What is the scariest part of Halloween? (31st Sunday)

Yesterday was my first ever “Trunk or Treat.” It was an enjoyable evening. Kudos to Meg Pfeifer for being the only one to figure out my costume without help. I had a badge that said: “Bless you” and then a fake mustache and sunglasses. When you put it all together, I obviously was: “A Blessing in disguise.”
For several years now, I have intentionally worn ‘costumes’ like that, because I discovered, after 10 years of doing Haunted Garages at the Newman center, how ‘easy’ it was to enter into those scary roles on Halloween. Put on a mask or some face paint; add a costume, a prop or two, and the normally meek and mild mannered Father Bill became a zombie or werewolf or whatever par excellence. The scariest part of Halloween is how easily we can become things that we are not. How easily we can become what we are not.

Zacchaeus certainly knew that truth in his life. We’re told that he is a tax collector and a wealthy man. We’re not told, but it is implied, that he was pretty hated by so many – because of the shock of the people in reaction to Jesus’ invitation to come to his house. But it was not how he started out. Like so many, he found a job with the occupiers, because it was a living, a way to put bread on the table. It didn’t take long, however, to start to enjoy that slightly better standard of living than his peers. And good wines. And a fine house. Hated by his peers, he becomes more and more insulated, more and more withdrawn from those normal relationships that keep a person balanced and centered. Layer upon layer of ‘costumes’ covered Zacchaeus, and soon, he could hardly recognize the man in the mirror. He had become the role he put on – that of a wealthy, hated tax collector.

But you sense it is not his truest and best self. Because it doesn’t take much for that to all crumble. Just the word that Jesus was coming to town was enough to make him lay aside all his dignity and climb a tree for just a glimpse of this man. How undignified. How utterly unlike a ‘wealthy’ tax collector! “Come down, for I must dine in your house this day.” That invitation, by love itself, is enough for all the masks and walls and pretending to completely collapse. “If I have defrauded, I’ll pay back 4 times over. Half of what I own, I will give to the poor – I don’t need it. It’s all a part of that sham life that I have hated for so long anyway… I don’t want to live like that anymore.” What a change in him when he meets love itself.

There is a large part of me that hopes, regardless of the outcome of this current election, that once it is done, we, as a nation, will spend some time looking at the whole process. And evaluating the endless months of campaigning, the name calling and the tons of money that we throw toward the media, we say – this is NOT who we are. This is not our best selves as a nation. And it is time for us to change, to let go of all that is not our best and our brightest hopes for our country and our world…

Do you know that experience – of becoming so easily what you are not? In my own life, I experience the ‘costume’/the temptation of wanting to be the ‘liked’ new pastor. To do things that make me popular instead of the leader I am called to be. Our scriptures invite us to let go of the masks and costumes and images of our selves that is anything less than what God wants of us to be. For that same Lord that told Zacchaeus: “I must dine at your house today” also wants to dine with us this day. And he bids us leave behind the costumes and masks and walls that we erect to protect ourselves. Leave behind those roles you have stepped into – perhaps as a protection, or perhaps intentionally as a way to ‘define yourself’ – and let the one who loved Zacchaeus back into life also love you into life.

Because the scariest part of Halloween (and perhaps all our days) is how easily we can become what we are not. Which is why we NEED to return, Sunday after Sunday to this altar. Because it is here that we always learn who we are and whose we are – people who are loved and valued by God and people who are called to be fully who God created us to be…


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