Under pressure
Commentary
Object:
One of the British band Queen's greatest hits is a testimony of modern life. The familiar lyrics of "Under Pressure" go like this:
Pressure pushing down on me
Pressing down on you, no man ask for
Under pressure that burns a building down
Splits a family in two
Puts people on streets
It's the terror of knowing
What this world is about
Watching some good friends
Screaming, "Let me out!"
Tomorrow gets me higher
Pressure on people -- people on streets
Chippin' around, kick my brains 'round the floor
These are the days -- it never rains but it pours
People on streets -- people on streets
It's the terror of knowing
What this world is about
Watching some good friends
Screaming, "Let me out!"
Tomorrow gets me higher, higher, higher...
Pressure on people -- people on streets
We are people under pressure inundated by the tsunami of life and squeezed by the multiple challenges to our identities and faith. So we hide in gated communities, schedule out uncertainty, entertain ourselves into denial, cope with numbing substances, consumerist obsessions, or finally succumb in fatalism. The pressures just keep coming.
But maybe they always have. All three of our lectionary passages today are about people under pressure. Habakkuk lives in Judah, which has grown wicked and immoral in the aftermath of sudden divine deliverance from Assyria, and finds his prayers for God to do something answered by an even greater threat -- the Babylonian threat. Paul writes to the young Thessalonian congregation that has experienced persecution and the recent death of some of its members, and informs these good people that more pressures are on the way. And Zacchaeus is pressured by his suspicious and prejudiced community until Jesus turns the tables on them all.
That, of course, is the great point of the gospel. We are under pressure from many principalities and powers and authorities. But Jesus absorbs the pressures into himself and provides a new haven of hope and healing and love.
Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4
By the time the seventh century BC rolled around, prophets were rarely welcome in the royal palaces, even though all that was left of once proud and expansive Israel was the tiny mountainous territory of Judah. During the 600s, although Assyria kept threatening Jerusalem, it was increasingly occupied in defending itself against its rebellious eastern province of Babylon. During these years, while Jeremiah developed his gloomy diatribes in the heart of the capital city, several among "the Twelve" also made brief statements about coming judgment. Zephaniah (630-610 BC) provided a few paragraphs against Judah and the nations that surrounded it (chs. 1-2), couching the imminent intervention of Yahweh in the increasingly common term "the Day of the Lord." In a final, somewhat more lengthy chapter, Zephaniah turned his attention toward restoration and renewal, pointing to a future time when the fortunes of Yahweh's people would be made full once again.
Also, for just a brief moment (probably around 615 BC), Nahum renewed the mission of Jonah against Nineveh and the Assyrians. This time, however, there was no outcome of repentance and restoration. Instead, the short-lived turnabout that had followed Jonah's challenge evaporated entirely, and Nahum declared irreversible divine judgment against this fierce kingdom, which had wreaked so much havoc on its neighbors in the Fertile Crescent. Yahweh's word through Nahum would come true a few years later when the Assyrians were trounced by the Babylonians, first in the destruction of the capital city of Nineveh (612 BC), then at their secondary administrative center Harran (610 BC), and decisively in the battle of Carchemish (605 BC), where even the allied armies of Egypt proved insufficient to turn the Chaldean tide.
Finally, during this era as well came the disconcerting dialogue between Habakkuk and Yahweh. Formulated around the year 600 BC, just as Babylon was rapidly overwhelming the whimpering remnants of the old Assyrian regime, Habakkuk asked Yahweh a series of questions that were answered in ways that almost brought more pain than the situations they were supposed to resolve. If summarized, the conversation would sound something like this:
Habakkuk: "Why do you ignore the social evils that plague our land (Judah)?" (1:1–4).
Yahweh: "I'm working on it. Very soon now I will bring punishment through my dreaded scourge, the growing Babylonian conquest machine that is rolling through the area" (1:5-11).
Habakkuk: "O God, no! You can't do that! They are even worse than the most evil among us! How can you talk about balancing the scales of justice with such an unfair sentence?" (1:12--2:1).
Yahweh: "I understand your frustration. That's why I'm giving you a message for all to hear. The sins of my people are terrible, and require drastic measures. For this reason I am bringing the Babylonians against them. But the Babylonians are my people too, and will come under my judgment for the wickedness they perform. In the end all will bow to me, as is appropriate when nations come to know that I am the only true God" (2:2-20).
At this point Habakkuk breaks into a song of confidence and trust (ch. 3) that rivals anything found in the Psalms. Habakkuk charts the terrifying movements of Yahweh on earth, bringing death and destruction as the divine judgments swirl. But in the end, Habakkuk raises a marvelous testimony of faith: though things often seem chaotic, evil, and without purpose, behind and above and surrounding the happenings of our history is the wise and sovereign plan and care of God.
2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12
When Paul first arrived in Corinth for his two-year church-planting commitment (Acts 18), his heart remained back in Thessalonica. Already when he was traveling through Athens he worried about how the fledgling Thessalonian congregation was faring (1 Thessalonians 2:17-20), and sent Timothy back to find out more and make a report (1 Thessalonians 3:1-5). Paul had already traveled on to Corinth by the time Timothy caught up with him and was elated at the good word he brought (1 Thessalonians 3:6-10). With emotions running high, Paul dashed off a letter of appreciation and encouragement to his new friends (1 Thessalonians).
Most of Paul's first short letter was given to expressions of praise for the great testimony already being noised about from those who watched the great grace and spiritual energy of this newborn congregation. Paul rehearsed briefly the recent history that brought them together and his aching heart after they were so quickly "torn away" from one another (1 Thessalonians 1-3). Only then did Paul spill some ink on a few notes of instruction.
The central message of Paul's missionary preaching focused on the resurrection, which was for Paul the astounding confirmation of Jesus' divine character. This was the undeniable proof that Jesus was the messiah, and that his words and teachings had ushered in the new age of God's final revelation and redemptive activity. Furthermore, the urgency of Paul's missionary endeavors was predicated on his understanding that Jesus had gone back to heaven only briefly and would be returning to earth very soon -- probably next week, but maybe next month. It was the generous grace of God that provided this brief window of opportunity, allowing Jesus' disciples a quick chance to tell others the good news, so that those who believed would also reap the benefits of the looming messianic age. Neither Paul nor God wanted anyone to be destroyed in the judgments that were still ahead.
The response of the Thessalonian church to this insistent focus on Jesus' imminent return apparently echoed back to Paul through Timothy's report in a way he had not expected. Rather than energizing the new believers in Thessalonica with anticipation of divine vindication after the painful struggles they had recently endured, some had instead become deeply discouraged. In the few intervening weeks or months since they had come to faith in Jesus under Paul's passionate preaching, several members of the congregation had died. The grief of those who survived was heightened because they supposed that their lost loved ones had come so close to sharing in the powers and perfections of the new age, only to succumb to death virtually on its threshold. They assumed that the dead were excluded forever from the messianic kingdom.
Paul corrects this mistaken notion with a brief eschatological teaching. Jesus will return soon, to be sure, and those of us who are alive when that happens will enjoy renewed direct interaction with him. But those who have already died will not be left behind. Their bodies will be raised and restored, just as happened with Jesus on resurrection morning. Assurance of this comes from "the Lord's own word," according to Paul. Although none of the gospels records this exact teaching from Jesus, evidently it had become part of the oral tradition already being passed along from one believer to another.
Paul then went on to reaffirm the central imminent-return-of-Jesus proclamation that had precipitated these reflections in the first place (1 Thessalonians 5:1-11). Jesus will come back very soon, most likely in the foreseeable future. Paul fully expected that he himself and most of his readers there in Thessalonica would experience this event firsthand and probably nearer on the calendar than more distant.
The letter closed with a quick litany of moral and ethical exhortations, urging faithful living regardless of circumstances (1 Thessalonians 5:12-28). It was probably sent in early 50 AD, just as Paul was getting started with his work in Corinth.
A month or two later Paul received a follow-up report on the Thessalonian congregation. It may have been written as a result of another visit by Timothy, but we do not know for sure. What is certain is that Paul's letter had increased the climate of expectation for Jesus' return very dramatically -- to the point that a significant number of the Thessalonian Christians had either stopped working their careers, believing these were no longer necessary because Jesus was coming so soon (2 Thessalonians 3:6-12), or coming to the conclusion that the messianic age had already arrived and they were free to carry on with no normal social restraints or obligations (2 Thessalonians 2:1-3). Paul's second letter to the Thessalonians addresses these issues. After a rousing note of appreciation for their growing faith (2 Thessalonians 1), Paul tempers his imminent-return-of-Christ teachings by injecting a waiting period during which a "man of lawlessness" will appear (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4). Who this person will be or when it will happen is unclear. For a moment Paul's writing verges on apocalyptic (2 Thessalonians 2:5-12), but it settles quickly back into exhortations of moral behavior consistent with the "sanctifying work of the Spirit" (2 Thessalonians 2:13-17).
Today's lectionary reading is a note of appreciation and encouragement at the heart of this beautiful correspondence. We who live between Easter and Judgment Day need to spend time with the wonderful people of the Thessalonian congregation. They can teach us a thing or two!
Luke 19:1-10
We used to sing about Zacchaeus in Sunday school:
Zacchaeus was a wee little man,
And a wee little man was he.
He climbed up in the sycamore tree,
For the Lord he wanted to see.
And as the Savior passed that way,
He looked up in the tree.
And he said, "ZACCHAEUS! YOU COME DOWN!
For I'm going to your house today!
For I'm going to your house today!"
We were told that Zacchaeus was a bad man, a traitor, and very short. But we may have been led down a simplistic and unreliable path. Although the story of Jesus and Zacchaeus is only a few verses long, it is packed with more meaning than we often suppose. It is also less clear about some of our typical assumptions.
For one thing, Jesus never identifies Zacchaeus as a bad man. The crowds in Jericho don't like him and call him a "sinner," but that is not unusual in the gospel of Luke (see Simon the Pharisee in Luke 7, the opening of the three parables in Luke 15, and the manner in which Jesus talks about the tax collector and the Pharisee in Luke 18). Public sentiment is often more harsh about people than either they deserve or than Jesus declares.
Second, Zacchaeus may or may not have been short. The word Luke uses to describe him in verse 3 actually means "young." Because young men (boys and young teens) are usually shorter than older men, and because Zacchaeus scaled the tree in order to see Jesus, Luke's description has traditionally been interpreted as height-challenged. It could be, however, that Zacchaeus was being marginalized by the crowds precisely because their leaders did not like him. Since the younger had to defer to the older, it is entirely conceivable that Zacchaeus' age, and not his stature, caused the alienation.
Third, Zacchaeus appears to be a devout man, even before Jesus arrives on the scene. After all, he was as excited as any, and more persistent than most, to connect with this celebrity rabbi. After Jesus spends time with Zacchaeus and his family, Zacchaeus tells Jesus that he already gives half his income to the poor (present tense in v. 8), and truly does not think he has knowingly wronged anyone (so his guarantee at the end of v. 8).
Fourth, if Zacchaeus is indeed quite young, his wealth is likely to have been inherited from his parents. Careers and businesses were passed down from fathers to sons, so Zacchaeus certainly was reared in an upper-class home that had, for some years or generations, owned the lucrative customs franchise at Jericho. This was a similar position to the one Matthew's (Jesus' disciple and gospel-writer) family held in Capernaum. In fact, Matthew's and Zacchaeus' families likely knew one another, and Zacchaeus most certainly was aware that Matthew, his counterpart, had left the family business to follow Jesus. It may even have been the case that Zacchaeus' avid interest in Jesus was heightened by Matthew's earlier earnest devotion to this unusual and charismatic man.
Fifth, Jesus never indicates that Zacchaeus has changed his ways or repented or renounced his old life. Instead, Jesus simply declares that salvation has come to Zacchaeus and his home precisely because he is also a son of Abraham! In other words, the rulers and leaders among the people have no grounds to alienate or marginalize any whom God cares about.
This message is consistent with Luke's emphases in his gospel, and the teachings of Jesus throughout. The poor have been noticed and loved, sings Mary in Luke 1. The outcast shepherds are the first to hear about "their" Savior in Luke 2. The genealogy of Jesus (Luke 3) places him in the whole family of humanity, not just the Israelites or Jews (Matthew 1). Jesus brings the Year of Jubilee (Luke 4), which means that captives are released, debtors are forgiven, and displaced persons go home. Jesus is identified with the marginalized in his encounters with Simon (Luke 7) and accepts his outsider status gladly. Jesus confirms this in his conversations with the leaders of the people at the beginning of Luke 15, and then throughout the three stories in which the "lost" are favored by God. Jesus is the hated good Samaritan and rescues those who have been beaten and forsaken by polite and religious society.
Now, as Jesus heads toward Jerusalem, he champions the cause of the widow, the tax collector, the rich, and the children (Luke 18), and opens the eyes of the blind man. Then, says Luke, an actual rich tax collector shows up, and Jesus does what he taught! Fancy that!
We got the moral and theological point right in our Sunday school about Zacchaeus, but probably for all the wrong reasons. We assumed Zacchaeus was not like us, that he was, in fact, bad and robber-rich and rightly despised for his shortness. Jesus is such a nice guy that he can love the unlovable! Yeah, Jesus!
But that is not what the text says. The point is not that Zacchaeus is an outsider to God, and somehow God gets beyond godself and pities the man; rather, we have marginalized Zacchaeus, by claiming we are better than him. The sorry point of the story is that we did not want Jesus coming to our house, because we were curious and "holy." But Zacchaeus simply wanted to see Jesus and be with him. And Jesus said, "Yes!"
Application
Sometimes it seems there's no getting away from a bad thing. In the mid-1800s, Dutch immigrant pastor and community leader Albertus Van Raalte watched his little colony in western Michigan disintegrate under the ravages of disease and death. One Sunday morning in the middle of his congregational prayer he broke down sobbing, and throwing his hands toward the heavens he shouted, "Oh God! Must we all die?"
Certainly there are times when each of us goes through that agony. It's one thing to experience trouble and torment when you've been living an ungodly existence. You know then that you're getting what you deserve. But it's quite another thing to be as close to God as Habakkuk and the congregation in Thessalonica and even Zacchaeus were, and still to feel such pain and frustration each day. The specter of death bumps against too many of us in the marketplaces of our lives. With Van Raalte's tear-stained cheeks and swollen eyes, we often shout toward heaven, "Oh God! Is there no relief?"
Because we know of the pressures of life, there is something absolutely amazing about the strength, peace, and confidence that come throughout scripture. With the prophets and the apostles we need to learn from Jesus the fundamental secret to living on the edge of cruelty and pain and spite and injury and death. We need to learn over and over again that only a God who has ultimate control over all these things can make life itself meaningful. Only a God who allows miseries for a time -- as a parent might restrain a helping hand so that a child can grow through the struggles of development -- can finally bring all things into his larger plans for peace and joy and harmony. The final testimony of faith by those living under pressure is confidence in the love of God.
Maybe even the band Queen knew that. Here are the final words from their famous song "Under Pressure":
Insanity laughs under pressure we're cracking
Can't we give ourselves one more chance?
Why can't we give love that one more chance?
Why can't we give love, give love, give love, give love, give love, give love, give love, give love?
'Cause love's such an old-fashioned word
And love dares you to care for
The people on the edge of the night
And love dares you to change our way of
Caring about ourselves
This is our last dance
This is our last dance
This is ourselves
Under pressure
Under pressure
Pressure
An Alternative Application
Luke 19:1-10. C.S. Lewis included a little chapter called "A Word about Praising" in his Reflections on the Psalms. He had some trouble with Christianity when he first encountered it, he said, because it seemed that God was so self-centered and Christians were so self-important. God wants praise, he thought. In fact, God demands praise. And if that's what God is all about, why should anybody want to worship him?
But then, says Lewis, he remembered what it was like to be in love. Love demands praise, not because it makes love grow, but because love itself must be spoken in that language. To love is to praise. To care for someone is to seek that person's blessing. Praise is the language of love.
But the praise and blessings of love are never merely self-serving. They are, in fact, self-giving. They reach beyond themselves and seek to touch the lives of others with their fun and fellowship. They seek to broaden and expand the extent of their joy like the rippling waves on a pond. The relationship that results in cries of praise and pleas for blessing spreads beyond itself. It calls to others: "See what we have. Feel what we experience. Share the delights we know!"
Love can never be self-important. That's why, when we read the story of Jesus and Zacchaeus, we light up. Jesus praises Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus praises Jesus. And with the world around, we smile. The praise of love is a wonderful song.
Pressure pushing down on me
Pressing down on you, no man ask for
Under pressure that burns a building down
Splits a family in two
Puts people on streets
It's the terror of knowing
What this world is about
Watching some good friends
Screaming, "Let me out!"
Tomorrow gets me higher
Pressure on people -- people on streets
Chippin' around, kick my brains 'round the floor
These are the days -- it never rains but it pours
People on streets -- people on streets
It's the terror of knowing
What this world is about
Watching some good friends
Screaming, "Let me out!"
Tomorrow gets me higher, higher, higher...
Pressure on people -- people on streets
We are people under pressure inundated by the tsunami of life and squeezed by the multiple challenges to our identities and faith. So we hide in gated communities, schedule out uncertainty, entertain ourselves into denial, cope with numbing substances, consumerist obsessions, or finally succumb in fatalism. The pressures just keep coming.
But maybe they always have. All three of our lectionary passages today are about people under pressure. Habakkuk lives in Judah, which has grown wicked and immoral in the aftermath of sudden divine deliverance from Assyria, and finds his prayers for God to do something answered by an even greater threat -- the Babylonian threat. Paul writes to the young Thessalonian congregation that has experienced persecution and the recent death of some of its members, and informs these good people that more pressures are on the way. And Zacchaeus is pressured by his suspicious and prejudiced community until Jesus turns the tables on them all.
That, of course, is the great point of the gospel. We are under pressure from many principalities and powers and authorities. But Jesus absorbs the pressures into himself and provides a new haven of hope and healing and love.
Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4
By the time the seventh century BC rolled around, prophets were rarely welcome in the royal palaces, even though all that was left of once proud and expansive Israel was the tiny mountainous territory of Judah. During the 600s, although Assyria kept threatening Jerusalem, it was increasingly occupied in defending itself against its rebellious eastern province of Babylon. During these years, while Jeremiah developed his gloomy diatribes in the heart of the capital city, several among "the Twelve" also made brief statements about coming judgment. Zephaniah (630-610 BC) provided a few paragraphs against Judah and the nations that surrounded it (chs. 1-2), couching the imminent intervention of Yahweh in the increasingly common term "the Day of the Lord." In a final, somewhat more lengthy chapter, Zephaniah turned his attention toward restoration and renewal, pointing to a future time when the fortunes of Yahweh's people would be made full once again.
Also, for just a brief moment (probably around 615 BC), Nahum renewed the mission of Jonah against Nineveh and the Assyrians. This time, however, there was no outcome of repentance and restoration. Instead, the short-lived turnabout that had followed Jonah's challenge evaporated entirely, and Nahum declared irreversible divine judgment against this fierce kingdom, which had wreaked so much havoc on its neighbors in the Fertile Crescent. Yahweh's word through Nahum would come true a few years later when the Assyrians were trounced by the Babylonians, first in the destruction of the capital city of Nineveh (612 BC), then at their secondary administrative center Harran (610 BC), and decisively in the battle of Carchemish (605 BC), where even the allied armies of Egypt proved insufficient to turn the Chaldean tide.
Finally, during this era as well came the disconcerting dialogue between Habakkuk and Yahweh. Formulated around the year 600 BC, just as Babylon was rapidly overwhelming the whimpering remnants of the old Assyrian regime, Habakkuk asked Yahweh a series of questions that were answered in ways that almost brought more pain than the situations they were supposed to resolve. If summarized, the conversation would sound something like this:
Habakkuk: "Why do you ignore the social evils that plague our land (Judah)?" (1:1–4).
Yahweh: "I'm working on it. Very soon now I will bring punishment through my dreaded scourge, the growing Babylonian conquest machine that is rolling through the area" (1:5-11).
Habakkuk: "O God, no! You can't do that! They are even worse than the most evil among us! How can you talk about balancing the scales of justice with such an unfair sentence?" (1:12--2:1).
Yahweh: "I understand your frustration. That's why I'm giving you a message for all to hear. The sins of my people are terrible, and require drastic measures. For this reason I am bringing the Babylonians against them. But the Babylonians are my people too, and will come under my judgment for the wickedness they perform. In the end all will bow to me, as is appropriate when nations come to know that I am the only true God" (2:2-20).
At this point Habakkuk breaks into a song of confidence and trust (ch. 3) that rivals anything found in the Psalms. Habakkuk charts the terrifying movements of Yahweh on earth, bringing death and destruction as the divine judgments swirl. But in the end, Habakkuk raises a marvelous testimony of faith: though things often seem chaotic, evil, and without purpose, behind and above and surrounding the happenings of our history is the wise and sovereign plan and care of God.
2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12
When Paul first arrived in Corinth for his two-year church-planting commitment (Acts 18), his heart remained back in Thessalonica. Already when he was traveling through Athens he worried about how the fledgling Thessalonian congregation was faring (1 Thessalonians 2:17-20), and sent Timothy back to find out more and make a report (1 Thessalonians 3:1-5). Paul had already traveled on to Corinth by the time Timothy caught up with him and was elated at the good word he brought (1 Thessalonians 3:6-10). With emotions running high, Paul dashed off a letter of appreciation and encouragement to his new friends (1 Thessalonians).
Most of Paul's first short letter was given to expressions of praise for the great testimony already being noised about from those who watched the great grace and spiritual energy of this newborn congregation. Paul rehearsed briefly the recent history that brought them together and his aching heart after they were so quickly "torn away" from one another (1 Thessalonians 1-3). Only then did Paul spill some ink on a few notes of instruction.
The central message of Paul's missionary preaching focused on the resurrection, which was for Paul the astounding confirmation of Jesus' divine character. This was the undeniable proof that Jesus was the messiah, and that his words and teachings had ushered in the new age of God's final revelation and redemptive activity. Furthermore, the urgency of Paul's missionary endeavors was predicated on his understanding that Jesus had gone back to heaven only briefly and would be returning to earth very soon -- probably next week, but maybe next month. It was the generous grace of God that provided this brief window of opportunity, allowing Jesus' disciples a quick chance to tell others the good news, so that those who believed would also reap the benefits of the looming messianic age. Neither Paul nor God wanted anyone to be destroyed in the judgments that were still ahead.
The response of the Thessalonian church to this insistent focus on Jesus' imminent return apparently echoed back to Paul through Timothy's report in a way he had not expected. Rather than energizing the new believers in Thessalonica with anticipation of divine vindication after the painful struggles they had recently endured, some had instead become deeply discouraged. In the few intervening weeks or months since they had come to faith in Jesus under Paul's passionate preaching, several members of the congregation had died. The grief of those who survived was heightened because they supposed that their lost loved ones had come so close to sharing in the powers and perfections of the new age, only to succumb to death virtually on its threshold. They assumed that the dead were excluded forever from the messianic kingdom.
Paul corrects this mistaken notion with a brief eschatological teaching. Jesus will return soon, to be sure, and those of us who are alive when that happens will enjoy renewed direct interaction with him. But those who have already died will not be left behind. Their bodies will be raised and restored, just as happened with Jesus on resurrection morning. Assurance of this comes from "the Lord's own word," according to Paul. Although none of the gospels records this exact teaching from Jesus, evidently it had become part of the oral tradition already being passed along from one believer to another.
Paul then went on to reaffirm the central imminent-return-of-Jesus proclamation that had precipitated these reflections in the first place (1 Thessalonians 5:1-11). Jesus will come back very soon, most likely in the foreseeable future. Paul fully expected that he himself and most of his readers there in Thessalonica would experience this event firsthand and probably nearer on the calendar than more distant.
The letter closed with a quick litany of moral and ethical exhortations, urging faithful living regardless of circumstances (1 Thessalonians 5:12-28). It was probably sent in early 50 AD, just as Paul was getting started with his work in Corinth.
A month or two later Paul received a follow-up report on the Thessalonian congregation. It may have been written as a result of another visit by Timothy, but we do not know for sure. What is certain is that Paul's letter had increased the climate of expectation for Jesus' return very dramatically -- to the point that a significant number of the Thessalonian Christians had either stopped working their careers, believing these were no longer necessary because Jesus was coming so soon (2 Thessalonians 3:6-12), or coming to the conclusion that the messianic age had already arrived and they were free to carry on with no normal social restraints or obligations (2 Thessalonians 2:1-3). Paul's second letter to the Thessalonians addresses these issues. After a rousing note of appreciation for their growing faith (2 Thessalonians 1), Paul tempers his imminent-return-of-Christ teachings by injecting a waiting period during which a "man of lawlessness" will appear (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4). Who this person will be or when it will happen is unclear. For a moment Paul's writing verges on apocalyptic (2 Thessalonians 2:5-12), but it settles quickly back into exhortations of moral behavior consistent with the "sanctifying work of the Spirit" (2 Thessalonians 2:13-17).
Today's lectionary reading is a note of appreciation and encouragement at the heart of this beautiful correspondence. We who live between Easter and Judgment Day need to spend time with the wonderful people of the Thessalonian congregation. They can teach us a thing or two!
Luke 19:1-10
We used to sing about Zacchaeus in Sunday school:
Zacchaeus was a wee little man,
And a wee little man was he.
He climbed up in the sycamore tree,
For the Lord he wanted to see.
And as the Savior passed that way,
He looked up in the tree.
And he said, "ZACCHAEUS! YOU COME DOWN!
For I'm going to your house today!
For I'm going to your house today!"
We were told that Zacchaeus was a bad man, a traitor, and very short. But we may have been led down a simplistic and unreliable path. Although the story of Jesus and Zacchaeus is only a few verses long, it is packed with more meaning than we often suppose. It is also less clear about some of our typical assumptions.
For one thing, Jesus never identifies Zacchaeus as a bad man. The crowds in Jericho don't like him and call him a "sinner," but that is not unusual in the gospel of Luke (see Simon the Pharisee in Luke 7, the opening of the three parables in Luke 15, and the manner in which Jesus talks about the tax collector and the Pharisee in Luke 18). Public sentiment is often more harsh about people than either they deserve or than Jesus declares.
Second, Zacchaeus may or may not have been short. The word Luke uses to describe him in verse 3 actually means "young." Because young men (boys and young teens) are usually shorter than older men, and because Zacchaeus scaled the tree in order to see Jesus, Luke's description has traditionally been interpreted as height-challenged. It could be, however, that Zacchaeus was being marginalized by the crowds precisely because their leaders did not like him. Since the younger had to defer to the older, it is entirely conceivable that Zacchaeus' age, and not his stature, caused the alienation.
Third, Zacchaeus appears to be a devout man, even before Jesus arrives on the scene. After all, he was as excited as any, and more persistent than most, to connect with this celebrity rabbi. After Jesus spends time with Zacchaeus and his family, Zacchaeus tells Jesus that he already gives half his income to the poor (present tense in v. 8), and truly does not think he has knowingly wronged anyone (so his guarantee at the end of v. 8).
Fourth, if Zacchaeus is indeed quite young, his wealth is likely to have been inherited from his parents. Careers and businesses were passed down from fathers to sons, so Zacchaeus certainly was reared in an upper-class home that had, for some years or generations, owned the lucrative customs franchise at Jericho. This was a similar position to the one Matthew's (Jesus' disciple and gospel-writer) family held in Capernaum. In fact, Matthew's and Zacchaeus' families likely knew one another, and Zacchaeus most certainly was aware that Matthew, his counterpart, had left the family business to follow Jesus. It may even have been the case that Zacchaeus' avid interest in Jesus was heightened by Matthew's earlier earnest devotion to this unusual and charismatic man.
Fifth, Jesus never indicates that Zacchaeus has changed his ways or repented or renounced his old life. Instead, Jesus simply declares that salvation has come to Zacchaeus and his home precisely because he is also a son of Abraham! In other words, the rulers and leaders among the people have no grounds to alienate or marginalize any whom God cares about.
This message is consistent with Luke's emphases in his gospel, and the teachings of Jesus throughout. The poor have been noticed and loved, sings Mary in Luke 1. The outcast shepherds are the first to hear about "their" Savior in Luke 2. The genealogy of Jesus (Luke 3) places him in the whole family of humanity, not just the Israelites or Jews (Matthew 1). Jesus brings the Year of Jubilee (Luke 4), which means that captives are released, debtors are forgiven, and displaced persons go home. Jesus is identified with the marginalized in his encounters with Simon (Luke 7) and accepts his outsider status gladly. Jesus confirms this in his conversations with the leaders of the people at the beginning of Luke 15, and then throughout the three stories in which the "lost" are favored by God. Jesus is the hated good Samaritan and rescues those who have been beaten and forsaken by polite and religious society.
Now, as Jesus heads toward Jerusalem, he champions the cause of the widow, the tax collector, the rich, and the children (Luke 18), and opens the eyes of the blind man. Then, says Luke, an actual rich tax collector shows up, and Jesus does what he taught! Fancy that!
We got the moral and theological point right in our Sunday school about Zacchaeus, but probably for all the wrong reasons. We assumed Zacchaeus was not like us, that he was, in fact, bad and robber-rich and rightly despised for his shortness. Jesus is such a nice guy that he can love the unlovable! Yeah, Jesus!
But that is not what the text says. The point is not that Zacchaeus is an outsider to God, and somehow God gets beyond godself and pities the man; rather, we have marginalized Zacchaeus, by claiming we are better than him. The sorry point of the story is that we did not want Jesus coming to our house, because we were curious and "holy." But Zacchaeus simply wanted to see Jesus and be with him. And Jesus said, "Yes!"
Application
Sometimes it seems there's no getting away from a bad thing. In the mid-1800s, Dutch immigrant pastor and community leader Albertus Van Raalte watched his little colony in western Michigan disintegrate under the ravages of disease and death. One Sunday morning in the middle of his congregational prayer he broke down sobbing, and throwing his hands toward the heavens he shouted, "Oh God! Must we all die?"
Certainly there are times when each of us goes through that agony. It's one thing to experience trouble and torment when you've been living an ungodly existence. You know then that you're getting what you deserve. But it's quite another thing to be as close to God as Habakkuk and the congregation in Thessalonica and even Zacchaeus were, and still to feel such pain and frustration each day. The specter of death bumps against too many of us in the marketplaces of our lives. With Van Raalte's tear-stained cheeks and swollen eyes, we often shout toward heaven, "Oh God! Is there no relief?"
Because we know of the pressures of life, there is something absolutely amazing about the strength, peace, and confidence that come throughout scripture. With the prophets and the apostles we need to learn from Jesus the fundamental secret to living on the edge of cruelty and pain and spite and injury and death. We need to learn over and over again that only a God who has ultimate control over all these things can make life itself meaningful. Only a God who allows miseries for a time -- as a parent might restrain a helping hand so that a child can grow through the struggles of development -- can finally bring all things into his larger plans for peace and joy and harmony. The final testimony of faith by those living under pressure is confidence in the love of God.
Maybe even the band Queen knew that. Here are the final words from their famous song "Under Pressure":
Insanity laughs under pressure we're cracking
Can't we give ourselves one more chance?
Why can't we give love that one more chance?
Why can't we give love, give love, give love, give love, give love, give love, give love, give love?
'Cause love's such an old-fashioned word
And love dares you to care for
The people on the edge of the night
And love dares you to change our way of
Caring about ourselves
This is our last dance
This is our last dance
This is ourselves
Under pressure
Under pressure
Pressure
An Alternative Application
Luke 19:1-10. C.S. Lewis included a little chapter called "A Word about Praising" in his Reflections on the Psalms. He had some trouble with Christianity when he first encountered it, he said, because it seemed that God was so self-centered and Christians were so self-important. God wants praise, he thought. In fact, God demands praise. And if that's what God is all about, why should anybody want to worship him?
But then, says Lewis, he remembered what it was like to be in love. Love demands praise, not because it makes love grow, but because love itself must be spoken in that language. To love is to praise. To care for someone is to seek that person's blessing. Praise is the language of love.
But the praise and blessings of love are never merely self-serving. They are, in fact, self-giving. They reach beyond themselves and seek to touch the lives of others with their fun and fellowship. They seek to broaden and expand the extent of their joy like the rippling waves on a pond. The relationship that results in cries of praise and pleas for blessing spreads beyond itself. It calls to others: "See what we have. Feel what we experience. Share the delights we know!"
Love can never be self-important. That's why, when we read the story of Jesus and Zacchaeus, we light up. Jesus praises Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus praises Jesus. And with the world around, we smile. The praise of love is a wonderful song.
