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Last weekend, I was downtown for a protest. The crowd was vast and in my persistent attempt to hook up with the group we were trying to meet, I climbed a light post in the middle of the sea of people to have a look around. Up on the concrete base, I was about four feet above everyone else, and finally from this vantage point, I gained perspective. All around me people called out asking what I could see from up there and I told them that the crowd was on the move.
When Zacchaeus climbed up that tree in our bible story today, he was also trying to see everything from a different vantage point. Something had gotten ahold of Zacchaeus, made an impact on him and motivated him to climb up to get a better look.
Zacchaeus was, the story tells us, a ruler/chief tax collector. We’ve been conditioned enough by scripture to be suspicious of both rulers and tax collectors so as soon as the story starts, we already don’t have the best feeling about this guy. As we hear in the bible story Zacchaeus has tricked people: He has been selfish and careless and people don’t like him. But for some reason, he’s taken a step away from his work as a tax-collector and towards Jesus. Why? Why is this corrupt man determined to see Jesus? Did he look in the mirror that morning and not like who he saw? Was he tired of being excluded, disillusioned with his choices, guilty about the lifestyle he was living?
We’re not exactly sure why he is so determined to see Jesus, but something deep and desperate is going on inside of Zacchaeus and it’s so strong that he casts dignity to the winds and climbs the tree.
I’m sure Zacchaeus had heard stories about Jesus: The mysterious Rabbi who healed all of these people, he had fed the 5,000 people with two loaves of bread and five fish. Maybe it was the stories that had shifted something in him. Maybe it was his teachings or even his simple presence that had caused him to look differently at his own life.
People shift, like Zacchaeus did. So do cultures. When Zacchaeus climbed a tree his perspective changed. And perspective can change through so many ways.
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Have any of you been to New York City? Omar and I lived there when I went to divinity school. In the heart of the financial district, in a park off Broadway Avenue, there is a bronze sculpture called Charging Bull. Perhaps you’ve seen it. The bull is muscular with big brass horns. It looks like it has just seen something and it is pivoting and about to charge. Italian sculptor, Arturo Di Modica unloaded it in the dead of night in December of 1989 and left it near a Christmas tree in front of the new York Stock Exchange.
The sculpture, Di Modica said represented prosperity and strength and was a gift to “bolster the spirits” of investors after the 1987 market crash. (A very heavy gift. The thing weighs over 7,000 pounds and is 11 feet tall.)
Twenty-eight years after the bull was installed, in 2017, another statue received a permit to be placed in Bowling Green park. It was a four-foot-tall sculpture of a little girl with her hands on her hips, her chin lifted, and her ponytail blowing in the wind. In the way she was positioned, defiantly facing the bull about 10 feet away, it looked like the bull was charging her. Next to the bull’s three tons, she was tiny, a mere weighed 250 lbs. Artist, Kristen Visibal, named her Fearless Girl. There was a lot of buzz over Fearless Girl. You see, she changed how people saw the bull and Di Modicha was not okay with this. Shortly after she was installed as a statue, They held a press conference which turned emotional and he said the Fearless Girl was “attacking” Charging Bull. “She changed the meaning of the piece,” he said and “turned his proud bull into a villain.” He threatened to sue.
Visbal, the artist of the Girl, said that the Bull was “beautiful” and “a stunning piece of art,” but that “the world changes.” She held firm.
There was a lot of controversy around this: how much control can artists exercise over how their art is interpreted? Who is more powerful here?, The bull or the girl? but at the crux was a reality that art or whatever we call “good” art interprets the world around it.
Hang two pieces of art next to each other and they’ll speak to each other. Beyond that, art interprets the places where it shows up. Play a certain song outside an immigration detention facility and it will speak. Paint a mural in a certain neighborhood and it will speak. Art also gives us a lens on our own lives. My mom and I attended a concert by a famous pianist when she was sick with cancer and we wept through the entire thing—don’t ask me why, no one else did, but something about the music cracked us.
Art or music or poetry stands in the world with this decentered power. It makes us see things differently. The fearless girls powerfully shifts our perception and she seems to do it with her mere presence. Somehow, Jesus does this too.
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Pastor Scott Black Johnson has made an argument that churches are God’s art. Now, Some of us will say that a sunset is God’s art, or a baby’s laugh is God’s art. Yes, fine I agree. But I’m talking about a different kind of art: Black says, “You know the story: Christ came and taught and healed. He suffered and died and rose. He called the disciples, gave them the gospel, and charged them to love each other and go around preaching, casting out demons, and living the good news. Jesus challenged this motley crew to become the church—to be God’s art.” God’s art that sits there at the side of power, and causes us to see our neighborhood, our workplace and our lives differently.
Now, I will be the first to say that the church is imperfect. If you’ve spent any time in the church, you’ll know that people will disappoint you and frustrate you. This project called community can be really hard. Beyond that, if you’ve spent any time reading headlines about the church, you’ll know that the church has made and makes a lot of mistakes.
And yet, the church sits to the side, just as Jesus stood to the side of the dominant Roman culture and leads the people to see the world around them differently.
The Church’s very presence and commitment to neighborliness can even cause the wider world passing by to pause, catch it’s breath and see things differently. This decentered power of Jesus sure made Zacchaeus see his world in a new way.
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You confirmands are stepping into a life of faith where you are going to ask questions about Why God? And then Why church?
I don’t think I need to tell you that there are a lot of challenges in our world today. We’ve talked about them. You think about them. You think about fairness and how you can take care of people. You think about our environment and the problems with violence in our world. You are big hearted, sensitive and deeply kind people and I love you all.
Many years ago before many of us were born, the church provided a more obvious moral compass in our society. When economic philosophies were being written generations ago and then later during the civil rights movement, the magnetism of religious ethics held the moral line and helped keep a check on power and greed. That has changed. I am a clergy person and I don’t think I have to tell you that I don’t have near the authority in our society that the pastor who stood here 50-60 years ago did. And yet, the church still wields power. The change is that now it is decentered, it is a power of presence, of authority that shifts the game from the sidelines. It may be different but it still pulls people back to moral alignment. That is profoundly important. And you are a part of this.
Jesus was a humble man who stood alongside of a big cultural machine of the Roman empire. He was miniature compared to the 3-ton bull. And yet, somehow his very humble presence was shockingly transformative. It transformed individuals like Zacchaeus who felt his influence like a force field. It transformed the wider culture, and it transforms us now.
It is a presence that doesn’t seek the reins of power. It doesn’t charge in like a bull. It stands to the side and offers moral critique and love and grounding. It recalibrates our vision with a gravity that pulls us back to mercy, grace, compassion and justice.
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I think Zacchaeus wanted something better in his life. He wasn’t connected to his community, he was cheating people at work, nobody liked him. When he climbed the tree to see Jesus more clearly, he didn’t expect that Jesus would also see him and it changed him.
We don’t have Jesus’ physical person the way Zacchaeus did, but we do have the body of Christ here in the church. This is what happens when we draw near to this strange and beautiful thing called church. It changes us.
When the Fearless Girl stood beside Charging Bull, the whole story shifted. When a rag-tag early church filled with the holy spirit stood beside that ancient empire, history turned. And when you, yes you, confirmands, step into this church to stand next to the world, our perspective shifts, our hearts open, we see differently and, for a moment, the kingdom breaks in.
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