Two
Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday November 2, 2025
Scripture: Luke 19:1-10
Has anyone here ever heard the term “rage-baiting”? This is a concept in social media, a place where
the number of views that a post gets, the number of comments, the number of
reactions, is directly related to success.
The more views, the more reactions, the more comments, positive or
negative, that a post gets, the more likely the Instagram or Facebook or
YouTube or TikTok algorithm is to show it to other people.
And as a result, some people will post a rage-bait video or picture, whose sole
purpose it to get people upset and clicking the thumbs-down reaction, or
posting a comment to point out what is wrong.
An example of this might be a map with an obvious error that might be a
typo but is more likely there to get people to correct it in the comments. It might be as innocuous as watching a short
cooking video and the chef says to add a teaspoon of baking powder but you can
clearly see them holding a box of baking soda.
Or it might be as dangerous as posting a controversial conspiracy theory
about vaccines that is guaranteed to get people on both sides riled up and
arguing in the comments.
So why do creators do this? Views.
Engagement = promotion by the social media algorithm = more views on the post
with spillover to more views on their other posts. And for someone trying to
make a living out of social media, views and followers = money.
And why do social media companies promote posts and videos with ragebait
content? For the same reason –
money. It doesn’t matter if the
reactions and comments are positive or negative to the companies – the more you
engage in the content, the more minutes (or hours) you are going to spend on
the platform, and the more advertising revenue Facebook or TikTok makes.
So I’ll get you to tuck this ragebait definition in your back pocket – we’re
going to come back to it later, I promise!
Let’s turn from social media to the bible, and the story of Zacchaeus that we
heard this morning. Zacchaeus was a tax
collector in the city of Jericho, and Jesus was passing through town, along
with his disciples, on his way towards Jerusalem. He wanted to see Jesus, and because he was
short, he climbs a tree so that he can get a better look. Jesus sees him up there, calls out to him by
name, and invites himself to Zacchaeus’s house for dinner. And after the meal ends,
Zacchaeus promises to give half of his possessions to the poor, and promises
that if he cheats anyone out of money, he will repay four times as much as he
stole.
At some point in your life, there is a very good chance that at least some of
you have heard a preacher stand here and talk to you about tax collectors in
Jesus’s world. Heck, there’s a good
chance that I’m the preacher who has stood here and talked to you about tax
collectors in Jesus’s world. The tax
collectors tended to be the most despised people of that time and place. They weren’t Roman; they were local people
who were colluding with the Roman empire.
They were given the task of extracting tax money from the local people
on behalf of the Roman Empire, and they were especially despised because they
weren’t paid very well, and so they had a nasty habit of extracting more money
than was owed to Rome and pocketing the difference.
And here we have Zacchaeus, the tax collector.
Not only is he a tax collector but he is the chief tax collector, the
ruler of the tax collectors, a prince among tax collectors. And not just that, but he is rich in a world
where most of the population is barely able to keep a roof overhead and food on
their plate. He was someone that would
be very easy to despise; and he likely faced a lot of cruelty on top of it all
for his physical deformity – he was so short that he had to climb a tree in
order to see over the heads of the crowd.
It would be a very easy sermon to preach to say that Zacchaeus had a literal
come-to-Jesus moment in this story. It
would be a very easy sermon to preach to say that this grasping, conniving man
met Jesus, and just like the Grinch, his shrunken heart grew three sizes that
day, and he became a person who was all about generosity, giving away half of
his possessions, and repaying four-fold all of the money he had stolen from his
neighbours. Go, and be like
Zacchaeus! End of sermon.
That would be an easy sermon to preach, and whether or not you have heard that
sermon before, I know that I have preached that sermon before!
But what if I were to suggest that this sermon might be doing a disservice to
Zacchaeus? What if I were to tell you
that if you were to turn back to the original Greek, you would discover that
many translations make a mistake? That
the verb tenses aren’t quite what most translations say? That Zacchaeus didn’t say, “I will give half
of my possessions to the poor, and I will pay back four times as much”; but
instead he said “I give half of my possessions to the poor, and I repay them
four times as much.” The original Greek
isn’t in the future tense, but it is in the present continual tense.
What if Zacchaeus has been doing these things all along? This isn’t a Come-to-Jesus moment after all,
a dramatic conversion on the Road to Jericho.
What, then, is Jesus trying to teach with this encounter?
Which brings me back to my definition of ragebait. What if Jesus is ragebaiting the crowd? Nothing will grab the attention of the crowd,
get them riled up more than seeing Jesus hanging out with the person that they
feel is least deserving of his attention.
A rich man. The leader of the
despised tax collectors. A short man who
is easy to mock.
Luke puts it quite mildly when he says that the crowd began to grumble when
they saw Jesus hanging out with the one they hated. I rather suspect that the grumbling was more
than just a low rumble. I can imagine
the odd shout coming from the crowd – “Hey Jesus, you don’t want to have
anything to do with that short little Tax Collector!” or “Of course Zacchaeus
who gets everything he wants gets time with Jesus too.” Maybe someone had an especially ripe tomato
on hand that gets tossed in their direction, hitting Zacchaeus squarely in the
back and splattering some juice on Jesus’s robe.
Jesus has caught their attention for sure, but why? Unlike 21st Century ragebaiters,
there isn’t any financial gain for Jesus to do so, but like on Social Media, he
now has the crowd’s attention. And his
decision to dine with Zacchaeus is very much in keeping with his overall message
– that God has special concern and special love for anyone who is
marginalized. It doesn’t matter if you
are marginalized because you have leprosy or because you are possessed by
demons or because you are a tax collector – God loves you.
So this might be a sermon, not on conversion and Come-to-Jesus moments, but
rather on God’s radical inclusivity of the very people that society casts out. Love your neighbour, especially your
marginalized neighbour. Be like Jesus.
End of sermon.
But I want to pivot one more time, and suggest that there might still be a
sermon in here with that original message, Go, be like Zacchaeus.
Zacchaeus was trapped in a broken and corrupt system – a system of Empire,
where the land he was born into was the property of Rome, and where a foreign
emperor controlled every aspect of life.
He was born into a family that had profited from historical inequality
and they had wealth, likely acquired on the backs of other people. He was employed by a system where corruption
was the norm – we aren’t told how he ended up in this job, but possibly his
family made their wealth because his father and grandfather were tax collectors
before him.
And yet despite all of this, as he was trying to live and exist in a world full
of unjust and broken systems, Zacchaeus does his best to live his life in a way
that honours God and loves his neighbours. The
law said that he was to tithe 1/10 of what he had, and Zacchaeus gives 5 times
as much, giving away half of his possessions to the poor. The law said that if one person cheated
another person out of money or property, they were to give back twice as much
as they stole, and Zacchaeus doubles the requirement, repaying 4 times as much.
Could it be that Zacchaeus is actually an honourable man, doing his best to do
good while living in a corrupt world; and Jesus is challenging us to see past
our prejudices in order to see him in this light?
If the message is to “Go and be like Zacchaeus,” it is very easy to name the
unfair and broken systems that we are trapped by. We are trapped living in an economic system
that allows a small number of people to get obscenely rich while the gap
between the rich and the poor is always growing. We are trapped living in a system that is
dependent on fossil fuels, as our planet is literally on fire as a result. We are trapped living in a world where
historical injustices mean that those of us with white skin receive benefits we
didn’t earn while our black and Indigenous neighbours live with disadvantages
that they don’t deserve.
We are living, like Zacchaeus, trapped in systems that we, individually, don’t
have the power to change. So the
question is, how can we, like Zacchaeus, live our lives in this broken world in
a way that honours God and loves our neighbours?
Go and be like Zacchaeus. End of
sermon. (For real, this time!)
“Zacchaeus” by Cara B. Hochhalter
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