More
than one astronaut has talked about their surprise at going up into space, all
excited about going to space, to explore radically new things, dreaming of investigating
moons, planets, stars, and then being suddenly taken aback by their view of
something that they thought was familiar: earth. NASA astronaut Ron Garan calls
this the “orbital perspective.” He described his sudden awareness that “we’re
all travelling together on this planet and, if we looked at it from this perspective,
we’d see that nothing is impossible.”
The book
of Wisdom speaks of God having a similar perspective. In fact, God sees the
whole cosmos as a speck of grain or a drop of water. And that shouldn’t lead us
to think of God as distant. No, God sees cares about every sparrow, every hair
on every head. But God has that orbital perspective. And Wisdom tells us that
that means that God overlooks sins.
It might
strike us as odd to think about God overlooking anything. And, because God is
God, it’s not the kind of negligent overlooking like if we overlook taking the
recycling out, or turning a light off, or something more serious, like reaching
out to a friend. And it’s certainly not an overlooking of deliberating
indifference, as if God doesn’t care about sin, doesn’t care about evil, about
us harming one another, harming ourselves in our lack of holiness. No, God
cares deeply. But Wisdom still says, God overlooks sins; God overlooks sins for
the sake of repentance.
I think
Ron Garan’s insight that when you see from an orbital perspective, you see what
connects us, and you see all things as possible, names something profound about
how God sees. God overlooks our sins in a very literal sense – God looks over
them; God looks over them and sees us, sees us as we really are, not obscured
and sullied and dirtied by a stinking mound of sin. God sees what connects us,
God sees the flame of our likeness to Him that, while dimmed and defiled, can never
be extinguished. And God sees all things as possible. “Who can be saved?” the
disciples once asked Jesus, who replied: “For humans, it is impossible; but for
God, all things are possible.” God looks over our sins, sees our likeness to
Him, and sees how we can be truly made holy. It’s not that God doesn’t care
about sin, that He’s not deeply grieved by sin, but he delights in looking over
it, in looking at us. And that’s how He’s going to get us out of it.
We see
Jesus doing that with Zacchaeus. Jesus doesn’t just see this feared bogey man
of a tax collector; he looks over that, and sees someone who can be just,
someone who can be hospitable. And Jesus knew exactly what he was looking over.
But that wasn’t what fascinated him; Zacchaeus was. We often get kind of
fascinated trying to work out just what kind of a man Zacchaeus was. Some
people want to see a great conversion in him at this moment, and if that’s true,
that’s wonderful. And it would show us how powerful a change can occur in
someone when they’re truly seen, when someone looks over their sin and sees and
loves them.
But we don’t
actually know that that is what happened. Neither Luke nor Jesus nor Zacchaeus
ever say that Zacchaeus has extorted anyone. When Zacchaeus says that he’ll give
half his possessions to the poor, is this a new commitment, or merely a statement
of what he already did but only now makes public? When he says that, if
he’s extorted any one, he’ll pay back four times as much, is that a cheap
promise because he knows that he’s kept on making the costly decision to not
extort?
A change
does occur in someone either way though. Either it’s Zacchaeus’ big conversion,
which is how this story is usually read, or this is the moment in which
Zacchaeus finally reveals his charitable practices to the people who fear him.
When Joshua, centuries earlier, had come to Jericho, the walls had come tumbling
down. Maybe when Jesus came to visit, it was the prejudices of the city’s
inhabitants that were they walls that came tumbling down. Maybe the inhabitants
learn to look over their fears and prejudices and see Zacchaeus as he truly is.
Either
way, Zacchaeus does his own ‘looking over.’ His is the most literal of anyone’s.
He climbs up a tree to look over the crowd so that he can see Jesus. He throws
caution and propriety to the wind, and climbs a tree so as he can see Jesus.
Friends, that’s what we’re all invited to do. However silly it may seem, we’re
called to look over all that keeps us separate, all the fear, the suspicion,
even the well-grounded knowledge of another’s sin. Because we’re all travelling
on this earth together, and anything is possible. And when we look over another’s
sin, and look for the true them staring back, the eyes we see are Christ’s.
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