VIEW THE SUNDAY, JANUARY 27, 2019 BULLETIN
RECEIVE WHATEVER YOUR HEART DESIRES |
| Psychologists tell us today that one of the most troublesome parts of the human person and behavior is the appetitive function of the brain. This is the function of desire, alternatively identified as craving, longing, wanting. In their book The Psychology of Desire (2016), psychiatrists Wilhelm Hoffman and Loran Nordgren summarize the dilemma: “Desire can overpower us, making a mockery of our efforts at self-discipline, inhibiting our focus on goals and purpose, and making it difficult to be faithful. And yet, it also can make us soar, inspiring creativity and even heroism.” Unlike other aspects of our person such as intelligence, conscience, or intuition, our function of desire, once it is satisfied, creates further desires. For example, it is the appetitive function which is at the heart of most addictions – that craving and unbridled want. Desire can be a powerful thing, for good or ill. Its objects can be food, power, sexual pleasure, control, material possessions, love, and a host of other things that we crave. This Sunday we celebrate the first preparatory Sunday before Great Lent – the Sunday of Zacchaeus. It is a story about desire as the first step towards personal transformation (metanoia), about our deep longing for the healing Christ can bring, and about the unseen human yearning for God. It is, in the end, about the truth so wonderfully expressed by St. Augustine in his Confessions: “Thou has made us for Thyself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.” This is the truth of our faith. Zacchaeus was chief tax collector for the Romans in Jericho, Not paid by the government, he took his earnings directly by skimming from the taxes paid to the Romans by his fellow Jews. The wealthy knew his game. It was the poor whom he bilked and from whom he took the most. He robbed his fellow Jews and was in collusion with an occupying power. He was therefore despised by both groups, to the point that he was afraid to walk among the crowds in the streets. Perhaps all the images and memories of the injustices he had enacted for a long period of time had finally come to torment and torture him. Maybe he was looking for some relief, some way to expiate his sins, some way to be free of this self-imposed burden of conscience – a way to rid himself of shame. What does St. Luke tell us he does? “He desired to see who Jesus was, but could not on account of the crowd because he was small of stature. So he ran on ahead and climbed up a sycamore tree to see Him…” (Luke 19:3-4) He desired. Fr. Alexander Schmemann, the eminent 20th century Russian theologian, writes about the dynamic of Zacchaeus: “Man follows his desire. One can even say that man is desire, and this fundamental psychological truth about human nature is acknowledged by the Gospel. A strong desire overcomes the natural limitations of Zacchaeus and he attempts to do something of which he thought he was incapable – he climbs a tree. He begins to overcome and transcend himself.” We don’t know the exact thinking process that Zacchaeus went through, but we do know that he desired to see and encounter Jesus. He had never met him or seen him, but he yearned to do so. In this moment, Zacchaeus illustrates what Archimandrite Leonidas (Contos) would express when he wrote: “A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire.” Zacchaeus’ first steps towards God and his own conversion originated from the truth that the yearning for God is inherent in the human heart. Behind all the hungers of our life there is God. All desire is finally a desire for Him. Jesus responds to Zacchaeus’ great desire by being the first to initiate the conversation: “Come down, immediately, Zacchaeus, today I must enter your house.” Ignoring the objections of the Jews who took umbrage that Jesus was eating with a known sinner, he entered the house. It was an expression of mercy. As Zacchaeus acknowledged even a weak glimmer of desire for God, so Jesus revealed His mercy, received his honest admission of wrong doing, and pronounced the blessing: “Today salvation has come to this house…for the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:10) He showed his desire and God responded. As His Holiness Patriarch +DANIEL of Romania preached regarding this passage: “We see in this Gospel passage how God changes the human heart, not so much through punishments, disease, trouble or reproach, as especially through overwhelming kindness shown to the sinful one often unexpectedly and undeservedly. God’s mercy and kindness are often shown to great sinners, not only to convert them, to change them, but also to urge other people that they too should become more merciful.” What are the lessons of Zacchaeus for us? The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God, God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will we find the truth and happiness we never stop searching for. The first step in our Orthodox spiritual growth is desire. Of all the things we crave and desire, do we find God is the first? The spiritual writer and preacher John Stephen Piper notes: “If you don’t feel strong desires for God, it is not because you have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because you have nibbled so long at the table of the world. Your soul is stuffed with small things and there is no room for the great. God did not create you for this.” (A Hunger for God) Like Zacchaeus, we must take honest stock of our hearts and souls to discover or create a desire for God. Without it we won’t seek Him. If we don’t seek Him, we will not find Him. If we don’t find Him – we are truly, sadly, lost. Why settle for the nibbles of the world’s table when you can have the Bread of Life and the cup of Eternal Salvation? Desire is the first step. Desiring God will mean changing our lives. When Jesus invited Zacchaeus to come down from the sycamore tree and entered his house, Zacchaeus vowed to change his life, to give up his unjust and abusive behavior, to adopt a new way of living characterized by selflessness, generosity, and concern. This means that desire for God leads to repentance. In encountering Jesus, Zacchaeus saw himself in contrast to pure goodness and the contrast jolted him to metanoia – a deep change of his heart and life, not simply a set of shallow good intentions or empty promises. St. Augustine speaks of this in his own life: “You called and cried aloud and shattered my darkness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant and I drew I my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me….and I am on fire to attain you.” (Confessions) Can you say that you truly desire God in your life? That you long to see and encounter Him every day? That you have a sense that you cannot live right or fully without Him? When you contrast yourself with Christ, what do you see? Is it enough to move you to change your heart, your life, your words, and your lifestyle? Has your experience been a Zacchaeus moment and, like him, you yearn to feel something besides fear, guilt, shame, and confusion? Come down then! Get out of the tree of self-punishment, ego and self-centeredness! Look Jesus in the eyes and see the merciful face of God. Let salvation come to YOUR house! Your faithful servant, Fr. Dimitrios |