Illuminations on the Lectionary readings for Oct. 30, 2022 (Pentecost 21C)

First Reading (Track One): Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4

“O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen?” The mournful cry of the prophet Habakkuk will turn to hope battling despair, an idea that we will hear reflected in various ways during Sunday’s Lectionary readings.

Zacchaeus in the Sycamore Awaiting the Passage of Jesus (Zachée sur le sycomore attendant le passage de Jésus, 1886-1896). Opaque watercolor over graphite on gray paper by James Tissot (1836-1902). Brooklyn Museum, New York. (Click image to enlarge.)

We only rarely hear from Habakkuk, a minor prophet who lived nearly 700 years before Jesus and, like many of the prophets, warned of the destruction and exile of Jerusalem. But this is a prophet with a difference. Unlike most of the prophets who deliver messages given them by God, Habbakuk shouts his own warnings. Then, in this Track One first reading, the prophet complains that even God doesn’t seem to be paying attention to him. But God does respond, directing Habakkuk to write his vision down so clearly that a runner can read it while racing past: “There is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay.”

First Reading (Track Two): Isaiah 1:10-18

The book of Isaiah, one of the Hebrew Bible’s greatest prophets, gets off to a fiery start. Its first five chapters are filled with God’s angry words of wrath before we even get to God’s call to the prophet. First we must clearly hear God’s anger over the people’s failure to keep the covenant that their ancestors made through Moses at Mount Sinai. In Sunday’s Track Two first reading, God likens Israel to Sodom and Gomorrah, whose people were so vile that God hates them and their works. Nevertheless, as always is the case, there is a way to restore God’s love, and it goes back to the covenant between God and the people at Mount Sinai: “Cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, and plead for the widow.”

Psalm (Track One): Psalm 119:137-144

Psalm 119 turns up fairly often in the weekly Lectionary. We read portions of this, the longest of all the psalms, a dozen times through the three-year lectionary cycle. Fun fact: Each of its sections begins with a different Hebrew letter, in order. Throughout its 176 verses, it offers a loving celebration of God’s Torah: Teaching, with the force of law. Each of the psalm’s sections brings its own message, though, and this segment fits well with Habakkuk’s prophecy: When indignation consumes us, when trouble and distress come on the people, God’s commandments are our delight.

Psalm (Track Two): Psalm 32:1-8

This psalm brings balm in the aftermath of a first reading that portrayed a God too angry to hear the people’s prayers or sacrifices, too outdone to give them even the least attention. This opening portion of Psalm 32 sings of the joy that comes when the separation from God that results from sin is ended, replaced with the utter delight of knowing God’s forgiveness. No longer groaning with pain that feels like withered bones, the repentant sinner is now guarded against trouble and surrounded with shouts of deliverance.

Second Reading: 2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12

The people of Thessalonika in northern Greece must have been suffering and afraid when this letter was sent to their Christian community around the end of the first century. The Apostle Paul was long dead at that point, but the letter’s kind words, written in the first person as if they had come from Paul and his companions Silvanus and Timothy, must have brought them some comfort: “We ourselves boast of you among the churches of God for your steadfastness and faith during all your persecutions and the afflictions that you are enduring.”

Gospel: Luke 19:1-10

Luke’s Gospel frequently introduces us to tax collectors, members of the Jewish community who, traitorously in the eyes of many, sold their services to the despised Roman occupiers and often used this position to enrich themselves. Last week we heard Jesus praise a tax collector for his humble prayer. Now we meet another tax collector – indeed, the wealthy chief tax collector, Zacchaeus – who was so eager to see Jesus that, being of short stature, he climbed a tree to see this rabbi better as he passed through Jericho. Jesus called out to Zacchaeus, invited himself to dinner at the tax collector’s home. Most of the crowd grumbled angrily about this, but Jesus went ahead, and soon joyfully heard Zacchaeus promise to give half his possessions to the poor and recompense fourfold those whom he had defrauded.