Scripture Readings: Habakkuk 1:1-4,  2:1-4, Luke 19:1-10

          Angelo Mozilo is the CEO and co-founder of Countrywide Financial Corporation, the biggest U.S. mortgage lender.  With record foreclosures on family homes in past months, Mr. Mozilo is under the microscope.  He is facing an informal SEC inquiry into stock sales.  It was announced this week that he is being sued by shareholders for taking part in a stock buyback program that allowed him, along with nineteen other top executives, to sell shares at inflated prices.  He is in the news every day, and not for the right reasons.

          Then, just hours ago, the announcement was made that Angelo Mozilo had had a revelation, and like a modern Zacchaeus, vowed to use his immense private funds and corporate power to bail out working families who had recently lost their homes or were in danger of losing them.  In a confession unheard of in corporate circles, he admitted to being blinded by greed and arrogance.  Finally realizing the gravity of his actions, he is now committed to rescuing nearly three thousand families that held their mortgages with Countrywide, all out of his own personal fortune.  In addition, he had a meeting with the board of directors this morning and made sweeping changes to Countrywide’s aggressive lending policies, in order to prevent future entrapment of innocent, hard-working people. 

          Immediate response has been mixed.  Some executives were overheard mocking Mozilo, clearly not impressed with his sudden show of generosity and perhaps even a little nervous.  Some of the homeowners who are hoping to receive aid from Mozilo were able to be reached, and their reactions ranged from tears of joy to grim suspicion.  People on the streets appear to have a wait-and-see attitude, not gullible enough to praise Mozilo until families’ homes are actually safely back in their rightful possession, and yet hopeful that at last, amidst endless accounts of runaway corporate greed, there might be a shift to a more responsible policy of lending that looks to the long-term health of communities rather than the short-term profits of investors.

          If only it were true.  In fact, I know of no plan on the part of Angelo Mozilo or any other top executive to use personal wealth to rescue families who are in danger of losing their homes, or to change company policy so that common folks can make ends meet.  Greed marches on unchecked.  Last year, Mozilo made $57 million in salary and benefits, and over the course of five years is expected to net nearly one billion dollars.  In the words of the prophet, the law becomes slack and justice never prevails.  The wicked surround the righteous—therefore judgment comes forth perverted.

          When Zacchaeus came down from his tree, welcoming Jesus into his home, and promised to pay back those whom he had cheated, the reaction was mixed, as I expect it would be if the CEO of a major corporation promised to give everything he had to the poor.  Some were jealous, some were suspicious, some were judgmental, and one could hardly blame them.  Tax collectors were seen as traitors, for they gathered funds from their own people to pay their captors.  The Roman government assumed that the tax collectors would demand more than they were required to pay Rome, and since there was no oversight, corruption was the rule.  Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector, so the phrase in verse two that he was rich is an enormous understatement.  Yet it appears that Zacchaeus was as good as his word.  That such a person would give up his wealth and distribute it among the poor, and would furthermore make it up to those he had cheated and then some, is such a remarkable tale that it has been told for two thousand years.  If Mr. Mozilo truly wants to be immortalized, he should follow Zacchaeus’ example to the letter.

          I’d like to think that I would be cheering Zacchaeus on.  I think it is possible I might be one of the ones to show him support.  Just this week, something happened with a student I have taught for five years, who for all of that time has been extraordinarily and consistently lazy and disruptive.  He has fallen so far behind the rest of his class that I believed he would never catch up.  I thought I had given up on him.  On Monday his class started a new hand chime piece.  As luck would have it, he ended up with the pivotal part.  Inwardly I cringed, thinking the whole class would have to suffer because he had such an important part, and would never take it seriously or even have the wherewithal to play it.

          Yet, there he was, focused as I have never seen him, working hard and mastering his part.  I would not have believed it.  I was overjoyed.  I still am.  I don’t know what will happen when he comes to class tomorrow, but I am hopeful.  So perhaps it is not such a long shot to think that I would cheer for Zacchaeus when he turned his life around.  I think most people would.  While I have certainly known individuals who look at such situations as unfair, and think that unless punishment is inflicted justice has not been served, most people I know are quite ready to welcome back into the community an estranged member who genuinely shows a change of heart.  Hope springs eternal when there is a glimmer of a reason to trust.

          Hope was what the prophet Habakkuk expressed, even while he watched the neighboring Chaldeans “seize dwellings not their own.”  God has made people like the fish of the sea, he says, rather than giving them their rightful place a little lower than the angels.  The enemy brings all of them up with a hook; he drags them out with his net, he gathers them in his seine…for by them his portion is lavish, and his food is rich.  Is he then to keep on emptying his net, and destroying nations without mercy?  This is precisely what we are watching today, except that we are the Chaldeans, seizing dwellings not our own.  And we know it is wrong, but efforts to stop it thus far have failed.

          At this point in the prophecy Habakkuk offers what to me is the greatest challenge.  Have hope and be patient.  There is still a vision for the appointed time.  Those seem to be empty words.  Who will stop the United States military machine?  Who will wrest power from the corporations?

          Habakkuk spoke to Israel a mere twelve years after sweeping religious reforms under King Josiah.  Renewing their covenant with God, the people of Judah had reordered their society to look more like what it was meant to be:  a nation built on justice.  Under the present king, Jehoiakim, the nation had quickly abandoned the instruction of the torah and the priests spoke to the people with soothing words.

          Consider that only twelve years ago the president of our own nation was talking about universal health reform, while our current president vetoes every bill that attempts to extend that necessity to our own citizens who need it.  Stay the course.  It will all be fine.

          What would happen if our nation dedicated itself anew to the Constitution?  What sweeping reforms might happen?  How long would our zeal for justice prevail?

          All my life I have heard people tell me how fortunate we are to live in the United States.  Those who have traveled the world remark on the dramatic differences in other countries, and how we who live here take so much for granted.  Yes, we take nearly everything for granted, it seems.  But are we fortunate to live here?  There was a time when that was true.  Is it still?  When I read these opening verses from Habakkuk, I don’t think of Judah during the rise of Babylon; I think of our own nation in the twenty-first century:

          O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen?

          Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save?

          Why do you make me see wrong-doing and look at trouble?

          Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise.

          If we live and work in Elmwood, or Pacific Heights where I teach, or in any of the other wealthy bubbles that are fairly insulated from random drive-by shootings and armed robberies, then we may be lucky enough to escape the violence around us.  We may not even have to look at it.  I personally know people who believe it is not there.  Even in safe neighborhoods, however, there are those who drive too fast and honk at anyone in their way, barely missing pedestrians and bicyclists.  There are the angry neighbors and passersby who shout obscenities at us, perhaps not even admitting to themselves the underlying causes of their frustration.  There are the unemployed and the unhoused.  There is the air pollution that makes it harder to breathe, the noise of vehicles and machinery that can be enough to rob a person’s sanity, the unsightly garbage that blows into our yards and onto our front steps.  At the very least there is the fact that we are working many more hours than our parents and grandparents did.  As if it is not enough to deal with earthquakes and fires, cancer and heart attacks, our society has managed to take a good thing and mess it up.

          Are we so fortunate to live here, just because that is what we are told?  It feels to me like I am one of the figures in Escher’s famous print titled “Relativity,” where I am walking up and up a staircase only to realize that I have reached the bottom, not the top.  While we certainly have a great many luxuries, I wonder how much we enjoy them.  Many of us seem to have convinced ourselves that, since we have so many things, we must be happy.  But in the words of George Orwell, “to see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”  Luxuries are easier to look at than angry neighbors.

          George also said that “if liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”  The same could be said of prophecy.  A modern-day prophet knew people would not want to hear his message, so he couched it in science fiction.  Isaac Asimov, a Russian emigrant to the U.S., wrote the Foundation stories, about a galactic empire at its zenith.  Its capital was a planet that was completely dominated by human structures.  Light and climate, even precipitation, were completely under the control of computers.  Wealth poured into and out of the capital.  It was the greatest empire humanity had ever seen.

          On that planet there was the most impressive university history had ever known.  Its brightest and best scholar, Harry Seldon, began in secret to create the seeds of the next empire, for he understood that even while it appeared the current empire was at its strongest ever, it would not last.  Upon its inevitable collapse, people would be plunged into a thirty thousand year period that would make the Middle Ages look tame by comparison.  With Seldon’s plan in place, however, that interregnum could be reduced to a mere thousand years.

          How does one plan for the demise of the empire in which one lives?  Seldon started by collecting knowledge and keeping it safe.  In our own situation, it seems to me that the pursuit and preservation of knowledge and culture would not only aid future generations that are destined to wrestle with the decay of our nation, (you didn’t really think the U.S. would outlive God, did you?), but such work would also make our present situation more bearable.

          Some of my seventh graders come to music class with the idea that music and art and drama and dance have value for two reasons.  One, they provide entertainment for the masses, and two, they provide huge incomes for the stars.  We talk about the difference between a pastime, such as playing a game of Scrabble, and entertainment, such as watching a ballgame.  In one case, a person must interact with a game and with other people.  In the other, a person is free to be entirely passive.  Ah, they say, but what if the person watching the ballgame keeps up on all the statistics, and collects memorabilia?  Doesn’t that make it a pastime?  Hopefully, by the end of four or five such discussions, these boys begin to think beyond the entertainment and dollar value of the arts and culture.

          Many of you know that I direct a professional choir.  We perform Renaissance pieces that, in many cases, have never been heard on the West Coast before.  Why put money and energy into such projects?

          Why will half a dozen of us gather after worship for bell rehearsal?  Why does the choir rehearse two and a half hours each week?  Why make busy schedules busier?  Perhaps it is because pastimes are antidotes to passivity and estrangement.

          This church has raised a bunch of money to pay me to be your music director, to pay Leon to be your organist, and to pay section leaders to bolster the choir.  Why?  Maybe the congregation is doing what the Church has done throughout the ages, preserving knowledge and promoting culture, so that the current generation will know there is more to life than making money and being entertained, and future generations will have something to look forward to.

          A month ago, Max welcomed the Sabeel conference to St. John’s so that people could learn more about the situation in Palestine. He had to take a lot of heat from the Jewish community for doing that.  Now he is having meetings to bring about discussion between the Palestinian community in California and the Jewish diaspora here.  It has not been easy.  Why does Max put himself through this?

          Perhaps we do these things because, in the prophet’s words, there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks to the end, and does not lie.