Sermon — November 27, 2022

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

What is it that keeps you up at night?

Is it anxiety or fear about the state of the world, about mass shootings or car crashes or the small-but-real chance that the already-horrible war in Ukraine might escalate even further? Is it the midnight realization that it was Bill from accounting, who was laid off last week, who always filed Form 4562 before the end of the fiscal year and that it was Bill, and Bill alone, who knew exactly how to calculate (and I quote) “the portion of the basis attributable to section 263A costs”—and that now that responsibility is yours? Is it the grief of a difficult loss, or the memory of a painful conversation, that keeps you up at night? Or is it, perhaps, that one glass too many, one hour too late, disturbing your sleep? Or that extra helping of late-night Thanksgiving leftovers now sitting like a brick in your stomach as you lie in bed?

Maybe it’s something else. Or maybe like me, you sleep like a log all night and then wake up at 5am with your heart pounding, and you don’t know why. But I suspect that most of the adults in this room occasionally address their souls in the night with a variation on Paul’s words: “Do you know what time it is? It is not the moment for you to wake from sleep.”

Of course, there are better reasons to be up in the middle of the night, and for them we have to turn to the lives of children and teenagers. It’s one thing to wake up with your heart pounding the middle of the night worrying about Bill’s secret formula. It’s another to stay up late into the night, whispering with your friends by flashlight-light at a sleepover. It’s one thing to be up at 3am because you’re worried that the world is falling apart. It’s another to be up at 3am because you’re simply so excited that Christmas is finally here.

So what is it that keeps you up at night? Is it fear or anxiety or grief or pain, friendship or excitement or joy—or just the late-night shift at work?

Whatever it is, it’s an Advent kind of thing.

In our gospel reading today, Jesus exhorts his disciples to practice constant vigilance. I am going away, and I will return, he warns, “but about that day and hour no one knows.” (Matthew 24:36) Just as Noah’s contemporaries knew nothing of the Flood that was about to wipe them away, “so too will be the coming of the son of Man.” (24:39) Two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. (24:41-42) “Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.” (24:42) “Be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” (24:43)

I’m not sure how they make you feel, but over time, Jesus’ words have evoked a number of different emotions among his followers. Some feel that adult anxiety and fear: will I be the one who’s brought along with Jesus when he comes, or will I be the one’s who’s left behind? Others feel that child-like excitement and anticipation: this world is good, in many ways, but the promise of “days to come” in which we “beat [our] swords into plowshares” sounds so much better that it keeps us up at night. (Isa. 2:1, 4)

But if I’m being honest, I mostly find Jesus’ words exhausting, which is its own kind of Advent emotion. You cannot, after all, keep awake indefinitely, if you do not know the day on which your Lord is coming; not for two nights, let alone for two thousand years. And I’m not just being overly literal: spiritual alertness, practiced indefinitely, is exhausting. There’s a reason that our weeks and our years and our lives come with a certain rhythm of spirituality. There are times in which we need a more active spiritual practice, and there are times in which we need to take a break, just as there are times to sleep and times to be awake.

I could stand here and urge you to practice constant vigilance, to stare out into the darkness keeping watch for God to appear, and let’s be honest, I’m a pretty charming guy. I could probably inspire one or two of you to really dive into a new spiritual rigor this Advent, an extra hour of meditation every day, or whatever it may be. But by the end of the week, you’d be worn down. Your soul needs rest just as much of your body. So “keep awake,” Jesus says. But how?

Luckily, Paul has an answer. (As usual.)

His charge to the Romans begins on a similar note to Jesus’ words, with this exhortation to wake and keep watch, for “it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep.” (Romans 13:11) Salvation is close at hand, Paul says. “The night is far gone, the day is near.” (13:12) So “let us lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us live honorably as in the day… Put on the Lord Jesus Christ.” (13:12-13) And it sounds just like Jesus’ message: “Keep awake.”

But there’s a difference. The picture we get from the Gospel reading is one of Advent darkness. It is the middle of the night, and it is your job to stay awake, for you do not know when the Lord is coming. Paul gives us Advent light. It is no longer nighttime; it is day. It is no longer the time to strain to stay awake; it’s the time to wake from sleep.

Jesus warns us to stay awake in the night, because we do not know when he will come. Paul reminds us that it is no longer night, because Jesus has already come. And we are not left alone, our eyes straining in the darkness. We are left with the Holy Spirit, with the presence of Jesus, with God’s light shining out all around us, to show us where God is in the darkness.

We “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” every time we turn our minds to prayer, and the light of God that is within us seeps out through us. We put on Jesus Christ when we come to worship, to sing his praise and to receive his Body and Blood. We put on the Lord Jesus Christ when we reach out to help our neighbors in love, within this church community or outside it. And when we put on this “armor of light,” it is as if it is both day and night, because his brightness is as bright as the sun, and it drives away the darkness before our eyes.

And so we live, as always, in that “now and not yet” of Advent: in that “day and yet night” of a world in which Jesus has been born, and the Holy Spirit is among us, and yet God’s vision of a realm in which we shall learn war no more is not yet fully real. And even while we wait and watch in the dark night of this world for God to make things right, we know that it is already day, and God is already making things right in and through and for us.

So “keep awake,” this Advent. I don’t mean keep awake with anxiety or fear—at least not for Jesus’ sake—but with excitement and anticipation. Keep awake like a five-year-old on Christmas Eve, desperate to catch a glimpse of Santa’s reindeer. Keep awake and watch for what God is already doing all around you.

But remember that it is not your sharp spiritual vision that will show you the way. It is not your exertion or caffeination or even your excitement that will make this a holy Advent for you. It’s only the grace of God that will slowly turn on the lights and show you the beauty of the things that are unfolding all around you.

So put on the armor of light. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ. May you know what time it is when it is the moment for you to wake; and may God give you a peaceful night’s rest when it is time for you to sleep.

Sermon — November 20, 2022

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

When I was a kid, we spent a fair amount of time in the car, for New Englanders: five-hour drives to visit my grandparents in New Jersey, sitting in traffic on I-95 North for summer vacations, a continuous stream of errands and activities driving around the suburbs. And as the younger of two children, I soon became familiar with some of the phrases traditionally used by parents driving a car:

1) “No, we’re not there yet.”
2) “I will turn this car around.” and
3) “Don’t make me come back there!”

If you’ve ever been a child or, heaven forbid, a parent, you may have heard or said one or two of these things yourself, especially the last one. You’ve got two or three or five kids loaded in the back of the car, and they’re hitting each other and yelling at each other and you’re more than a little focused on not getting rammed by some guy crossing all three lanes of traffic at Sullivan Square and you shout over your shoulder: “Don’t make me come back there!” As in, “if you can’t work this fight out, I’m going to have to come break it up myself, and then you’ll be sorry. As will I.”

If you ever find yourself in this situation, it may be some comfort to know that God knows exactly how you feel. The driver of a car full of children may shout, “Don’t make me come back there!” And the god of world full of adults is sometimes has to say, “Don’t make me come down there!” 

This is the whole point, after all, of our reading this morning from the prophet Jeremiah. “Woe to the shepherds,” says the Lord, “who destroy and scatter my sheep!” (Jer. 23:1) He’s not talking about actual shepherds, of course. And he’s not talking about religious leaders, pastors, the spiritual shepherds of spiritual sheep. “Shepherd,” in fact, was a traditional ancient image for a king.

The god or gods of the city are the owners of the flock. The king is the shepherd, the hired hand who leads and guides the people on their behalf, tending to those entrusted to him and caring for them… or not. And it’s the “or not” with which God is concerned this morning. “Woe to the shepherds who shepherd my people!” They “have not attended to” my flock. (23:2) They have not, it seems, “execute[d] justice and righteousness in the land.” (23:5) And so, God says to these kings, “I will attend to you for your evil doings.” (23:2)

“I myself will gather the remnant of my flock… and I will raise up shepherds over them who will shepherd them.” (23:3, 4) Like all prophecies, it’s one part prediction and one part warning: this is what’s going to happen if they don’t change their ways. “The days are surely coming, says the Lord…” (23:5) and if you don’t get your act together, God tells the kings of the people, “I myself” will come to take charge of the sheep.

 “Don’t make me come down there!”

But they did. And so he did.

This morning we observe the “Last Sunday after Pentecost,” the day sometimes known as “Christ the King.” It’s a kind of hinge between two seasons, between the long season of “Ordinary Time” after Pentecost and the short run-up through Advent to Christmas. And if you look at it in this context, you might think of “Christ the King” as one answer to the question, “Why Christmas?” In other words, “Why was Jesus born? Why did God choose to become human?”

There are many answers to this question, and each one pulls out a different facet of who Jesus was and what he was there to do. Did Jesus come to teach us a new way of love? Yes, and… Did Jesus come to heal our fragile and fallible human nature? Yes, and… Did Jesus come so could finally become King; because the shepherds of the people were letting them down, and God Godself needed to take charge? Yes, that too!

Because if Jeremiah’s prophecy was supposed to be a warning—“Don’t make me come down there!”—then when we read it five weeks before Christmas, it should be clear that it failed. We did not change our ways. We did make God come down here to set things right, and thank God he did.

Because it’s the way God came down here that really changed the world. You can easily imagine things turning out differently. Imagine that the shepherds and kings of the people had practiced evil instead of righteousness, and God was mad. God warned them to mend their ways, or God would come down. And they did not change their ways, and God came down with a punishing wrath, God came down with an army of avenging angels and destroyed those who had exploited the people, casting them into the fires of hell and establishing his throne for ever and ever, Amen.

That’s not what happened. Look at our Gospel reading today.

God came down, not to dispense violence, but to endure it. God came down, not to mete out justice at the end of the sword, but to face injustice and a crown of thorns. God came down to reign as Christ the King, not from a jewel-encrusted throne but on the hard wood of the cross.

God came down and absorbed all the violence and injustice of the rulers of this world—of Roman governors and mocking soldiers and even Death itself—and broke their power over us. God came down not to destroy us, but to be destroyed by us, and in so doing to destroy death for us. God came down to do what our shepherds could never do, and to lead us into greener pastures than we could ever imagine, to “reconcile us” to God, “by making peace through the blood of his cross.” (Col. 1:20) And this is the upside-down kingdom of Christ, in which the good shepherd lay down his life for the sheep.

God came down to where we were, and for a moment our little fists wailed on God, instead of on one another, but God was too big and too calm and too strong to be hurt by us, and God’s love transformed our anger, and showed us a new way of love. It wasn’t a permanent fix. God knows we’ve been violent since, Christians certainly included. But the power of a calm and patient love, in the face of a violent and impatient world, began to show us the way of another kingdom. And God is inviting us to follow that way of self-giving love that Jesus laid out, and to live as though his law of love was the law of our land, as if Jesus truly were our rightful King, as if God really had “rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son.” (Col. 1:12)

If you ever feel like that child melting down; if you ever feel the need to rage at God, or throw a punch; if you ever feel the guilt of having whacked your sibling over the head with a toy, and you’re ashamed, or you’re afraid—take heart. Remember that God will come down here, not in anger, but in love. God will come down here, and hold it all for you. God will take whatever you throw at her in prayer, because she is patient with you when all your patience has run out, and then some. God will absorb it all, and, in time, transform it all, for you.

So as you prepare yourself, in this coming season of Advent, to celebrate the birth of our newborn God and king, I pray with Paul that the Holy Spirit may continue to fill you with God’s love. “May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience… joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light.” (Col. 1:11-12)

Amen.

Sermon — November 13, 2022

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

When I walked here last Sunday morning for church, I saw a flatbed truck and a crane being operated by the Department of Public Works right over in Thompson Square. (Did anyone else see them?) Do you know what they were doing?)

If you walk by on your way home you’ll see a new tree. A tall, slender, evergreen tree. One might even call it… a Christmas tree.

And this was on November 6.

But I am not a Scrooge, and the reality is, even if Christmas is still six weeks away, even around church it’s “beginning to look a lot like…” Advent, at least.

Look no further than our readings this morning. If you don’t know much about how churches traditionally observed the season of Advent, they may not seem like they really capture the spirit of “the holiday season” that’s being celebrated in our lovely November Christmas tree. To be fair, our first reading from Isaiah gives you a certain kind of Christmassy feel: peace and joy, eternal life and new creation, the wolf and the lamb feeding together. In this reading from Isaiah you may already start to feel the joy of Christmas: the sweetness of the Prince of Peace lying in the manger, and angels bringing glad tidings of great joy.

Luke, today, gives us something else entirely: destruction and deception, famines and plagues, hatred and betrayal and portents from the heavens: the end is drawing nigh. And this, in fact, a traditional theme of theme, of the season leading up to Christmas. We sometimes associate the four Sundays of Advent and their candles in the wreath with the four themes of hope, peace, joy, and love. But the readings we get during Advent tend more toward the four traditional themes of Advent: death, judgment, heaven, and hell. They prophesy calamity and destruction, peril and alarm. They tell the story of a world being turned upside down. Advent doesn’t begin for another few weeks, but you can already feel the mood start to shift: The long summer where we listened to Jesus healing people and telling parables as he traveled toward Jerusalem is over. Jesus has arrived in the city where he will die, and he’s starting to predict some pretty scary stuff.

The Temple, Jesus says, is going to be destroyed. The center of his people’s religious life, the place where the people come to worship God, where heaven and earth intersect, is going to be dismantled stone by beautiful stone. When the disciples ask him when this will be, he warns them against trying to predict it. And he tells them that first they’ll have to go through trials and tribulations, to endure great suffering, not only the shared social suffering of natural disasters and political upheaval, not only the collective grief of losing the Temple that’s at the heart of their spiritual lives, but a specific and personal process of persecution and arrest. Everything will fall apart, in their lives, in their nation, in their whole world.

And in fact, it would and it did. But not quite yet. Everything Jesus said would in fact come true. There would be wars and insurrections, earthquakes, famines, plagues; his followers would be arrested and stand on trial because of his name. It would take months before his followers were arrested; years before the famines and the plagues. The Temple would survive for decades before it was destroyed at the end of a long war.

But it’s at this very moment—when the disciples are admiring the beauty of the Temple on their trip together to the big city—that Jesus tells them it will one day be destroyed.

And interestingly enough, that same paradox applies to the reading from Isaiah as well. It’s sometimes helpful to remember, when reading the Bible, that most authors don’t say things that go without saying. This beautiful prophecy comes from the very end of the book of Isaiah. It’s likely that it was written a few decades after the destruction of the first Temple, at the end of the people’s long years spent in exile, and maybe even after some of them had begun to return to Jerusalem. When the people began to return, many of them felt joy. They’d been refugees for fifty-something years. But it was mixed with sadness, because the city was not the same. The Temple had been destroyed. The population had been scattered.

And so when Isaiah offers this prophecy of hope, it’s not because the people are feeling hopeful, it’s because they’re disappointed. When he shares these words of eternal peace, it’s because they’re just recovering from the trauma of war. When he promises that he is about to “create new heavens and a new earth,” about to “create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight,” it’s because they’re sorely missing the old Jerusalem and they’re not feeling much joy or delight.

And so just as Jesus delivers his word of warning and woe at the very moment the disciples are feeling most comfortable, Isaiah delivers a prophecy of comfort when the people are feeling their most uncomfortable.

And there’s some wisdom in that. There may be times when you are feeling pretty good. You’re proud of what you’ve accomplished. You’re proud of what you’ve built. You want to stop and admire the beautiful stones and gifts that decorate your life. And it can be tempting to think that it will last forever. But the inconvenient truth is that it won’t. None of it will. Everything we have, and everything we’ve built, will one day be dismantled stone by precious stone. And we might find ourselves in the situation of the people in Isaiah’s day, people cast away in exile, grief, and loss.

But when we find ourselves living among the ruins, wondering where God could possibly be in all of this, that’s when Isaiah’s prophecy is there, promising new things, joyful things, a world without weeping or distress, violence or pain.

This kind of cyclical pattern is common in life, and of course recognizing it can give us a good perspective on things. It’s good to remember, when times are hard, that a better future lies ahead. It’s good to remember, when things are good, that they are not permanent, so we should appreciate and enjoy them while we can.

But the same pattern applies beyond just the scope of this life and extends past our deaths. For many of us, myself included, it’s a difficult truth to accept: nothing that we have can be held onto forever. And this is true whether you believe in Jesus or not. Every human being, of every faith and none, will one day die. Every building, no matter how beautiful or beloved, will one day crumble into dust. Nothing, however good, will last forever.

And yet God makes us a promise, which is a second and perhaps-even-more-difficult truth: that nothing we lose will be lost forever. That God is preparing a new heavens and new earth, like the old ones in many ways but much improved. That when it feels like our lives are being torn down around us, a new home is already being prepared for us, and we will one day reach that land of everlasting peace.

Sermon — All Saints’ Sunday, November 6, 2022

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

“You were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit;
this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption.” (Eph. 1:14)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Over the last few years as a freelance web developer, in addition to my work in the church, I’ve learned a lesson that many contractors before me have learned as well: It’s best for everyone involved if you’re paid 50% up front and 50% when you finish a project.

If you’re paid 100% on completion, of course, you spend the whole project working for free. A difficult client who wants to keep pushing for changes or expanding the scope of work has all the power in the relationship; they won’t pay a dime until they’re finally satisfied with what you’ve done, even if it ends up being far more work than the original contract. And if you’re paid all up front, well… There’s not much of an incentive to do the job. If you’ve ever worked with a contractor who disappeared once you wrote the final check, leaving behind a punch-list of small items that would never be completed, you know what I mean.

50-50 is the best of all worlds. And people have known this for generations. Years ago archaeologists found an ancient papyrus in Egypt, from nearly 1500 years ago, describing one such freelance operation. “Regarding Lampon the mouse-catcher,” the author writes, “I paid him 8 drachmae as earnest money in order that he may catch the mice.” More to follow, one assumes, once the mice are actually caught.

It’s the very same word, translated in the letter as “earnest money,” that Paul uses to describe the gift of the Holy Spirit. In the letter it’s translated “pledge,” but it means the same thing. The Holy Spirit that we experience in this life is, Paul writes, God’s down payment, God’s 50% up front toward the promise of our redemption.

This is part of what’s sometimes called the “now and not yet” in Christian life. You have already, Paul writes, “heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed.” (Eph. 1:13) You have already been “marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit.” (1:13) You have already received a “pledge,” earnest money, as an advance on the riches of your inheritance. (1:14) But God’s work in you is not yet complete. You do not yet know—we do not yet know—“the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints.” (1:19)

Hopefully, this “now and not yet” makes some intuitive sense. You know that your spiritual life is not just “paid on completion,” as if we only experienced suffering and misery in this world, and had to wait for peace and joy in the next one. We already now experience the comfort and love of the Holy Spirit, in many different ways. But we also know that things aren’t perfect yet. We know that that “golden evening,” that “glorious day,” those “pearly gates” are describing some reality that we do not yet inhabit. God has promised us something better, and the promise has not yet been fulfilled. We’re still waiting for that final check.

But here’s where the analogy breaks down. If we’re spiritual freelancers, that initial gift of the Holy Spirit is a mark that God’s earnest about the project, but it’s also an incentive. If we just keep working and working and working, and becoming more and more saintly, more holy and good, if we can just finish our projects of self-improvement, then one day God will reward us with a second check.

This isn’t what Paul means at all. You are not the hard-working contractor. It’s God who is at work in you. “I pray,” he writes, that God “may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation.” (1:17) He prays that “the eyes of your heart” may be “enlightened,” so that you “know” three things: the hope to which he has called you, the riches of your inheritance, and the greatness of his power. (1:18) The Holy Spirit that God has given us is not a spirit of fear or anxiety. It’s not a spirit of inspiration, so that we might go on to do great things for God.  It’s a spirit of comfort and reassurance, not about our work for God about God’s work in and for us. God wants to enlighten our hearts, so that we can see and feel the reality of that promise, so that we can truly know that the thing we hope for is real, and that it is more beautiful than we can imagine, and that God is more than strong enough to bring us there. And that blessed life of God is not a wage; it’s an inheritance. It’s not a reward that we earn by working hard. It’s the gift God has chosen to give us for being who we are.

I think that’s part of what Jesus means when he tells us, “Blessed are you who are poor… Blessed are you who are hungry… Blessed are you who weep now.” (Luke 6:20-21) It’s not that you are blessed because you are poor, or hungry, or weeping. It’s that even though the kingdom of God is not yet yours, even though you have not yet been filled, even though you are not yet laughing all the time, amidst all the pain and suffering of this world you are God’s blessed child, and you will receive the inheritance that is yours.

On this All Saints’ Sunday we remember and we pray for all the people whom we have loved and who have died. And the Holy Spirit’s work of assurance goes on. Every moment of joy or peace or prayer we feel is just a taste of what has been promised to us, of the eternal life already being lived by those who have already died. That doesn’t mean we can’t be sad. It doesn’t mean we won’t miss them every day of our lives. But it is the sometimes-unbelievable promise that they live now in the world we all pray to see, a world of peace and rest; and it’s a promise that we will one day see them again. So I pray, like Paul, that God may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, and what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us. Amen.

Sermon — October 30, 2022

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Page

I have some good news for you and some bad news for you. Which one do you want first?         

Well actually, it’s not up to you. The order has been predetermined. Because if last week’s sermon could’ve been titled “Some Good News for Tax Collectors,” this week is the bad news. Last week, if you weren’t here or you need a refresher, Jesus told a story about a Pharisee and a tax collector, standing in the Temple, praying, and how the Pharisee—a good, upstanding, righteous person—was praying, “Thank God I am not like other people… certainly not like that tax collector!” And the tax collector—the “Sherriff of Nottingham” character in the story, the one whose whole job it was to shake down his own people and ship their money off to Rome—simply prayed “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” and it was he who went home justified, not the other. The moral of the story being that it is better in God’s eyes to recognize our own imperfection than to try to justify ourselves through comparison with another person. And that’s good news for the tax collector: However unsympathetic or unethical a person may be, as soon as they turn and ask God’s forgiveness, they will find that God has already forgiven them.

But Jesus cuts the story short. We’re left wondering about what happens next. After the tax collector’s prayer in the Temple, does he resume his regularly-scheduled program of economic exploitation? Does he apologize for harming his neighbors, and then go back the next day to harming them? To put it in theological language: Has he simply “been justified,” been reckoned as righteous before God, been forgiven without being transformed? Or is he being “sanctified”? Is his actual life changing to become more holy over time?

Jesus didn’t answer those questions in last week’s story. He left us with the good news for tax collectors, with the idea that we are never too far gone for God’s forgiveness.

But this week comes the bad news for tax collectors. Or at least for Zacchaeus.

Luke describes Zacchaeus not merely as a tax collector but as the “chief tax collector,” in other translations the “chief toll collector.” (Luke 19:2) This was not like being a low-level bureaucrat. In fact, it wasn’t like being a high-level bureaucrat. “Chief tax collector” wasn’t a job promotion, or an honor bestowed on a distinguished civil servant. It was a privilege he paid for.

The Roman Empire operated its system of taxes and tolls like a modern franchise system. If you were rich enough, you could purchase the right to collect tolls on behalf of the emperor in a certain area. In exchange, you were responsible for sending along a certain amount of money every year. It doesn’t take an MBA to see how this would led to corruption. The chief toll collector had every possible incentive to overcharge, to squeeze as much money as he could out of his area, because anything over and above what he owed Rome was pure profit.

If this sounds like a terrible way to run a country, it turns out it was. And if you think it sounds like theft, it turns out Zacchaeus thought so too, and he said as much to Jesus. It’s a comic scene: Zacchaeus, this wealthy and prominent man, clambering up into a tree to see Jesus. But you can understand the urgency: Zacchaeus has a choice to make. If this Jesus of Nazareth is just another would-be Messiah, another pretender to the throne, then Zacchaeus has nothing to worry about.

But if he’s the real deal, if he’s the Messiah, as they say, then Zacchaeus had better act fast. Because God’s chosen king is coming to clean house, and it’s a much better idea to be remembered as one of his earliest supporters than to be branded as a collaborator.

And so when Jesus stands at the foot of the tree and calls up to him, “Zacchaeus, come down. I’m coming for dinner,” Zacchaeus acts quickly and decisively. He doesn’t stop where the tax collector did last Sunday, with the simple prayer, “God, be merciful to me!” He goes further: “Look, half 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.” (Luke 19:8)

“Four times as much” is a telling phrase. It doesn’t just mean “I’ll pay a big fine.” It’s something more specific than that. If you turn in your Bible to the “Book of Torts,” which is to say Exodus 22, you’ll find a meticulously-detailed set of penalties for damaging someone else’s penalty. What happens if I dig a well, and don’t cover it, and your ox falls in? What do I owe you if my ox gores your ox? And what if my ox had done this before? (This, by the way, is where most people who set out to read the Bible cover to cover run out of steam.)

And then in the next verse, what happens if I steal your ox or your sheep and I slaughter it, and eat it, or sell it on to someone else? I owe you five oxen for a stolen ox; four sheep for a stolen sheep. I don’t just owe you one sheep back, to return your wealth to the status quo. No, I’ve harmed you, and I owe you one sheep to replace the one I stole, and three more sheep, to make reparations for that wrong.

So in promising to repay those whom he’s defrauded fourfold, Zacchaeus not only admits his theft, he recognizes that he knew it was theft, and that he knew the proper penalty for that theft. But he doesn’t only recognize and admit that he has done something wrong. He offers the appropriate repayment that’s prescribed to repair those relationships.

Now, you can apply this to a whole range of wrongs in life. This is probably an incredibly satisfying story to anyone who’s ever heard the words, “Well, I’ve already apologized? Isn’t that enough?” No. As a matter of fact. It’s not. When you have wronged someone, it’s one thing to apologize and to be forgiven for what you’ve done. But it takes much more to be reconciled, to really repair things so you can once again be in right relationship with someone. Apologies aren’t enough. Returning what was stolen isn’t enough. Repairing the relationship takes something more.

This Gospel reading comes at a fascinating time in the life of our church. I spent most of yesterday at our annual Diocesan Convention, where, among the many other important but not always interesting acts of a church convention, we voted to begin establishing an $11 million reparations “as a part”—and here I quote from the resolution—”as a part of our effort to address our legacy of the wealth accumulated through the enslaved labor of Africans and Afro-Caribbeans on our behalf.”

It’s easy for us in Massachusetts to look at the question of reparations for slavery and see ourselves as “the good guys.” Slavery was abolished in Massachusetts well before this parish was founded. Boston was a center of abolitionist thinking and activism. But what our diocese and many of our parishes have found in their own historical research is more complicated. Many early Boston Episcopalians were among the leaders of the trans-Atlantic merchant class, and while they may not have “owned” enslaved people, they profited from their labor. More than a few Boston merchants made their fortunes from slavery well after it had been abolished in our Commonwealth: building or owning the ships that trafficked kidnapped West Africans to the Americas, processing the molasses and rum made with slave-grown sugar cane, starting the American industrial revolution by building factories to convert cotton grown in the South by enslaved people into cheap textiles. Many of these men, it turns out, were pious and devoted supporters of the church, and they gave great sums of money to our diocese and our parishes; money extracted, in part, by practices infinitely more brutal and more inhumane than anything Zacchaeus could imagine. And this is what’s so interesting about this situation: None of my family lived in this country until decades after slavery had been abolished. That’s probably true for many of you, as well. But due to the miracle of compounding interest and sound financial practices, we are all still benefiting from the money they gave long before we were alive.

And now, like Zacchaeus did, we owe it back.

I’m telling you this in part just by way of information, so you know about important conversations in our church. I should add that the reparations plan actually won’t affect our budget as a parish. As parishes and individuals, we’ll be invited to make our own contributions to the fund, but certainly not required. It’s actually a pretty well-structured plan, I think: the diocese is taking a chunk of its own endowment to seed the fund, then allocating some of its annual endowment draw and a portion of parish assessments every year to go into it, without raising those assessments, so that each parish will be supporting the fund without actually paying hurting our own budgets. (It will mean a somewhat significant cut to our diocese’s operating budget, instead.) And if anyone has any questions about how this all will work or any concerns or opinions, feel free to talk to me about them at Coffee Hour.

But I also want to celebrate this Biblical model of reparations to restore broken relationships as good news in and of itself. I joked that this was a good news/bad news situation for tax collectors, and sure, Zacchaeus is going to lose half his stuff, which is a bummer. But there’s good news here for all of us. It’s so easy to feel powerless in this world, as if we’re just stuck up in a sycamore tree watching things fall apart. It’s so easy to feel like our problems are intractable, like there’s nothing you or I can do to make things right, whether that’s in a difficult relationship or a violent world, in the face of our own failings the ways in which we’ve benefited from what our confession calls “the evils done on our behalf.” And it’s easy to feel unforgiveable in our culture, as if we can never recover from a mistake, let alone from intentional wrongdoing. But the good news of Zacchaeus is that you always have the choice to turn and change. And there are actual, tangible, concrete ways to help make things right.

As long as we decide to get down out of that tree and follow where Jesus leads.