The Slow Way: Return to Your Realest Self
Jesus is down at the base of the things we’ve used to save ourselves, saying: “Come down from there and face the reality of who you are.”
Two weeks ago I took Ace to the endocrinologist. When you’re the parent of a kid with Down syndrome, you develop a long list of specialists. In fact, when we walked into this particular doctor’s office, he looked at Ace’s chart and remarked at the endocrinologist he had seen in San Francisco. I literally stared blankly. Absolutely no memory of that particular doctor in SF. I thought we were doing something new! This is the way things are. The specialists, the blood tests, the concerning levels of this or that, which often, thankfully, prove to be typical for kids with Down syndrome, just concerning for the rest of us.
On this particular visit, we were also talking about Ace’s growth. He is a tiny thing, a seven-year-old, who still wears size 4 clothing, and often gets mistaken for being much younger than he is. Our pediatrician had brought up the possibility of growth hormones, which this doctor promptly shrugged off. Not worth the risk, he said. Ace is tiny, even when we look at his growth alongside his peers who also have Down syndrome. In the DS Growth Chart, Ace still clocks-in in the fifth percentile. Which means he may never make it to five feet tall. And this is who he is, a small person. Uniquely, beautifully himself.
I’ve been thinking about that this week as I’ve been preparing for a sermon I’ll be giving next week at my church. It’s a sermon about Zacchaeus, the biblical character we sang about back in the 80s, when commenting on someone’s “wee” status was seen as cute and clever. “Zacchaeus was a wee little man and a wee little man was he,” we sang in Sunday school. Thankfully that song has gone the way of many of the Sunday school songs of my childhood. As I’ve come back to the story of the man named Zacchaeus, a tax collector hated by his community because he betrayed his people in order to fill his pockets, who climbed a tree to get a view of the itinerant preacher walking through his town, I think about that height thing. How small was Zacchaeus, and what did his height determine about the way he was valued or perceived in his community? Zacchaeus was a man who took up a small amount of space in a world that prefers to honor those (at least when it comes to men) who take up a lot of space.
There’s a kind of crushing that happens to those who find themselves on the margins of their communities, a flattening. Sometimes those who are rejected accept their fate and learn to live outside the community in a sort of marginalized life. Or they find ways to gather strength, to protect themselves with power. Maybe Zacchaeus did both. He was rejected by his community either before or after he took up his career of swindling his own people, bringing money into his own pocket and the pocket of the empire that oppressed them. He found a way to climb toward power, as Victor Westhelle explains in his article, “Exposing Zacchaeus.’ In the story of Zacchaeus in Luke 19, the word used for “short in stature” can also be translated “small in character.” Which came first? Was Zacchaeus rejected because of how his body presented to the world? Or did his smallness of character lead him to become the tax collector who swindled money and made enemies? Either way, he found ways to climb out of where society had placed him. He climbed political ladders, ladders of power. In Z’s case, he became a traitor to his people, took their money on behalf of the occupying Romans, and kept plenty for himself. And, in this story, he climbed more than a metaphorical ladder. He climbed a sycamore tree to get a view of the unapproved-by-the-religious-authorities freelance rabbi.
The story of what happens next is a whole sermon (one I’m still thinking through). Jesus, as per usual, comes into this town and does something unexpected. He starts by seeing Zacchaeus: The unworthy one, the scapegoat of the community. He sees the man who is small enough to hide, who has been trying his best to not be noticed behind a bunch of branches, perched above the community who has rejected him, and who he has betrayed. And then, Jesus does a very Jesus-y thing. Before even saying hi, he invites himself to Z’s house. Jesus chooses Zacchaeus, because Jesus sees him for what he is: Someone who has always been excluded, and now has built himself wealth on the back of that exclusion. You come down, Jesus says, not sweetly. I’m coming to your house, Jesus says, knowing that the Z’s house represents his wealth, a whole life of comfort based on his choice to distance himself from his own people. Zacchaeus has chosen to stand on the side of power for the sake of ease, and a false sense of selfhood. But Jesus is not having that. Not today.
Zaachaeus is not winning in this scenario. He is used by the oppressors and despised by his community. He belongs to no one. But Jesus’ invitation (or if you look closely at Jesus’ language, it’s more like a demand) is for him to return.
Westhelle gives Jesus these words: Zacchaeus, get down from there and face the reality of who you really are. Today I’ll enter your “luxurious and secured home just as you have invaded and plundered the poor houses of these people.” Ouch.
But somehow, this message is just what Zacchaeus needs to wake up, to see himself as he is, not simply as the bad guy his townspeople have made him out to be, but the really real of his own life: rejected, outcast, overcoming that exclusion with false ego and power. The rest of the story of Z that we find in Luke 19 is a story about transformation, not just one man’s transformation, but the transformation of a community he had done his best to crush.
John Chrysosotom, the Syrian saint of the 5th century, taught about how transformation begins within us. Westfelle summarizes Chrysosotom’s idea as, “allowing the other, the poor and stranger to become known, to have a voice, to have a face. Without exposure, there is not repentance, without repentance, no grace; without grace, no transformation.”
What Jesus did in calling Zacchaeus down from his high place in the tree, was allow him to stand side by side with his peers, those who had rejected him, those he had plundered, who in turn rejected him again — and around and around it had gone. Maybe the magic of that moment was the magic of all moments of vulnerability? When the walls we have constructed to protect ourselves begin to crumble, we see our pain for what it is, and the pain we have caused for what it is. The stranger inside us becomes known to us, and we see the truth of our own harm. “Without exposure, there is no repentance,” Chrysosotom taught. But repentance, the turning from the false protections we use to keep ourselves from our vulnerabilities, allows us to finally turn toward the truth inside us, which is sometimes ugly, but always redeemable. Because grace is there waiting in the turning.
Transformation is actually pretty simple: It’s the returning to the realest part of us — for Zacchaeus, before he was outcast, before he sought revenge, before he comforted himself with the wealth that truly belonged to others.
Grace is free. But it always demands our vulnerability. And that’s the story here. And the story for each of us.
This is the story of so many who have found wealth and power in our world. We feel small. So we climb sycamore trees. We climb ladders. We climb power structures.
And we can convince ourselves from way up there that we have somehow saved ourselves. But really, we’re dangling above what’s real. We’re unsafe, lonely, unknown to our people and to ourselves.
And Jesus is down at the base of the things we’ve used to save ourselves, saying: “Come down from there and face the reality of who you are.”
Which brings us back, once again, to Richard Rohr’s concept of the Really Real. Because underneath the things we use to prop ourselves up, to protect ourselves from our pain, to separate ourselves from those who have hurt us, what Stephanie Spellers calls, “the Dream of God” is still waiting. And within the Dream of God is the realest us deep down underneath the pose, the power, the wealth, the safety and comfort we’ve secured. It’s the Realest You that Jesus is always inviting you back to. But to come back it demands vulnerability, recognizing that you are small and still worthy. To come back is to forgive those you ran away from in the first place, and to forgive who you became to gain that power and separation.
We don’t know what happens to Zacchaeus after this story, but we know that salvation has come to his house. That house full of the wealth he had plundered from his neighbors which he says he’s planning to return. He is transformed by an act of self exposure, and we are transformed by the very same thing. When we’re brave enough to remove the pose, the ladder climbing, the hiding, and begin to show our self in all its weakness, frailty, and need. That’s when we become transformed people who bring transformation.
A Slow Practice
Let’s go back to Chrysosotom’s idea of transformation: Without exposure, there is no repentance, without repentance, no grace; without grace, no transformation.
Exposure of our failures, aches, and deepest longings? That’s the stuff hardest to discover. It hurts to do the work of digging through the parts of us that ache the most. And it’s rare to find other people in our lives who are willing to help reveal it. How many Jesuses come walking by and call us out of our trees?
Another word for exposure is uncovering. There is real work behind the daily or weekly practice of peeling back the noises, distractions, and explanations we use to explain away our hurtful patterns, whether those patterns are the ways we distance ourselves from those we’re in relationship with, or lie to ourselves or to God about the choices or thoughts we’d rather keep hidden. My pastor talks about how what we call “sin” is essentially falling short of love. That could be falling short of the opportunities to love our neighbor, or the opportunities to love those closest to us. It could be falling short of loving ourselves.
So how do we put ourselves in places where we can hear the longings of our souls? Where can we experience the clarity of our broken patterns of behavior?
Today I’d like for us to consider a few questions that the story of Zacchaeus helps reveal.
First, let’s take a deep breath together.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Imagine your town or city, and the main space where people gather in your community. Maybe you live in a place where there is a main road or a street where the neighborhood tends to cluster. Or maybe you’re in a city where people don’t gather outside at all. In that case, imagine a building where people might gather to encounter something special, a concert or sports event. Now imagine yourself there in that space, but unwelcome among the faces around you. You are not wanted here. You are separate from those around you.
Imagine a tree, or a platform in that space. When you feel the pangs of rejection you climb higher, above the people. How do you feel in that perch? What do you imagine Zacchaeus felt?
When Zacchaeus faced that particular kind of suffering, he chose to do three things: He abused the power he was able to grasp. He climbed. He hid. I wonder if you’ll consider how those three ways of falling short of love might translate into your own life.
First, what power do you have right now? In what ways are you using that power for love? In what ways might you be abusing that power, keeping it for yourself, or refusing to do the work to share it?
Second, in what ways are you climbing ladders of success? Climbing doesn't need to be negative, but it is important to be honest with ourselves about our motives behind the ways we’re hustling, pursuing our work, or attempting growth. Are you climbing the ladders in your life to prove our own value to yourself or to anyone else? Are you hustling so you can avoid the ache that comes with stillness within or ignore the hurt in your own life?
And third, how are you hiding? Imagine that Jesus finds you perched in your tree, attempting to remain anonymous. He says to you, “Friend, why are you hiding?” What is your answer? What would rather not expose to him or to yourself? And what would happen if you say what that thing is out loud right now in the presence of Jesus? This is what I’m hiding. This is what I’m afraid of. This is what I need.
It might just be that Jesus will invite himself over. And when he does, he’ll call you right back to the Really Real of your own life. The truest parts of you, beyond the power you have grasped for, beyond the ladders you have climbed, beyond the parts you have hidden, even to yourself. Jesus is coming to your home, and inviting you to come home too.
Spend some time in quiet reflection.
A List of Things
BIG FUN NEWS!!! This will be our last “List of Things” as part of the The Slow Way Newsletter. I am starting a new, twice-a-month paid-subscriber newsletter called “The Slow Seven,” where I will be expanding my list of things into a longer, more light-hearted list of seven things I’m reading, thinking about, listening to, and generally delighting in. The Slow Way Newsletter will remain available for FREE, and will continue to drop in your inbox every Saturday morning. But The Slow Seven will be a space where I can share some of my sillier thoughts (and dance moves!), tell you more details about my writing process as I work on my new book project, and where I hope we can build a more discussion-driven community. This is also a way you can support my work, particularly if my newsletter or podcast has been important to you. Please don’t feel any pressure! I know becoming a paid subscriber is not for everyone. You are welcome here, however you’re able to come to The Slow Way. If you want more information on how to become a subscriber of The Slow Seven, click here.
MORE FUN NEWS! This past week I signed a contract with Brazos Press to publish my next book! Those of you who have been following along for a while know that this has been a long road to get to this moment, and I’m beyond thrilled to be working with a publisher that is putting beautiful important books into the world. So many of you readers have shared my work, written reviews of the podcast, and generally cheered me on as I worked toward this moment in my career. Thank you for supporting me and reading faithfully. I’m grateful for all of you.
T-Swift’s new album is out, you guys! I listened all day yesterday and I’m generally cheering her on always. Really enjoyed this deep dive on Sam Sander’s new podcast Into It about Taylor’s career and what makes her work significant.
Also, I would be remiss to not mention the Arctic Monkey’s new album that dropped yesterday as well. They are on constant rotation in our house, beloved by all three of my boys. And there was great delight in the offering of The Car. I love that being a parent has helped me discover new music.