37th Sunday after Pentecost / Zaccheus Sunday / Martyr Agatha; St. Theodosius of Chernigov / 1 Timothy 4.9-15; Luke 19.1-10
F/S/HS. Brothers and sisters, Zacchaeus Sunday! It’s hard to believe that once again we are at the beginning of a cycle of five special services, each having its own name, all five leading up to the start of Great Lent, five Sundays from today.
Next Sunday is the Publican and the Pharisee. The Sunday after that: The Prodigal Son. Followed by the Sunday of the Great Judgment. And fifth and finally, Forgiveness Sunday, with the next day beginning Great Lent. I must say dear ones that there is already something deep in my soul, deep in my bones, yearning for the start of Great Lent. I need its many medicines.
If you read a sampling of our church fathers and mothers, you will see that each of these five Sundays, beginning this morning with Zacchaeus Sunday, have a central theme to them. There are many themes that we will explore over these next five Sundays. But one theme in particular remains front and center: Namely, that all five Sundays ask about the state of our heart.
How is your heart before God? Are there secret and hidden things in your heart, that keep us from abiding in God, that hinder us from obedience to our Lord, from walking the path of His will and His ways with us? Is there anything going on down in our heart that hinders us from loving others as our Lord asks us to love?
I was talking with one of our children recently. We were talking about God. What do you think is most important about our relationship with God? I asked this child. And her answer: That we know that God loves us, and that we have pure hearts.
The heart—our heart!—no other image is more used by our church fathers and mothers to name the place, the locus within us wherein God dwells. The heart! It’s not that our head, our mind, is unimportant. Many of our saints possessed brilliant erudition and extolled the wondrous workings of the mind. But the mind alone as an organ for perceiving the mysterious wealth and love of God, absent the heart, is woefully inadequate if not dangerous. Never ever, not for a moment, warned St. Theophan the Recluse, think that you can reason or think your way to God. Woe unto clever thinking that does not think with the heart.
Which is why our own St. Silouan so emphasized that our mind must descend down into our heart. During this descent, as the mind begins to dwell in the heart, observed St. Silouan, whole new vistas open up to us. There in the heart is humility cultivated. There in the heart is repentance and contrition best practiced. There in the heart do we better perceive the contradictions and paradoxes so necessary for a life of virtue and holiness; there where joy and sorrow, darkness and light comingle; there in the heart, where God’s presence makes His absence understandable.
The beloved servant of God, King David, committed horrendous, awful sins. So overcome with lust was he for Bathsheba that he schemed and brought to fulfillment the killing of one of his most elite soldiers: Bathsheba’s husband Uriah the Hittite, so that David could take her as one of his wives.
The first of David and Bathsheba’s four children died, as punishment from God for David’s adultery and murder of Uriah. Something had gone terribly wrong in David’s heart. Once pure, his heart became consumed with unchecked passion.
Consequently life began to beat up on David. He fell mightily into the pit of darkness. Weeks and months passed. And then somewhere in that darkness David’s heart began to whisper, a still small voice telling him to mend his ways, forsake his vices, turn back to God. His heart began to soften. Contrition and repentance renewed a new and right heart before God. Culminating in David composing his great psalm of repentance, so central to the life of every Orthodox Christian.
My heart has transgressed, he pleads with God. I am full of iniquity. I acknowledge my transgressions. My sin is ever before me. I have done evil in Your sight. You O Lord desire truth in the inward parts; create in me a clean heart; renew a steadfast spirit in me. A broken and humble heart—these O God, You will not despise.
David, dear ones, has learned a salient truth—the truth that when we depart from the path of a humble and contrite heart, so then do we spill God’s wisdom that seeks to live within us. In my hidden parts, he says early in his psalm, You O Lord will make me to know wisdom. And when that wisdom spills from us due to our sin, as David knows all too well, so too does the joy and gladness spill from us. No longer are we made whiter than snow. Why? Because we have opened our heart to hidden and secret things, dark things that have taken up residence down in our heart.
Sisters and brothers, two hours ago during Matins I stood here during the reading of the Six Psalms, in front of our ambo, silently reading the twelve prayers that I pray during those six psalms. As I’ve shared with you before, the tenth of these twelve prayers, which is a recapitulation of David’s great psalm of repentance, finds me praying to our Lord who knows the secret and hidden things of the heart of man.
What are these secret and hidden things that lay in our heart? They are those things, like David’s sin, that go unacknowledged in Confession, that we don’t repent of. They are those things which hinder us from the fullness of a humble and contrite heart, because darkness and not wisdom occupy our heart. Is that what we want! Is that our destiny: To live lives of secret iniquity and hidden transgressions, absent wisdom and joy and gladness in our heart? Lord have mercy!
And what of this morning’s Gospel story? How is Zacchaeus’ heart? I rather like the teaching of some of our church fathers, that Zacchaeus might actually be the Publican that we will encounter in next Sunday’s Gospel, a story that takes place one chapter earlier, just before the story of Zacchaeus.
That publican, we will learn, stands in the back of the church, his head hung in contrition and repentance, a quiet pleading prayer the only words his lips can offer—O God, be merciful to me a sinner. This publican is a tax collector.
One chapter later we encounter another tax collector, Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus’ passion is not that of David’s—lust for beautiful women. Zacchaeus’ passion is for wealth. His was the passion of greed, the passion of avarice, manifest in the form of taking from others monies that were not rightfully his.
When John the Baptist came preaching repentance near the beginning of this same Gospel, the people asked John, saying, What shall we do then? Remember who was amongst those people—the tax collectors. What shall we then do? these tax collectors asked John. And John’s answer: Collect no more than what is appointed you (3.13). In no way whatsoever did Zacchaeus heed John’s call to repentance, but instead indulged in his gluttonous and greedy appetite for wealth by collecting four-fold more than was rightfully his.
Zacchaeus hears that Jesus is visiting his town. So great is the crowd, and so small in stature is Zacchaeus, that he climbs a tree, in order to better see this one Jesus. Something dear ones is stirring down in Zacchaeus’ heart; little drops of conviction, contrition, and repentance—drop, drop, drop, telling Zacchaeus, reminding him, that his is a life of sin and not repentance.
Jesus looks up and sees Zacchaeus perched in the tree branches. Zacchaeus, He yells, make haste and come down, for today I must stay at your house. Come down and encounter me, the Lord of life. Come down and descend into your heart, Zacchaeus; come down and begin to make clean and purify your heart from your filthy iniquity!
So powerful is this moment that those little drops become a full blown gush of conviction, the conviction to utterly amend his ways. Zacchaeus tells Jesus that he will repay fourfold what he has robbed from the people. And Jesus, seeing Zacchaeus’ repentance and humility, honors him: Today salvation has come to this house, because he also is a son of Abraham, for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. A heart changed dear ones, Zacchaeus’ heart.
But what of the hearts of many in the crowd observing this scene? Theirs are hearts full of judgment—And when they saw it they all complained. He has gone to be a guest with a man who is a sinner (v. 7).
And the lesson for us this morning, dear sisters and brothers? And over the next four Sundays? It is the lesson to descend down into our own hearts, to gaze into our heart and assess the possible hidden and secret things within us; the lesson to begin amending our ways by way of humility, contrition, and repentance. If we want to experience the joy and gladness, and wisdom, of which David speaks in his great psalm, such will be the result of the serious self-examination that these five Sundays before Lent call us to.
What do you think is most important about our relationship with God? I asked that young girl amongst us. And her answer: That we know that God loves us, and that we have pure hearts. F/S/HS.
