Learning from students in Bible Study
After leading Bible studies for college students for 10 years, I’ve come to learn that my favorite Bible studies are the ones where we study passages that were often taught in Sunday School growing up. I find that there’s something beautiful that happens when people engage with texts that they think they know everything about but learn very quickly that there’s more happening than they realize. And I’m one of those people who learn that there’s more happening than I realize too! I’m grateful for the amount that students have taught me about the scriptures that I’ve led.
Last month, I got the opportunity to lead a scripture study at MIT. The chapter was focused on looking at characters in scripture and the ways they displayed faith despite their brokenness. I was given the honor of teaching the story of Zacchaeus in Luke 19. I was incredibly excited when I heard about this because Zacchaeus’ story has been one of my favorites to study as an adult. In Sunday school, I felt like the Zacchaeus story was boiled down to, “Zacchaeus was short so he climbed a tree and Jesus chose to eat dinner with him.” It seemed like the morale of the story was that Jesus would love me even if I was short? But what’s wrong with being short?!? I guess that’s good news for my fellow Indian sisters and brothers?
For the study, I decided to break the scripture into three parts, and in each part, I had a “but why?” question I invited us to explore. The first question we explored was “why did Zacchaeus have to climb a tree anyway?” Zacchaeus had a very public profession and so chances were Zacchaeus knew a good number of the people in Jericho, so why couldn’t he just ask them to make space for him? We explored the realities of his relationships with his own people because of his decision to be a tax collector and realized that Zacchaeus’ own people were an active barrier between Zacchaeus and Jesus. And it’s because of this, Zacchaeus had to climb a tree (which was embarrassing for grown men) in order to see Jesus. For the second question we explored more about why Zacchaeus responds to Jesus’ request to join him for dinner in the way he does. We concluded that Zacchaeus was being very generous (half his possessions to the poor + 4x what he stole is probably all his money), and Zacchaeus was also acknowledging his sin in exploiting “God’s sheep,” based on what we see in Exodus 22 and Ezekiel 34 (go check it out!). This is something the leaders of Israel still haven’t realized.
It was the answer to the last question that was my favorite though. We looked at the whole text, and the fact that this was the last story that Luke shares before Jesus enters Jerusalem to die. And since it was the last story, Luke probably had something important he was trying to communicate to us in it. We talked about this question for a bit before a student raised her hand and shared about how this story is similar to what Jesus did on the cross. I didn’t have that in my notes, so I asked the student to share more. She proceeded to talk about how Zacchaeus humbled himself by climbing a tree and then gave all of what he had away to people who hated him. What Jesus will do on the cross is humble himself by climbing a tree (the cross) and give up all of himself and what He has to people who will beg for Him to be crucified. I was absolutely stunned by the truth of what she said. Luke was giving us an example of someone who acted just like Jesus would, and maybe much of Jesus’ delight and desire to eat dinner with Zacchaeus was seeing this reality play out in front of Him.
I’ve had moments in life where my time in scripture has felt dry. I stare at words that feel all too familiar and nothing really comes of it. But it’s moments like these where I’m reminded that there’s always more that God has for us in His word. If you’re feeling that way too, then maybe you need to ask Jesus for some fresh eyes or a fun and committed community to sit in scripture with.
God we thank you for Your word and for revealing Yourself to us in it. God I pray that you might continue to give us new eyes to see more of who you are in scripture. And I pray also that you might give us what we need to commit ourselves to being in scripture with community as well. Amen.
