Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time
Luke 19:1-10
Rev. Rona Kinsley

The Strength to Bless

What does the word “blessing” mean to you? Do you ever use the word “bless” or its variants when you talk about your life? Do you sometimes say “That was a real blessing,” or “I feel so blessed”? The thesaurus gives as synonyms for blessing: grace, approval, favor, kindness, bounty, gift, benefit. We use the term “benediction” for the blessing that closes worship, a Latin word that literally means to speak, or command, goodness— to bring wellness into being through the power of our words. Even when something bad happens, if it eventually leads to something good, we may call it “a blessing in disguise.”

“Blessing” carries a sense of being gifted by goodness. But there’s a special quality to our awareness of blessing that makes it more than just an appreciation for the good things in our lives. This is because the concept of blessing relates not just to the gift but also to the giver. When we recognize that we are blessed, rather than just fortunate, or deserving through our own efforts, we acknowledge that there is an outside source for the good things that we have been given. The nature of that outside source becomes clear when we look at the synonyms for the verb form “to bless.”

To bless, to be on the active end of blessing, according to Roget, means to consecrate, sanctify, hallow, ordain, exalt, glorify. Now, the synonyms that I gave before for “blessing” are part of everyday, secular language— words that we might hear anywhere. But I would guess that there’s only one place where we are likely to hear words like “consecrate” and “sanctify” on a regular basis. Where would that be? You guessed it. We’re in it.

We hear these words in church, because the power to bless is God’s power. When we say that we are blessed, we acknowledge that God is the source of the goodness in our lives. We also acknowledge that we are often blessed in spite of ourselves, rather than because of ourselves— that blessing is about God’s gracious giving rather than our just deserving. And even when blessing comes through another person, it is God’s hand we see at work in the other’s giving to us.

Our gospel reading for today gives us a powerful example of how life-changing it can be to experience God’s blessing. To understand just how, and how much, Jesus blesses Zacchaeus, we have to understand what it meant to be a tax collector in first century Judea. Remember that the land where Jesus and his people lived was occupied by the Romans. It took a lot of money to keep the Roman Empire and its huge military going— money Rome raised by taxing the people it conquered. These taxes were so heavily burdensome that they often left the local people destitute or deeply in debt to moneylenders and tax collectors.

Contracts to collect taxes were given to wealthy foreigners who hired local people, like Zacchaeus, to do the actual collecting. The tax collectors were personally responsible for paying the taxes to the government, but, in turn, they were free to collect extra taxes to make a profit for themselves. You can imagine the opportunities this created for theft, fraud, and corruption.

The tax collectors were a lot like modern-day bill collectors who go after people who can’t keep up with their debts. And the struggling poor in the Roman Empire didn’t like the tax collectors any more than we like bill collectors. But the tax collectors were especially hated among the Jews, because they worked for, and had contact with, the Romans. Working for the oppressors made Zacchaeus a collaborator, while his contact with Gentiles made him ritually unclean, someone with whom no good Jew should associate. Tax collectors and sinners were often mentioned in the same breath as completely undesirable types.

So, here we have Jesus, who is passing through the town of Jericho, surrounded by the usual crowd. And here we have the completely undesirable Zacchaeus, standing at the edge of the crowd trying to see who this is— who is important enough to draw all these people. But Zacchaeus is short, and he can’t see through the crowd— a crowd that has, in all likelihood, drawn closer together to keep him out. So he runs ahead and climbs up into a tree.

Now, Zacchaeus isn’t expecting anything, he hasn’t asked for anything, he just wants to see what all the fuss is about. And then, Zap!, he gets blessed. Jesus looks right at him, sitting there in the tree, and tells him to get down and get a move on, because he’s going to stay at his house today. Well! The crowd doesn’t like this at all. This man is a sinner! What is Jesus doing, going to his house?

What Jesus is doing, and Zacchaeus knows it, is blessing him. He’s blessing him with acceptance, he’s blessing him with the opportunity to seek forgiveness, and he’s blessing him with the chance to change his life. As one commentator so beautifully expresses it: The whole impact of the gospel was in that meeting. It redeemed the past, transformed the present, and redirected the future. Zacchaeus emerges from his encounter with Jesus a changed man, a man who pledges to give half his possessions to the poor and to repay anyone he has defrauded four times as much.

In a couple of recent sermons, I have been sharing some ideas from the book Deeply Woven Roots: Improving the Quality of Life in Your Community. It’s author, Gary Gunderson, includes the “strength to bless” as one of the assets of congregations for building healthy communities. While Zacchaeus experienced God’s blessing directly through his encounter with Jesus, Gunderson believes that blessing usually comes to us through one another— it comes from one human to another in the name of all that lasts, in song, prayer, silence, word, touch, presence. . . The power to bless exists between people when they gather at the intersection of human and holy. When Jesus blessed Zacchaeus, in a daring and yet poignant intersection of human and holy, he redeemed Zacchaeus’ past, transformed his present, and redirected his future.

Many of us come to a church looking for just such a blessing. We look for a blessing that will redeem our past. We may carry deep wounds from childhood or from broken adult relationships. Maybe we don’t feel as though we’ve been much of a success in life. Maybe we’ve been a success, as the world sees it, but we’re aware that we hurt others, and ourselves, in getting there. Maybe we’ve been isolated, or even shunned, because of a disability, or a disease, or some other form of “difference.” We need to experience, not only in words but in actions, that God welcomes us and loves us, just as we are.

The congregation has the strength to bless us, and to take part in redeeming our past, when members welcome us and love us, no matter who we are or where we’ve been. It blesses us when it shows us that God wants us here, and when it refuses to judge us or to value one of us less than another. And it blesses us when its members are honest, about their own past and current struggles. As Gunderson notes, It is hard to accept a blessing from people who are, on the surface at least, too pure to need one of their own. We need a place where the full complexity of our lives is welcome, forgiven, hoped for, included, blessed. It is a particular strength of congregations— some of them anyway— to do that.

We also come to church seeking a blessing that will transform our present. A congregation blesses us and transforms the present through its willingness to walk with us when we are hurting, to accompany us through our pain and our brokenness. It transforms the present when it gives visible witness to the hope and healing that God offers to each and every one of us. The idea of a hopeful, loving universe floats in abstraction, Gunderson tells us, until we experience it as a blessing, mediated in the community of other people. Hope is the virtue, but the experience, the modality, is blessing, saying “yes” to what is and might be. . .

Finally, we come to church hoping for a blessing that will redirect the future. When we have been accepted, welcomed, loved, and appreciated by a congregation, when we have been accompanied in our struggles, when we have heard the good news of God’s power to make us new and seen this power demonstrated in the lives of those around us, then we can begin to imagine and work toward a different and better tomorrow, not only for ourselves, but for all of God’s creation. The power to bless, Gunderson writes, helps make it possible to move into the unknowable future, rather than settling back into the past.

Zacchaeus experienced the “whole impact of the gospel” in his encounter with Jesus. We too can experience this impact— redeeming our past, transforming our present, and redirecting the future — through the strength that we have, in this congregation, to give and to receive blessing, in song, prayer, silence, word, touch, presence. May God bless us, and may we bless one another.

Amen.