Reparations

Reflections on the Lectionary for October 30th

Note: This week I am writing on Proper 26, not the texts for All Saints Day.

In the first chapter of Isaiah, the prophet, speaking for God, addresses the rulers of Sodom and Gomorrah. Not literally; Sodom and Gomorrah were in ruins by this time, if they had ever existed in physical form at all. (Some see the cities as a literary device, not meant to describe an actual city). No, Isaiah was speaking to the rulers of Judah, but he was calling them rulers of Sodom and Gomorrah, and thereby comparing them. He did not mean this as a compliment.

If Sodom and Gomorrah link to anything in our brains today, it’s probably sexual immorality, and more likely, it’s homosexuality. But that’s because we have been subjected to a sustained campaign of what I might call (speaking theologically) BS—we have been told, over and over and over again, that the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is a story about homosexual desire. This is a bad and very wrong interpretation, not supported by the text of Genesis itself, and not supported at all by later traditions of interpretation. Take a look at this passage from Isaiah, 1:10-18, for example: of what are Sodom and Gomorrah guilty? There is not even the slightest hint of homosexuality, or heterosexuality, for that matter, or any other kind of sexuality. Sexuality is not in view at all; it has nothing to do with the story of Sodom and Gomorrah as Isaiah understands it. Instead, Isaiah understands the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah, rightly, as sins of injustice. Sodom and Gomorrah were guilty of privileging religious pomp and ritual while neglecting people, especially the outcast and downtrodden. This passage is very clear that the problem in Sodom and Gomorrah was a thin and false religiosity that shrouded neglectful and exploitative social practices. The problem was inhospitality, which Isaiah is expanding to encompass a wider range of injustices related to society: care for orphans, widows, and the oppressed. Unless we want to claim that Isaiah (and, depending on your theology of prophecy, God) got the interpretation of Genesis wrong, this has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with the ethics of being a religious person in an unequal society.

Habbakuk has the same concerns. In the (very scattered) selections from chapters 1 and 2, the lectionary lifts out parts of the text that assail the wicked for their injustice against the righteous. The selection cuts off in 2:4, just before Habbakuk makes it clear what exactly is standing between the people and justice: “Wealth is treacherous,” 2:5 says, and “the arrogant do not endure.” Some ancient manuscripts have a different reading: “Wine is treacherous.” That textual variant, though, isn’t suggesting anything about the dangers of drunkenness, I don’t think. Instead, I think, it’s underscoring that the problem is the accumulation of luxury by some people in the face of scarcity for others. Habbakuk has the same basic critique of Isaiah. The people have forgotten the call to of God to justice, and the prophet’s role is to call them back to it. All the religiosity in the world won’t cover over our failures to do justice by each other.

In Luke 19:1-10, the problem is distilled down from a societal problem (as it is presented in Isaiah and Habakkuk) into the story of one particular man: Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus is most well known for being short; maybe as a child you sang that “Zacchaeus was a wee little man” song. But the story only mentions his stature as a plot point. The bigger issue is that Zacchaeus is a tax collector, and he embodies all that Isaiah and Habbakuk have opposed. As an agent of the government and its tax structure, he’s a living example of the social inequality that the prophets were always railing against. His position between the empire and the people let him become wealthy by taking a cut of the extortion, and had become rich. Jesus invites himself over to Zacchaeus’ house.

It’s interesting that in this passage there isn’t a direct reckoning or confrontation over Zacchaeus’ wealth. Jesus doesn’t ask him about it; he simply invites himself in. But Zacchaeus gives a twofold pledge, in response to Jesus’ actions and to the disgruntlement of the crowd. First, he pledges to give away half his wealth, and second, he offers to pay back any fraud he has committed fourfold.

The second action is simpler, I think. Zacchaeus is a little bit defensive, and he’s placing a bet that he has played within the rules of the society. As a tax collector, he has not defrauded anyone. He has not abused his role to cheat them, Zacchaeus is saying. If it turns out that he had done something wrong, he was prepared to make it right.

But the first action is more complicated and more radical. The “if” of verse 8 separates the question of fraud from everything else; in the beginning of that verse, Zacchaeus is not yet speaking of fraud. He’s simply speaking about the wealth he had accumulated through the lawful exercise of his position. As a tax collector, he was entitled to a cut of the revenue, and he had amassed money as a result. In the first half of verse 8, Zacchaeus is pledging to give away half of it, not because it was obtained illegally, but because it was obtained legally but immorally. This is a nuanced point, tucked away in this story: confronted with Jesus, Zacchaeus realizes that by participating in an unethical system, he had obtained wealth but acted wrongly. Legal and right are not always the same thing; it’s possible to do something that’s very wrong but perfectly legal. Zacchaeus, in that moment, realizes that he has committed just these kinds of acts. His participation in an unjust system has led to legal—but unjust—consequences.

The solution comes to him immediately, in the story: reparations. The money in his bank account shouldn’t be his, and should never have come to him in the first place. So he vows to give it away. This is a radical and explosive admission, because it implies that others who are involved in the same system—other tax collectors, administrators, clerks, and the Roman Empire itself and all its collaborators—are similarly engaged in unethical behavior. It’s like when billionaires recognize the grotesquery of their wealth and begin to offload it, or when a corporation begins to understand that it cannot be guided by profit alone. Zacchaeus realizes in that moment that nothing short of reparations will make things right. He cannot simply withdraw from the system and keep his unethical wealth, and he cannot simply keep working within it and try to take less money. He has to withdraw from it and divest himself of his dirty money.

This isn’t far from what the prophets (like Isaiah and Habbakuk) want. They aren’t suggesting piecemeal adjustments to the way society is structured; they are calling for a whole new way of being a people together. Isaiah seems to be suggesting that religion has been functioning as a guilt assuagement machine, allowing people to bring offerings and light incense and make sacrifices and attend assemblies. Religion was working like an ethical money laundering operation. It still does, giving us a way to appear to be doing something to change the world while not addressing structural inequalities.

Zacchaeus offers us another way. Faced with Jesus, he realized straightaway that the only option was to give it away. He couldn’t just double down on religion and keep extorting people as a tax collector; he needed a radical break with the system. The same is true for us today, and for the entrenched systems of inequality that dominate our world. I’m not especially hopeful (even for myself) that we could have the insight and bravery of Zacchaeus, but he nevertheless represents a clarity that we should aspire to, and an action that we can all begin to take: to begin extricating ourselves from the forms of oppression we tolerate and authorize, and to begin to make things right.