Precious Sleazeballs

Precious Sleazeballs--August 1, 2016

"Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through it. A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, 'Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.' So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. All who saw it began to grumble and said, 'He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.' 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.' Then Jesus said to him, 'Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost'." [Luke 19:1-10]

Come on, let's get it over with and just say this: there are some people you just love to hate, aren't there?  There are some folks who just always find a way to rub you the wrong way, who push your buttons, who come off as arrogant jerks, or with whom you disagree so strongly about so many things that you always feel at odds with them.

And, while we're being honest, I'll bet there is a dark streak inside you (about which you are not proud, to be sure... but which is still there all the same) that just kind of relishes the idea that you might see them mess up, or have to eat their own words, or get their comeuppance.  We don't like to talk much about that hostility inside us, curated and cultivated like a rare plant in the hothouse of our short tempters, but it's there.  There just some people you know who so irritatingly get under your skin that you find yourself rooting against them.  You dislike them (maybe we would never say the word "hate" out loud), and you don't really want to ever get to the point where you don't dislike them anymore.  Is there someone you can think of--whether a public figure or private individual--who comes to mind in that category? 

I'll be honest: I can think of some.  I don't like it that I have that piece inside me, but I do.

Well, Zacchaeus was one of those guys.  Ol' Zach was somebody that everybody else seemed to love to hate, back in first-century Jericho.  The Pharisees and the Zealots didn't like him because he was a sell-out by working for the Romans.  And the Romans didn't like him because he was a grubby little nobody they subcontracted with to do the dirty work they didn't want to do.  The Republican committee of Jericho didn't like him because he was a tax collector.  The Democrats didn't like him because he was a greedy member of the one-percent.  Zacchaeus was the guy everybody loved to hate... and in truth, you get the sense that he really was something of a sleazeball. As a hired tax collector reporting to the Romans, he could threaten and cajole people and basically extort whatever he wanted from them.  But the Romans themselves didn't want anything to do with him, either... except get their share of what he collected.  This is the kind of guy who can only get "friends" to hang around him because he buys their dinners and drinks.  Everybody wanted to see someone like Zacchaeus the sleazeball get his comeuppance.

And then Jesus happened.

Jesus, who makes the first move the way that grace always does, seeks Zacchaeus out.  Zach might have been curious about this traveling celebrity rabbit, but he doesn't dare approach Jesus on his own.  Zacchaeus has been called out one too many times from righteous preachers who correctly point out what a shameless sell-out he has become... so Zach doesn't want to even approach Jesus at first.  He's tired of being booed and belittled--he was ready to just watch Jesus pass by without a word.  But Jesus has more in mind.

It's not "comeuppance," it's really "comedownance," as Jesus calls the unliked tax goon down from his treetop perch so that they can be on the same level and share a table. Jesus invites himself over into Zacchaeus' world, into his very house, the same way grace always takes the first step, pulling us spiritual wallflowers out onto the dance floor, beginning the conversation we were too afraid to begin ourselves.  And because Jesus offers grace to Zacchaeus--cutting through all the long list of reasons he should not have been in the same company as this scummy sell-out that everybody loved to hate--dear ol' Zach is changed.  Grace does that, you know.  Grace changes our hearts.

This is a critical point: it's NOT (in big letters!) that Jesus just happens to see a flicker of good in Zacchaeus that nobody else does.  It's NOT that Zacchaeus was really a nice guy all along if you just got to know him, but nobody ever had tried.  It's NOT that Zacchaeus was unfairly discriminated against because people wrongly assumed he was a sleazeball: he really was one.  Zacchaeus wasn't a diamond in the rough--he was a lump of coal.  He wasn't  misunderstood--he really was a misanthrope.  He was a sell-out, a cheat, and a privileged fat-cat if ever there were one. There was a reason, in other words, that everybody else loved to hate Zacchaeus.   Well, everybody except Jesus.  Jesus knew he was a dirtbag and loved him anyway.

And that's the thing: Jesus doesn't go around looking for people who are just in need of a fresh coat of paint and a wax.  He finds total wrecks and overhauls them from the inside out.  Jesus doesn't "discover" an already half-decent guy in Zacchaeus who just needs a nudge in the right direction.  Jesus' gracious acceptance of Zacchaeus the Sleazeball changes him into someone who can own his sins and go to work to make them right.  To Jesus, he is a precious sleazeball, beloved in spite of himself.  And it is that love, that amazing love that meets us while we are selfish jerks rather than diamonds in the rough, that transforms us.  It's like the line from the old hymn: "love to the loveless shown... that they might lovely be."  Grace changes our hearts--it doesn't find "pretty good" hearts and just dust them off.  It finds us in all our sinfulness, while we are being selfish jerks and shameless sleazeballs, and invites itself over for coffee to get through our defenses.

And in meeting us where we are, as we are, we are made into new creations.  Martin Luther said it so perfectly in the last of the theses of his 1518 Heidelberg Disputation:  "The love of God does not find, but creates, that which is pleasing to it."  In other words, God doesn't go around looking for a perfect peach somewhere to bestow divine love on--there aren't any of those.  Instead, God finds us as total messes... and makes us into something new by loving us exactly as we are when we are total messes. Grace changes our hearts. 

We are all there, up in a tree like Zacchaeus, with stubbornly jagged rough edges that make us hard for others to love and sometimes easy for others to dislike.  And we all have moments in which we are (not to put too fine a point on it) sleazeballs.  But we are precious sleazeballs in the grace of Jesus... and Jesus' reach is slowly wearing away everything but the grace in us.

How will you meet people today--especially the people you really like to dislike?  How could Jesus be using you as the invitation of grace to change their hearts?  And... how might Jesus be sending people into your life to change yours?

Lord Jesus, here are our hearts... in all their unloveliness.  Reach out to us as we are, and make us over into your new creations.