“If it seem…”
The Twenty-Fourth
Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 26
3 November 2013
Saint Anne’s
Episcopal Church
Fremont, California
Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4
Psalm 119:137-144
II Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12
St. Luke 19:1-10
INI
Obstructions:
I just finished reading a fascinating book. It was written by Laurent Binet, a
young French author. The name of
the book is HHhH, which stands for the German sentence Himmlers Hirn heißt Heydrich, (Himmler’s
Brain is called Heydrich. Richard
Heydrich was the Protector of Bohemia and Moravia after Adolf Hitler annexed
the Bohemian and Moravian territories into the Reich in 1938. The story is about two persons; a Czech
national and a Slovak national who made their way to Britain to join the
Czechoslovakian-army-in-Exile.
There they were trained to eliminate, by means of assassination, this
one obstruction to Czechoslovak freedom.
This story comes to mind, one because it is fresh in my memory, and two,
because it serves a point from which we might be able to understand aspects of
life that are obstructions to faith.
The volunteers, Jozef Gabčik, and Jan Kubiš, along with
their compatriots, encountered obstruction after obstruction during their
several months of planning, preparation, transport, and execution of the plan
called Operation Anthropoid. It
took time, precious time, to make this counter-attack to the atrocities that
were being visited upon innocent people. As the story is told, both good and
evil move over national boundaries to describe the day-to-day activities that
surround the moment of the assassination.
The protagonists are not pure in nature, but like all of us have lives
that exhibit both good and evil. The
same holds true for the antagonists as well. So, where does that leave us? (Oh, by the way, Heydrich does die of wounds suffered in the
attack, and the two patriots commit suicide as they are besieged by German
troops, who attempt to flush them out of Ss. Cyril and Methodius Church in
Prague. There are numerous lives
lost here, lost in attempting to dismantle the obstructions to justice and
liberty.)
Habakkuk and Patience
The prophet Habakkuk has an issue with God. In the first reading, he takes God to
task for the conditions in his land, Judea. The last verse of the first half of the reading sums it up
well. “So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails. The wicked surround the righteous –
therefore judgment comes forth perverted.” What we have here is one frustrated prophet who
determines that he needs to speak to God in spite of the fact that in the
prophet’s estimation, “(God) will not
listen.” There are many in
this day and age, indeed in many ages that have preceded this one, who would
agree with the prophet’s argument.
Where is God?
What is God waiting for?
These two statements are the theme of the prophet’s oracle. As the church year begins to grind to a
close, such questions are quite appropriate. Jesus’ talked about “wars and rumors of wars”, and we not
only believe it, but also continue to see it. We wonder too, where is God’s justice? This became a theme for Rabbis writing
after the holocaust, and is a theme that resounds for women, people of color,
the poor, and those who are oppressed for whatever reason. Even those of a conservative stripe can
join in the prophet’s train. Where
is the God who will punish the wick?
(And isn’t wickedness in the eye of the beholder?)
God does respond to Habakkuk in an enigmatic and thoroughly
engaging sound byte: “For there is still
a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If
it seems to tarry, wait for it.
Yes, if it seems to tarry wait for it. That is the word for today. As we prepare to enter Advent the overarching theme will be
one of waiting. God’s answer to
Habakkuk is centered in the notion that “There
is still a vision for the appointed time.” It will happen – wait for it. Waiting is hard stuff, but it is what God wants us to
do. There is, however, another
attitude.
Zacchaeus and the
tree
Tax collectors were built of different stuff. They didn’t wait, they asked. They asked for what was due to the
Roman Empire in terms of import, farm, or port taxes, and they asked for a bit
more so that they could earn a living.
They were seen by their fellows as obstructionist to Jewish liberty and
as collaborators. They become, in
the New Testament, the standard villain, the everyday thief, the traitor and quisling.
The story of Zacchaeus is one of obstructions. The first is his height. He is a short man, and the very crowd
that surrounds and has access to Jesus becomes and obstruction to him. It is a clever symbol of the reality of
Judean life. Society itself wishes
to ignore these men who were loathed.
Their very life choices was an obstruction to honoring God, and being a
part of God’s family. So the
situation itself becomes a commentary on life as it was.
Taking the advice of God to Habakkuk, Zacchaeus might have
turned around, gone home, and waited for his acceptance into the kingdom and
into the family. He will, however,
have none of that. He climes a
tree. He looks over the crowd, and
he catches Jesus’ eye. Jesus will
have none of the usual stereotyping of a people, be it women, lepers, children,
or tax collectors. Jesus invites
himself to Zacchaeus’ house – thereby inviting biting comments about his own
status in the community.
What I would like for us to think about is the method that
Zacchaeus uses, one of not be deterred by what people think. Do your neighbors and friends know that
you are a Christian? A friend once
told me he had more difficulty coming out as a Christian to his gay friends
than coming out as a gay man to his family. Zacchaeus seems to leap over those sensibilities and to
stand his ground. He describes to
Jesus his own righteousness of giving in his gifts to the poor. Given time, (wait for it) could we have seen through to Zacchaeus’
innate righteousness? Or would we have
been obstructed by social convention and pressure?
Both and
So what might we take home with us today? Might it be a combination of both
patience and bravado? Might we
storm our way into God’s presence (In the Name of the Father and of the Son, and
of the Holy Spirit) only to wait patiently for God’s answer? Well, yes. And what do we do while waiting? We do what Zacchaeus did – he served the poor, he fed the
hungry, he gave back to his community.
All of these are the signs of the messianic time, and all are coming
from social enemy # 1 – the tax collector.
I will not be able to be with you during the Season of
Advent. My own time here will have
come to an end. I would have liked
to wait with you, waiting in the activity of Sacred Space, the love you have
for one another and your community, the care for those who are sick or dying,
the daily kindnesses that seem to flow out of the faith that you hold. I would like to share that with you. I can encourage you to make it so: to
make your waiting and your patience an active thing worthy of a Zacchaeus. And what isn’t to say that you can’t be
a Habakkuk as well, calling upon God, and reminding God of God’s promised
faithfulness.
I’ll be watching…from the tree.
