out;
                        who’s part of us, and who’s lost to us.
 
Society fixates on certain people, certain professions,
            and rules them persona non grata.
 
And so some people live at one remove from society,
            not necessarily because they are bad people,
            but just because they don’t fit.
 
It seems there was something about Zacchaeus
            that drew him to Jesus.
 
Like so many of us who have money and possessions,
            there was something in him that nagged,
            something that drove him to seek a better way.
 
It’s surely no co-incidence that when Zacchaeus tries to see Jesus,
            he climbs a tree to the top,
            over the heads of the crowd who were in the way.
 
He might not be the bad man of his own legend,
            but he certainly seems to be a man who was used to getting to the top.
 
The crowd would have kept him in his place,
            but he is determined to catch a glimpse of the good rabbi,
            who is talking about a better way, a new way of being human,
                        where status and hierarchy case to matter,
            and where each person is valued for who they are,
                        not for who other people think they are.
 
And as so many others have discovered since Zacchaeus,
            when someone goes looking for Jesus,
            they discover that Jesus has been looking for them all the while.
 
In the background to Luke’s story of this lost tax collector,
            are three other stories of ‘lost-ness’ also unique to Luke’s gospel,
                        I’m thinking of the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin,
                                    and the lost (or prodigal) son,
            all of which demonstrate that God’s primary concern,
                        as revealed in Jesus,
            is to recover that which is lost.
 
Like the good shepherd searching for the lost sheep,
            like the woman searching for the lost coin,
            like the father searching for the lost son,
so the Son of Man seeks those who are lost,
            in order to restore them
            and to bring salvation to their house.
 
These parables of chapter 15 become reality here in chapter 19,
            and the stories of finding that which has been lost
                        take flesh in the telling,
            becoming real in the life of a little tax collector.
 
And so Zacchaeus climbed his tree,
            rising above the crowd that had already written him off,
            that had already consigned him to the back of the queue.
 
And so the stage was set for his encounter with Jesus,
            the scene so beloved by Sunday School teachers down the years.
 
Zacchaeus looks down, Jesus looks up,
            and suddenly everything is different.
 
Zacchaeus starts as a spectator,
            but quickly finds himself drawn in
            as an active participant for the kingdom.
 
And then Jesus does what he has done elsewhere,
            and invites himself to share a meal
            with this ostracised tax collector.
 
Luke’s gospel is particularly, and somewhat surprisingly,
                        positive about tax collectors:
            they are listed amongst those coming to be baptised (3.12, 7.29),
                        they come near to Jesus to listen to him (15.1),
            Jesus regularly shares food with them (5.29-30; 7.34),
                        one of the disciples, Levi, is a tax collector (5.27),
            and the tax collector in the parable of chapter 18
                        goes away justified (18.13-14).
 
It’s almost as if, for Luke, the socially marginalised tax collector
            is the perfect example of exactly the kind of person
            who the religious establishment would write off
                        as unredeemably compromised,
            but whom Jesus intentionally reaches out to.
 
The children’s song captures the moment beautifully:
 
            And when the Saviour passed that way,
            He looked into the tree and said,
            'Now, Zacchaeus, you come down,
            For I'm coming to your house to tea.'
 
In the ancient world, eating with someone was a highly symbolic action.
            To go to someone’s house, and to receive hospitality from them,
                        was to impart value upon them.
            To take the gift of food from someone
                        was to pay the giver an honour.
 
And for a rabbi like Jesus to take the initiative
            and invite himself to the house of a notorious outsider like Zacchaeus
            was an unusual move, to put it mildly.
 
The visit of Jesus to the house of Zacchaeus
            was an intentional breaking down of the barriers
            that had kept him apart from society.
 
To eat with him, to share food with him,
            was to impart to him an honour
            that no-one else would grant.
 
And it’s as Jesus sits at his house,
            that the righteousness of Zacchaeus is revealed.
 
It emerges that he is not what others had thought he was,
            he isn’t a man on the make,
            determined to succeed whatever and whoever the cost.
 
Rather, he is a man who has not allowed his money to own him,
            and who has discovered the possibility
                        of a life lived out of grace and generosity;
                        both generosity of spirit, and generosity of pocket.
 
The contrast with the rich young ruler couldn’t be more clear:
            The rich young ruler was publicly holy and visibly righteous,
                        a great man, a tall man,
                        the kind of man others would look up to,
                        as an example of someone who had it all and had made it work.
 
            And yet, when he met the call of Christ,
                        he discovered that his love of money
                        was keeping him from entering the kingdom.
 
            Zacchaeus on the other hand was shunned by his own people
                        he was looked down on as a small man,
                        looked up to by no-one.
 
            And yet, when he met the call of Christ,
                        he discovered that his generosity and humility
                        attested his righteousness far more
                                    than any public display of holiness could have done.
 
His fourfold repayment to anyone who he may have defrauded
            was at the top end of that required by the Jewish law (Ex 22.1)
and his giving of half of his money to the poor
            was clearly a highly generous act.
 
But, and here’s the significant thing,
            we are not led to believe that either of these acts on Zacchaeus’ part
            left him as a poor or an impoverished man.
 
Half of a lot, is still a lot,
            and even once compensation has been given
                        to those who have been defrauded
            we can still think of Zacchaeus as a man of means.
 
And yet, his response is clearly adequate in Jesus’ eyes…
 
Plainly, ‘giving it all away’ is not the economic response
            that is required of everyone who would follow Jesus.
 
Perhaps what we can learn from Zacchaeus,
            the small man who passes through the eye of the needle,
is that what is required is a discovery and embodiment
            of the kingdom values of generosity and humility.
 
For some of us this may involve a radical transformation
            of our approach towards money.
 
But others of us may find here a gracious assurance
            that we are loved and accepted by Jesus
            and welcomed into the kingdom of God.
 
Whatever it is that Christ asks of us,
            it begins with hospitality,
                        it begins with him reaching out to us
                                    across all assumptions and attitudes
                                    that would divide, exclude, and condemn
            it begins with the sharing of food,
                        and the breaking down of barriers.
 
And so Jesus invites us, too, to eat with him,
            and to see what we might discover about ourselves as we do so.
 
And so we come to the table,
            at the invitation of Jesus.
 
We come as we are:
            little people, tall people,
            the sinners and the righteous,
            the poor and the wealthy,
            the holy and the compromised.
 
We come, not because of any goodness of our own,
            but because we need mercy and help.
 
And as we eat with Jesus, and he with us,
            salvation comes to our house also,
            as our eyes are opened to the possibilities
                        of a life lived out of generosity and grace.
 
That which was lost is found,
            that which was excluded is made welcome,
and the new society of the people of God,
            that new way of being human that is the kingdom of God,
            becomes real in our midst.
 
So Jesus invites us to eat with him,
            and he comes to our house to eat with us.