Starting Small

This sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Church in Marshall Texas on Reformation Sunday October 31, 2010, the 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time.

Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4
Psalm 119:137-144
2Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12
Luke 19:1-10

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen

Scripture is filled with wondrous messages and warnings about children and the little ones. In Luke 17 we read, “Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Things that cause people to sin are bound to come, but woe to that person through whom they come. It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around his neck than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin.’”

Luke 18 tells us, “People were also bringing babies to Jesus to have him touch them. When the disciples saw this, they rebuked them. But Jesus called the children to him and said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth; anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.’”

What is fascinating is that Jesus spoke of these categories of people separately; the little ones and the children. They are not the same.[1] When Luke’s gospel spoke of the little children in chapter 18 he truly meant the little children, but the references in chapter 17 did not. In the chapters before the presentation of the little children, Jesus was speaking with adults about adults; there were no children in these passages. This is a little confusing, and certainly is different from what I had thought all my life, but when Jesus was talking about “little ones,” he was not talking about children.

We need to ask ourselves what did Jesus mean when talking about “the little ones?” but we’ll get back to that. First though, I want us to look at something that everyone wants to joyfully consider on a sunny Sunday morning, what it meant to be a tax collector in ancient Jericho.

Now of course, public services are a necessary part of life and they have to be paid for and we pay for them through taxes. On Thursday, Marie and I got tags and paid the registration for our car. Part of the privilege of this was paying the Title Application Fee, the Texas Mobility Fund Fee, the TERP Fee, the Sales Tax Fee, the Windshield Sticker Fee, the Registration Fee with DPS, the Reflectorization Fee (this fee is so new that Microsoft Word doesn’t even consider “reflectorization” a word), the County Road Bridge Fee, and the Automation Fee for a Large City. What caused me to raise an eyebrow about these fees is that we didn’t either buy or sell a vehicle and we paid $90 in sales tax, so they’re going to hear from me tomorrow morning.

So given my question and the way they’re “going to hear from me tomorrow morning;” maybe, just maybe, the only thing worse than paying taxes is collecting them. I believe anyone working in the county assessor’s office would agree with this.

It just can’t be a joy to collect taxes. The very words “Tax Collector” cause even the most honest and diligent to shudder. But at least we don’t pay our taxes to some middle manager who runs a private state sanctioned tax collection service. This is how taxes were collected in the hinterlands of first century Rome.

Imagine how this would work on the local level today… Imagine local businesses being told to pony up the expected taxes for November today, the last day on October. In this system the collector begins by having to figure out the assessment. You have to begin with the expected revenue, and of course the collector is going to estimate high while the businesses will estimate low. Then the sales tax rates begin with 6.25% for the great state of Texas, then here in Marshall there’s another 2% split between the city, the county, transit taxes, and any Special Purpose Districts. Don’t feel bad though, if each of these special assessments were maxed out, we would be paying an extra 6.50% instead of just 2%. Imagine; there could be some places in Texas where special taxes can cost even more than the state’s 6.25% sales tax collection, but back to what we do have to pay.

So here in Marshall a business owner would need to fork over 8.25% of the tax collector’s expected revenue before one dollar of real revenue was raised or risk having the doors closed. While my little example begins with sales taxes, this isn’t the only tax assessed against local businesses that would be collected on the spot. If the business sells gasoline or alcohol there are taxes on those products that come out on top of regular sales taxes. Add the assessments against payroll; Medicare, Medicaid, and the Social Security Administration as they come in for their share of the pie. Then comes an assessment on real property, including land, building, inventory and so on. Then if you deal in tires, car batteries and hazardous materials; don’t forget the disposal fees that will need to be collected. I’ve failed to mention the collection of Federal Income Taxes, but at least Texas doesn’t have a state income tax or that would be collected too.

So now imagine you’re the person whose job it is to collect all of the taxes and see that it goes off to the proper bureaucrats at the seats of government. In ancient Rome, these taxes had to be paid by the collector in advance, so in my example, you can’t collect the taxes the day before they’re due because they have to get to Rome by the first of the month; postmarked by the 15^th isn’t good enough, oh no. So if you are the tax collector, you had better collect the all of the taxes early and often. Then you should even collect a bit more as a cushion because if they don’t get paid, it’s coming out of your pocket. The good news for the tax collector is that in the months where collections exceeded the estimate, the surplus is profit. That profit is salary.

As a first century assessor, collector, and clerk, Zacchaeus was in charge of gathering the taxes for Rome. As the head tax collector he was responsible for paying the estimated taxes to Rome in advance, and then collecting the taxes.[2] Of course, this becomes a losing proposition for a collector when people don’t pay their taxes because you can’t tell that to Rome. Rome says pay up and the head tax collector pays up, in advance.

This is why first century tax collectors would gouge the people who actually paid their taxes. They knew there would be some fat times and some lean times, so they made sure there was more than enough fat to cover the lean.[3]

It almost gives you a grain of pity for the hard work faced by the first century tax collector. Almost. Then again, it almost sounds like a protection racket. Almost.

Zacchaeus was a man. He was a head tax collector and he was short and he was rich and he was reviled by his people. And like every other tax collector, he overcharged the taxes he collected because he knew what could happen if he didn’t. But as a head tax collector, he had junior collectors who did the dirty work with the people while he did the work with the big boys in Rome. And through this, he became rich. And as a Jew, a son of Abraham, he was truly reviled by his people who made him rich doing Rome’s dirty work.

He was a collaborator. He was not a patriot.

As for our reading today, Zacchaeus was a wee little man and a wee little man was he. The glorious children’s song[4] tells us this and that’s what our gospel reading tells us, though in far less subtle terms. Our reading from the New International Version says without any subtlety that Zacchaeus was a short man. What’s interesting, at least to me, is that the New Revised Standard version says that he was short in stature and the New American Standard Bible says he was small in stature.

As I said earlier, “small” didn’t mean “young” or “child.” It meant small in a descriptive way, or as a noun it would be rendered “little ones” like in Luke 17. What did it mean to be little? Who were the little ones?

Well, Zacchaeus was pushed around by the crowds, so he could well have been physically tiny. The Greek word in the original transcript doesn’t exclude this definition, and it is surely the most common. So maybe Zacchaeus was the “Before” picture in the Charles Atlas ads. For those of you who don’t know Charles Atlas, that would be a PX-90 ad.

But being small could also mean being less, pitiable even. Jesus used the same word to describe the Rabbis, and surely they would not been confused with the seven dwarves as a group. Jesus used this word to describe their theology and polity as immature. They were small men trapped into a small world view making small decisions in a world that demanded more. The word had an edge of weakness to it, meaning that the entire being of a man was small and wretched; not just his stature.

So in a wonderful way, Luke might have been describing Zacchaeus as a physically short man, but also as a man who was small in more ways than just his height. The kind of man, the kind of Roman collaborator that could be shoved around and nobody would even want to come to his aid. Nobody would even care.

Yet attached to this word is a wonderful hope, a leaning toward a secret, concealed inner or future dignity.[5] Being small does not mean being small forever. Being small can be like a tiny acorn which can grow into the mighty oak, and Zacchaeus demonstrated this growth with his Lord.

So what made Zacchaeus right with God?

We read on and we read that Zacchaeus was overjoyed. Despite the snarky comments made by the people around him, those who call this tax collector a sinner; knowing the contempt they held for him in their heart, he gladly welcomed Jesus to his home. And Jesus followed.

Then, along the way, even before they reached the tax collector’s home, Zacchaeus stopped and announced his repentance, turning from taking taxes in excess. He cried out, “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 declared, “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.”

So now we have the formula, give stuff to the poor, make reparations to those you injure, and salvation will come to your house. This is how we get right with God!

Not so fast.

This leap is easy to make, people often think you have to be “good enough” to get into heaven, or even be “good enough” before going to church. People often think you have to make up for your sins before Jesus can save you, but this is not so. In Ephesians, Paul writes, “For it is by grace you have been saved through faith.” We are not saved by our actions; we are saved by the actions of God in Christ. Through what Jesus did, his life, his death, his resurrection, by his work and Word are we saved.

So what of Zacchaeus’ response? So what of his repentance? Oswald Chambers says it well in this entry from his devotional work, “My Utmost for His Highest”:

“It is not repentance that saves me—repentance is only the sign that I realize what God has done through Christ Jesus. The danger here is putting the emphasis on the effect, instead of on the cause. Is it my obedience, consecration, and dedication that make me right with God? It is never that! I am made right with God because, prior to all of that, Christ died. When I turn to God and by belief accept what God reveals, the miraculous atonement by the Cross of Christ instantly places me into a right relationship with God.”[6]

So it wasn’t what Zacchaeus did, it was what Jesus did and continues to do. Zacchaeus responded, and he responded well giving to the poor and making reparations to those he injured.

On this Reformation Sunday, this is one of the great truths we learn. We can do nothing to earn our salvation. It is by grace through faith that we are saved. Jesus saves not despite who we are, but because of who we are. For Zacchaeus it is because he is a son of Abraham, for us it is because we are God’s people.

Yet if we stopped there, we would be taking that grace, that salvation, and handling it as cheaply as fallen leaves. Not only do we need salvation, we need to respond to our salvation. We need to add our obedience, our consecration, and our dedication for a full relationship with God.

One of the ways we do that is by following Christ’s lead. As Christ before us, we need to seek out and find those who are small, the little ones, because as we know from Luke 17, it is “better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around his neck than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin.”

We need to start small. We need to find those who have been shoved to the margins of polite society. While the small are commonly poor and distressed, they may be rich and distressed like Zacchaeus. We need to greet them and meet them as Jesus did. We need to reach out to the small ones because there is hope that as we respond to our salvation, we can help others respond to theirs. This works both ways too; there is hope that as we help others respond to their salvation, we may respond to ours.

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[1] Kittel, Gerhard, The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament.” Vol. iv. Geoffrey W. Gromiley, Translator and Editor. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, page 659.

[2] Bamberger, B. J., “Tax Collector,” in “The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible.” George Arthur Buttrick, Dictionary Editor. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1962, 21st Printing 1992, electronic version 2004.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Reference to the Zacchaeus song can be found at http://www.ebibleteacher.com/children/songs.htm#Zacchaeus. Videos of the performance of Zacchaeus can be found at http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=zacchaeus+song&aq=3. Both retrieved October 27, 2010.

[5] Kittel, page 652

[6] Chambers, Oswald, “My Utmost for His Highest, An Updated Edition in Today’s Language.” James Reinmann, Editor. Grand Rapids, MI: RBC Ministries for the Oswald Chambers Publications Association, Ltd., October 28 entry.