Daily Lesson for October 30, 2020

 Today's Daily Lesson comes from Luke chapter 19 verses 1 through 10:

He entered Jericho and was passing through it. 2 A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. 3 He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. 4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. 5 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.” 6 So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. 7 All who saw it began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.” 8 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.” 9 Then Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.”

I don't think I ever quite got how radical this scene was until I went to see a dying man in one of my congregations who was a Viet Nam veteran. He was weak and frail. Cancer had dropped him from a strong, 250 pounds to a meagre 160. He looked ashen and bone thin. We sat down on the couch and he asked me, out of nowhere, "Do you know what a tax collector is?" I didn't realize it at the time, but I had just entered the confessional.

The man told me about being on a patrol in a South Vietnamese village when the villagers had turned up a "tax collector". These were soldiers and spies sent down the Ho Chi Minh trail who would often enter a village when American and South Vietnamese soldiers were not present, and extort money or loyalty from the people by the threat and use of terror. They were hated; but usually there was not much the people could do because they were always well guarded by other soldiers.

But in the confessional the old and dying veteran told me how the people had pulled this man out from either a hole in the ground or somewhere out in the jungle, and he had been abandoned by his comrades because the American GI's were near.

So having this "tax collector" in their own hands, the men of the village and few South Vietnamese soldiers brought him to the center of the village and tortured him to death. The veteran and other GI's sat and watched, smoking cigarettes, and not having any more feeling for the man than they would a rodent.

I grew up in Sunday School singing, "Zacchaeus was a wee little man, a wee little man was he." That was the children's version of this story. I heard the adult version that afternoon on the couch.

I know now why it was that after this story -- when Jesus went to have dinner with the tax collector -- that there were those very ready to kill not only the tax collector, but also Jesus. And it did not matter that Zacchaeus was willing to pay reparations. For what they really wanted was blood.

And soon enough they would have it . . .

NOTE: We are reading the whole Bible through this year. Over the weekend we will read Matthew 22 and 23, Mark 11 and 12, and John 12, and Luke 20-21.