William Yagel
Grace Radford
October 30, 2022
Proper 26, Year C
Holy and Loving God - may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be pleasing in your sight oh Lord for you are our rock and our redeemer.
Amen.
Empire.
Our biblical canon takes a particular stance when it comes to empire. The utterance of the word is almost always synonymous with evil, corruption, and injustice. Whether it is the Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, or the Romans we hear the prophets and disciples rail against empire. The forces of empire always seem to bring corruption and oppression to God’s beloved. Greed and idolatry are often working in the narratives as well, pulling the people out of relationship with God and pushing them farther into the clutches of a system of power and domination.
In the Old Testament we can see God using Empire to punish the people. Or, at least, that is how it is portrayed. Israel from her beginning as a people lived in a cycle of oppression. They would begin with stability, then they would fall out of relationship and commit acts of injustice and evil, then God would cause or allow oppression of the people before they would repent and return to relationship. This cycle repeats throughout the books of the Old Testament. It was during those times of oppression that God seemed to use empires and cruel leaders as a punishment. Amos, for example, famously speaks of Gods Justice rolling “down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream (Amos 5:24).” The empire of Assyria seems to be the agent of God who conquers the Northern Kingdom just a few years after Amos’ prophetic warnings. In the passage from Habakkuk today we hear his lament of the same coming to Judah.
Like Amos, Habakkuk is one of the books of The Twelve Prophets.
At least that is what the Rabbinic leaders in the early centuries of the first millennia CE, who debated the Jewish scriptures in the Talmud, said. They combined the twelve books of the Bible that we call the Minor or Lesser Prophets. We have 12 books, they thought 1 book with 12 chapters. Most of these books are very short, and Habakkuk is a prime example with only 3 chapters and just over 1000 words.
An interesting piece of modern archeology, Habakkuk’s length is still being debated as there is a scroll form the Qumran community, one of the dead sea scrolls discovered in the 1940s, that omits the third chapter all together. This raises a question of the original authorship and content of the book, as that chapter might not be “original”. The time of writing is also unclear, but tradition places the setting of this work in the Southern kingdom in the 7th century BC. All of this means that the work it is set after the fall of the Northern Kingdom of Samaria to the Assyrians, then the Babylonians, and a couple of decades before the Southern kingdom would also fall to the Babylonian Empire.
Habakkuk is watching the corruption and see the impact of Empire on his people. The first verses we hear today are his lament of the destruction and violence that are before him. And in a line that immediately captures my attention we hear in his lament the complaint of “the law becoming slack and the wicked surrounding the righteous. Where justice is thwarted and judgement is perverted.” I have to say, that one hit a little close for me.
Justice and judgement are central to the law for the people of Judah. These are not merely governmental goals for a fair society. These are not secular values, rather, they are central to their faith as people of God. They are bound by the laws given as part of their covenant with God to seek justice, and in this they are failing. Habakkuk can be heard as lamenting the fractured nature of their relationship with the Creator of all things. Empire is coming in the form of the Babylonians. And God seems to be willing to allow the evils of empire devour that which God has loved.
But Habakkuk is given a glimmer of hope in the tablets he will create. There is a vision coming. It may seem to take a long time, but God has promised the righteous life. God is saying that God will not forsake them, and that the faithful are to wait for God.
Now, we Christians have a hard time not reading a certain character right into this page. I must admit that a savior from the line of David sounds like a pretty good answer from God. This a challenge for Christians as we read the Old Testament. It is not simply a proof text for the life of Jesus. We should always bear the coming Christ in mind, surely, but this is a sacred text not just of our faith, but also a text that has unique meaning to our Jewish brothers and sisters. And I think that this is vital to remember and to hold in tension. We are not the only group of people in dialogue with this text. So where we may hear Jesus fulfilling these words, it is unreasonable, I think, to assert that this prophet was speaking strictly of Jesus in a direct linear arrangement. Millennia of Rabbinic Scholars would disagree, but I do think we are called to bring this writing into dialogue with the life of Jesus.
So, when we put the words surrounding justice and empire in dialogue with our passage from Luke we do see some similar themes with starkly different understandings. We see the influence of empire again in the person of Zacchaeus. You see, he wasn’t simply a tax collector, and it isn’t even that he is a chief tax collector. I mean, that is accurate, but the part I am asking you to consider is that he is a tax collector for the Roman Empire. He is collecting for Ceasar. The collectors that work for him are skimming money off of the Jews and Zacchaeus is skimming off of them! The corrupt and unjust forces of Empire are here in Luke as well.
Zacchaeus has led a life of success by stealing from the poor to reinforce the empire that oppresses the Jewish people of first century Palestine. Little wonder he is hated by the people. And it is this agent of empire that Jesus welcomes. It is this man, whose life stands in opposition to the Jewish faith, that Jesus seeks out. This is why the people grumbled.
I encourage you to hear in the dialogue between these passages a shift. It is just this shift of an understanding of justice that remains transformative for us today. It is not that Zacchaeus invited Jesus to be with him, rather it was Jesus who saw Zacchaeus and loved him immediately. Jesus invited himself into Zacchaeus’s house like an old friend. And there was no lecture on Zacchaeus’s bad behavior or corrupt practices. There was not admonishment for his complicity with empire. Instead, there is a full and complete welcoming of Zacchaeus as beloved. Jesus knew the fullness of Zacchaeus and still, he welcomed him in.
Jesus presents a new understanding of God. Hear in the words of Luke this morning how radical the work of the Gospel is and should be. The Gospel is about change. Jesus is redefining judgement in this action with Zacchaeus. Judgement and grace seem to move closer together in this one story. In Jesus we see more clearly God’s love for each of us as being well beyond our ability to deserve it.
But we don’t see Jesus give up on Justice. It is after Jesus’ radical welcome of Zacchaeus that we see the most profound transition. In the actions of Zacchaeus we see the work of reconciliation. Zacchaeus is compelled to seek justice for those he has injured, and to push back against the power of empire that would seek to oppress. Zacchaeus is overcome with gratitude and compelled to be an agent of change in his world. May it be so with us as well.
Amen