“Lost” Vance L. Toivonen
READING Luke 19:1-10
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.
READING Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
People are constantly trying to use you to help them create the particular illusion by which they live. This is particularly true of the collective illusions which are sometimes accepted as ideologies. You must renounce and sacrifice the approval that is only a bribe enlisting your support of a collective illusion. You must not allow yourself to be represented as someone in whom a few of the favorite daydreams of the public have come true. You must be willing, if necessary, to become a disturbing and therefore undesired person, one who is not wanted because he upsets the general dream. But be careful that you do not do this in the service of some other dream that is only a little less general and therefore seems to you to be more real because it is more exclusive!
SERMON
Have you ever been in a room full of people and yet felt utterly alone? Perhaps you are feeling like that right now in this room. Or, maybe you have felt like that in other rooms, which was your entrée to Hope Church. What is it that isolates us from other people? And how desperate are we to fit in, to be included, to be one of the gang?
One night at Senior High Youth Group the kids jokingly referred to the existence of gangs in Sturgeon Bay. We are fortunate to live in a community where we do not have to endure the pain and suffering wrought by gang activity. But in most of our more urban areas of the country gang activity is a sad reality. The most common reason kids join gangs is plain and simple: the fear of being isolated. Kids are no different really than any of us adults…we want to belong. We do not want to be outsiders.
Social norms can sometimes cause people to feel like outsiders. Did you know, for instance, that it is still legal in 33 of these United States of America for an employer to dismiss an employee, or refuse to hire an employee, solely because of his or her sexual orientation. This is but one example of how we as a society engage in what Thomas Merton refers to in that second reading as our collective illusion. Really, our social discrimination against those who are sexed outside of the so-called norm is nothing more than an ideological and collective faux pas. The day will come, and I hope sooner rather than later, when we as a society will look back on this blunder and shake our collective head in disbelief.
We have done this in the past, from the whole earth is flat thing right up to one of our recent collective illusions, namely, that we needed to go to war in Iraq. We shake our heads now and wonder how we will bring an end to the war. But at the time we were convinced, and those that weren’t, those who said no to the war, were outsiders who were out of the mainstream of American opinion polls. I was one of those outsiders, and I can say it felt pretty lonely at times. I even wrote a protest song back in March of 2002 that hasn’t been heard much in public until recently. I sang it at The Café Launch a few weeks ago. It seems easier to sing it now that opinion polls have swung the other way. In fact, staunch supporters of the war are increasingly in the minority.
Despite our best efforts, all of us feel alone, isolated, and lost at times. It is, to put it plainly, the nature of the human beast. If we cease our penchant for being chameleon-like, seeking approval and taking the bribe, as Merton puts it, then we will likely find ourselves at some point standing alone in the universe. There will be moments of absolute exclusion when it seems like it is just you or me and God, or perhaps even you or me absolutely and utterly alone with no sense of God whatsoever.
In his book Eternal Now, Paul Tillich writes,
I never felt so lonely as in that particular hour when I was surrounded by people but suddenly realized my ultimate isolation. I became silent and retired from the group in order to be alone and with my loneliness. I wanted my external predicament to match my internal one.
Loneliness can be conquered only by those who can bear solitude. We have a natural desire for solitude…We want to feel what we are – namely, alone – not in pain or horror, but with joy and courage.
Zacchaeus was a Tax Collector in Jesus’ day, which meant that he collected taxes for Rome. It is this association and collusion with Imperial Rome that made Tax Collectors sinners is the eyes of the righteous Jew. This isolated Zacchaeus from the masses. In addition to that he was short in stature. He was a short, powerful, wealthy man who was literally looked down upon by that segment of the Roman populous known as the Jews. For that matter he was probably looked down upon by anyone who hated to pay their taxes. Okay, so he was looked down upon by most folks. Are you friends with any I.R.S. agents?
Anyway, when other Jews saw the renowned Jewish boy from Nazareth, the young man called Jesus, hail to Zacchaeus who had planted himself up a tree, and invite himself to Zacchaeus’ home, they “began to grumble and said, "He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner."” The crowds lived under the collective illusion that Zacchaeus should not be someone upon whom a holy man like Jesus lavished his attention.
I remember how it was in my first parish in North Dakota. It was this tiny little town on the prairie, and the place everyone went on Friday night was the bar. That was it! Not too many other social opportunities there in a town of 200, 85 miles from anywhere. So when the new, young pastor came to town and decided to spend time with people at the bar on Friday nights, tongues were set a-wagging. It even came up in conversation with a few folks at the anniversary there this summer. Nearly 20 years later I was still the pastor who went to the bar on Friday nights. My notoriety did not stem from crossing that threshold, but rather from the fact that I was spending time with people in that community who were deemed by other people in that community not to be worthy of the pastor’s attention, especially when they were drinking and carousing at the bar.
The same thing could happen here, I suppose, and perhaps already has since I have, over the years, spent my time in other realms. What would happen if I became the pastor who frequented local bars? And believe me, such socializing would have nothing to do with the consumption of alcohol. I would be a food-a-holic or spend-a-holic before I would be an alcoholic. For me it would be all about making contact with others, and the conversations that might be had that might not otherwise take place. It would be about seeking the lost, I suppose.
But wait, let me clarify. One of my many favorite lines from Bruce Cockburn’s lyrics is the following, “Even though I know who loves me, I’m not that much less lost.” When I quote that lyric in conversation more often than not people need a little time to absorb it, so let me repeat it, “Even though I know who loves me, I’m not that much less lost.” When I reflect upon that word, lost, I am well aware that I am first and foremost speaking of myself. When I hear Jesus say, “the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost” I always think of myself first, that I am the lost one. The designation of others as lost can tend to be a dangerously judgmental activity. So I try not to go there. And yet, at the end of the day, we are all lost, it seems.
I really resonate with Merton’s statement about the disconnect between the self and others, between the self and the general illusion of the culture at large. He writes, “You must be willing, if necessary, to become a disturbing and therefore undesired person, one who is not wanted because he upsets the general dream.” I believe that I am not alone in this room when it comes to having felt like this at times. Hope Church has long been a bastion of those who march to the sound of a different drummer.
But Merton also includes that disclaimer at the end, “be careful that you do not do this in the service of some other dream that is only a little less general and therefore seems to you to be more real because it is more exclusive!” This is why I must work from a center, a power greater than myself. I can easily become enamored with my own illusions as over against the illusions of the many, which can be equally destructive, and indeed has been destructive for me in the past. This is why I am so excited once again about tracking the genesis of the life and teachings of Jesus, encountering his wisdom, and leaning on that wisdom instead of my own for guidance and direction.
By studying where Jesus butts up against the collective illusions of his day I can draw parallels between his world and my own. This is why the Saving Jesus course is so important. It helps us begin to put these pieces together so that we can decide what is illusory and what is real. So much of popular Christianity ends up being just another collective illusion. If our study of Jesus, his life, and his teachings cannot help us break through that illusion to what is real, then it is a waste of time, and yet another destructive element of our society. This religious and spiritual path is risky, especially for a community of people who walk it together, because we will never, then, be able to compete with the Joel Osteens, or the Rick Warrens of our culture. By walking this path together we will never worship in 60,000 seat stadiums and rake in millions of dollars. We will, instead, be lost together, and hopefully and prayerfully found to be faithful to the emerging of God’s kingdom in the midst of so many other kingdoms in this world; not least of all the current empire called the United States of America.
Our solitude, and our differentiation from the masses, is then an essential quality of our spirituality. Thomas Merton writes,
Solitude is to be preserved, not as a luxury but as a necessity: not for “perfection” so much as for simple “survival” in the life God has given you. Hence you must know when, how, and to whom you must say “no.” This involves considerable difficulty at times. You must not hurt people, or want to hurt them, yet you must not placate them at the price of infidelity to higher and more essential values. (Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander).
It is interesting to note, I think, how Jesus responds, or rather does not respond, to the grumbling and complaining of the crowd. He doesn’t even bat an eyelash, making no effort whatsoever to placate them, or to make them happy. He stays focused on his mission and ministry to seek out and to save the lost. Knowing our mission and ministry is essential to living authentically as God’s people in the world. I tend to get a clue for that mission and ministry from Jesus. I invite and encourage you to do the same, in order that more and more we might discover how we can be lost together for the sake of others.