Heart and Home

A good story can fool you; it can take you where courage would not.  A good storyteller knows your heart, and knows how to get in.  But the really good storyteller knows how to take you by the hand and walk you through your own heart.  This story of Zeke in the last two postings is our own story, and the house Jesus is entering is not merely our house, messy as it is, but our own heart. 

As soon as Jesus tells Zacchaeus he is coming over, Z starts to clean up.  He’ll give to the poor half of all he has.  His home and heart are crowded with stuff that he thought would make him happy, perhaps.  He needs to make room for this Rock Star who knows his name, and apparently knows his heart, knows that if there’s to be room for him, Z’s got some cleaning out to do
.  I smile to read Z’s noble 2^nd pledge: “If I’ve extorted anyone, I’ll pay it back four times.”  It sounds to me like he’s coming clean before Jesus even has to charge him.  Like I said two posts ago, Zeke is clever.  There’s no flies on him.  He knows what he’s gotta do.

But it seems to me that Zeke’s pledges come from more than cleverness.  I’ve mentioned that I meet on Tuesday mornings with a small group of men, all husbands and fathers, to read the following Sunday’s Gospel and share conversation about it.  Dave is one of the guys, humble, quiet, and deep.  I was struck by his question regarding Zacchaeus’ motivation for climbing that tree:  “What sparked him to go out there and get a look at this Jesus guy going by?” 

As I have begin these cool autumn mornings by lighting a fire in our wood stove, using the gifts of our forests to warm our house before I need to turn on the furnace, that word, spark, really struck me.  Lighting a fire is easy or difficult or impossible.  Lighting a fire takes materials that are ready to burn.  A match is most eager, made for that purpose.  We use it to light paper, which is thin and light and gives in to the flame easily.  The paper makes more heat than the match had, perhaps enough to heat the little scraps of wood, the kindling, enough of it to ignite.  And finally, if we’re to be successful, the kindling needs to catch fire enough to warm the logs so that they can begin to burn.

But I’ve discovered that not all logs are ready to burn.  Freshly cut wood is still full of the moisture that gave it its first life.  You might say it’s full of itself.  Firewood needs to be “seasoned”, to dry out, emptied of its old sap.  It is as if it needs to prepare for its next life, making not cooling shade but warming light.  It is as if wood needs to be ready for the next phase of its life.  It must yearn to burn.

So Dave’s use of the word spark was one I wanted to, well, catch.  What was it about Zacchaeus that yearned to burn?  To be ignited as he was, what was the ache in him that knew his first life was not enough, that there was more?  Xavier le Pichon said that when we invite someone into our heart, we become human.  He says that when we welcome into our hearts someone who is fragile, we discover that our lives need to be rearranged around this person.  And he says that we find our humanity, and we find true happiness and joy.  When our friend Max Brill was dying at home, his wife Mary ordered a hospital bed and moved all of the furniture in the living room to the sides so the bed could be right by the window, so Max could look out.   The bed would be just inside the entrance to the house, and the bed would be clearly visible from the big front window.  About this same time, there was a big hoohah about feng shue, an Eastern sense of arranging furnishings.   But Mary, like Zeke, knew what had to go, and what belonged in the center of things. 

So Zeke was more than a Tax Collector after all.  Zeke was tinder-dry, ready for the spark that Jesus was.  This story of Zacchaeus is not the story of a villain who takes people’s money, of a fool who climbs a tree.  It is not the story of Jesus coming to his house.  It is the story of Jesus taking us by the hand and walking us through our own hearts.  

What do we need to move so another heart can enter our hearts?  What do we need to remove so another heart can live there?