The following is a homily I preached for a beloved parishioner’s funeral this past weekend.
He 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
I only knew Fielda for less than 1% of her life. Thanks to her nearly 103 years, that’s not hard math to figure out. I am grateful to have known her even that long. I have heard she was a force when she was younger, but I’ve also been bragging about how her spirit was until the end (she was in our weekly Bible study up to the very last week of her life). And though I only knew her a little while, our visits together were so important to me.
As for today’s gospel reading, you might be wondering… Zaccheus? Why Zaccheus? Isn’t this a funeral? I will get to him in a moment.
But before I do, much to her chagrin I will talk about Fielda one more second. When we met months ago to talk about her funeral, she had a folder with the hymns and readings she wanted in the service. But as we were talking, she slowed down in her speech, squeezed my hand, and said in her native New Hampshire accent, “My only desire is that somebody who doesn’t know Jesus might want to get to know him.”
I said, “That is beautiful….of course, that’s not really in my hands, Fielda.” I thought to myself, well, how is that for pressure?
We agreed to meet back again in a week, and I asked her to think about any other requests she might have. But when we met again a week later, she repeated it, “I just want someone who is there to want to get to know Jesus.”
So yes, while that is not in my control, it was such a beautiful sole desire that I couldn’t not bring it up to you.
Now forgive me for asking a question that might seem obvious…why?
Why was that her wish?
Can I think this out loud with you? Why would she want that for someone today?
We know some of the reasons; I know people have told me how much she went through, tremendous tragedy at almost every stage of her life, and she would attest that she couldn’t have gotten through those times without her faith. So maybe she just wished for some of us to have good resilience. Okay.
Or maybe there were bigger salvation reasons why—after all, she was very theologically concerned about wanting all her friends and family who were not in the faith to go to the next life in a good place. And that’s a sweet concern, too.
But is there some other reason that isn’t just about getting through tragedy, and not just about where you’ll end up? Is there something more that maybe she couldn’t even put words to, but that others could see? What makes a woman of her age not only survive, but thrive, and inspire, and love as she did?
Maybe her wish is almost a tragedy for some of us here. Maybe for some of us here we can’t possibly imagine actually believing this stuff, as beautiful as it can be. Yes, she was a wonderful woman, but from a different time, and now we know more about religion, we’ve deconstructed this man-made book, we know the Church is struggling in America, and maybe it’s a good thing, because so many Christians are so reliably hateful, even if she wasn’t.
And yet her wish was her wish. How could we possibly give her that gift?
Well, I don’t know exactly how. I know for me, I left the faith a long time ago. I probably left it for many reasons someone in here might have left or never joined: it’s not intellectually honest, it’s cramping my truest authentic self, it’s got some nice people, but there are all these different ways of understanding God outside of church, and it’s done so much evil, and pastors are especially the worst of the worst. And that’s real! And on the other side of faith, I would still agree with you. And whatever the case may be, when I was not a Christian, I just couldn’t make myself believe it anyway.
This is not the time for my whole story and testimony. But if you’re curious, you and I, let’s have a real conversation someday. A conversation about grass that isn’t greener, about where when God wasn’t real to us then we still tried to become like God anyway, where our addictions and captivity to the Powers That Be really wrecked us, about all the bad decisions we’ve made. And I’ll tell you someday about when I did my best Zaccheus impersonation, and climbed a tree, peered through the branches at Jesus Christ, where I thought I was nice and safe and hidden, where neither he nor anyone else would see and know. At first, that’s all I did.
Back then, I wasn’t ready for the good news because I wasn’t ready for the bad news. The bad news is that we’re all sinners. I know, “sin,” that word poisoned by judgment, the word so many in my generation and perhaps the world have become allergic to because of how it’s been weaponized. But it is, I believe, nevertheless true news, what one writer called really the most provably true thing about Christianity: sin is real. There is something that all of us—all of us—are caught in, a mix of our human nature, powers that rule our social world, and forces beyond our control that keep us one from the One who loves us. Our shorthand word for that is sin. And we are all in it: we are sinners.
Does this mean humanity is all evil? No, not at all. We are created in God’s image, but we all fall prone to darkness, we are all wounded in some way, and the goodness of God in us is caught, stuck, trapped in what has been called an “impossible situation.” The situation is we cannot get out of sin through our own effort, for this will inevitably be trying to get free of sin through more sin. Our animalistic human nature that leads to self-centeredness is one way sin has us impossibly caught, seeking our own good and worshipping ourselves. And because of that, we are ripe for the picking, and the powers that rule the world of politics, business, empire, and more have us worshipping those powers that vie for our minds, our energy, our attention, our moral compass, our hearts and souls. And because those powers that rule the world are where God’s children live, there are spiritual forces beyond our comprehension that love to rule through them.
The bad news is also that there’s no amount of being a perfectionist that can help, nor a coward to run away from it, or a warrior to defeat it, or a guru to be enlightened over it, nothing can help…not even being a self-righteous jerk can help, which most of us Christians should know but reliably forget. The bad news is there is no way to save ourselves.
But the good news is that through Jesus Christ, we are free from our brokenness, from the powers of this world and the spiritual world, and we are promised something more. Through Jesus Christ, making a home for him within us and our hearts, life in Christ is far more than arriving at the answer of a spiritual math problem, where if you believe thing X, do thing Y, you get into place Z. Our God is bigger than that and a life of faith is so much more than that. Fielda’s faith was bigger than that. I’m glad for the readings she picked today that preached some of that bad news she knew: she knew she was a sinner in need of grace. But she also firmly believed God loved everybody, and God’s grace falls on everybody even if you don’t believe.
Yet she really wanted people to have that relationship with Christ. And she didn’t want it for her interest, but yours.
Now, as for our friend Zaccheus. Why him? Who was he?1
He was a tax collector. Not just a minion, but a head tax collector. In his social world, he was practically a mafia leader, able to abuse his power to grift people. Worse, by being in that position in working for the occupying force of Rome, he was a traitor to his own people. What did he think of himself? We don’t know. Maybe he knew he wasn’t perfect, but maybe he was scarcely aware he was lost. But maybe there was something deep down in him that knew that life was more than this. Again, we don’t know.
But he heard this fellow was passing by, and “wanted to see what Jesus was like.” And maybe that’s you, maybe even if you think you already know who Jesus is, maybe there is still something in you that really wants to see what Jesus is like.
But why could Zaccheus not see? Thanks to that childhood song we know that part about him being short, but pay attention to the other part: “on account of the crowd.” He wanted to see him, but couldn’t “on account of the crowd.”
Sometimes we can’t always see Jesus on account of the crowd either. The crowd of people who make Jesus look bad in his name, the crowd of people who have a million other distractions for us, who fill our sight with noise.
So he climbs the tree. And the first thing he learns about Jesus is what? That Jesus loves him. That’s really all he knows about Jesus, that he loves him. And he wants to be closer to him.
And if you ever think you have Jesus figured out and the first thing isn’t that Jesus loves you, look again. Maybe you feel so far from the idea of God, maybe you can’t believe it. That’s okay, Zaccheus didn’t convert before he really saw Jesus and saw that he loved him.
Finally, “Hurry down,” Christ says, “I must stay at your house today.” And it transformed his life.
Like Zaccheus, I don’t think Fielda wanted people to know Christ just to get through hard things and be saved, but because of how it transformed her life. She had a life transformed by faith, which is related but not the same as belief. If we reduce her faith to “Oh, that’s some interesting nice beliefs, but it doesn’t really matter because good people are everywhere,” that is almost right….good people are everywhere. But there are not many Fieldas.
And it is Jesus Christ that transformed her by faith, not her beliefs, but by her faith. And I’m convinced that what she wanted for you to have was not the right answer to a philosophical discourse or the right formula for a spiritual math problem; she didn’t want you to sign a mental contract to agree to something unreal. No, she wanted you to have the realest thing in this life, a living faith, an animating force in your life. She wanted you to have freedom in Christ, not just freedom in a future place, but a freedom in Christ in this life that is only possible through that faith, because the bad news is the bad news, but the good news is that in faith, Christ sets us free.
But if you just can’t believe today—including some of us who have maybe been in church but feel doubts—what to do? What’s the ask? What now? I would say, just keep your eyes open for Jesus. He’s going to keep pursuing you. He’s inviting you into that living faith. He’s inviting you to have your life transformed in a way that you didn’t know was possible. I know many of us are at different levels of skepticism, I’m not preaching to the choir she used to be in, I’m preaching to those of us who don’t know what to make of any of this. Talk to me, or talk to somebody else about God, and don’t be fake about what you can’t believe, be real, we’ve all had doubts, we Christians are real people too.
Of course, it is still true what I told Fielda, it’s not in my hands—I can’t make anybody be interested in Jesus. But if there is a part of you today that finds yourself just a little drawn, like Zaccheus, pay attention to that. That inkling is God trying to reach you, because you are loved, you are being pursued, God loves you, and he will keep working and reaching out to you, and he will never stop trying to reach you for the rest of your days.
So why Zaccheus today? Because I think Fielda would have loved for us to be like Zaccheus, and just climb up a tree. In fact, you’re in a tree right now, but there are so many more trees to see Jesus from. And maybe you need to stay behind branches, like, “I’m just see what’s going on, here where I’m safe from all the Christians.” I don’t think she would have wanted you to start in the deep end with full belief…she just wanted you to keep climbing trees.
And I promise if you keep climbing trees, eventually, you’ll notice that Christ inviting you into his house.
So if you don’t know Jesus, as a parting gift to Fielda, keep climbing trees to see what he’s like. And one day you may discover that this wasn’t a gift you’re giving her, but that this wish was the greatest gift that Fielda could have given you.
And when you do finally really see him… hurry down.
Exegesis for this section inspired by Bp. Robert Barron.