Harrowing Haints

A sermon for Proper 26
October 30, 2022

Once upon a time there was a man who lived in an old Victorian house. The house was once called The Painted Lady of the town. Now she was drab from decades of disrepair. The man had given up trying to keep up that big house by himself, with the exception of one spot. The porch. He took care of the porch. He would sit on his rocking chair and rock the days and much of the nights away. Alone. When he wasn’t rocking he was sweeping the porch, making sure the rails were sturdy. And above all, he made sure the porch ceiling was always freshly painted. He painted it the color it has always been, the distinctive haint blue. The color that was said to keep the ghosts and evil spirits away. 

The house, they say, was haunted. I don’t know about that, but it would be easy to believe. The man, they say, was haunted, too. That was obvious. His eyes were empty. 

One day, an old friend of the man’s came into town after decades away. He stopped by the house to see his friend, there, rocking on the front porch. The friend said hi, enthusiastically! The man sat there, rocking, back and forth. The friend tried to make conversation. He asked about everything. He told stories. The man, if he responded at all, only gave one word answers, a nod, a grunt. 

Finally the friend had enough. He stomped his feet and yelled he was leaving if he didn’t talk to him. That got the man’s attention, and he turned around. The friend expected him to be angry. But the man was not angry. He was crying. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m out of practice. No one has talked to me in so long.” 

“What happened to you?” the friend asked. The man began to explain. He had left the town after high school graduation. He went to college, and met a girl whom he would marry. Eventually he moved home. He hit it big with one of those once-in-a-million-years business ideas; it even got him a feature in Arkansas Money & Politics. Friends and neighbors poured money into his idea. It was only later that everyone discovered it was too good to be true. No one called it fraud, but that’s what it was. The man, driven by greed, had intentionally cheated money out of his fellow townspeople. They turned on him. His wife left in shame with his kids. In a matter of days, his life was turned upside-down as his past caught up with him. 

People said the man didn’t have a heart, but that wasn’t true. He wished he could go back and make things right. He had even tried to, paying back small sums of money as he was able. He was still despised. Since being found out, he had been followed by a kind of shadow of sorrow and regret–sorrow and regret so strong it had almost taken on physical properties. A haint, he called it. He couldn’t shake it. It would keep him awake at night, pacing the floor of his bedroom. He would catch glimpses of it as he rounded corners in his house, just a fleeing shadow. The only place he got peace was on that porch, under the haint blue ceiling, rocking, back and forth. 

Haints, or ghosts, aren’t real, the kids in Sunday school would be quick to tell me. But they would be wrong in a sense. Of course, I’m not talking about ghosts like Casper or the stories we tell around campfires. I’m talking about something we carry around within us, something that burdens us, something we cannot shake. Something like that man’s haint. 

We carry around deep regrets we cannot share. We carry around pain that may only be known to us. We carry around shame and guilt of past decisions that feel so heavy that sometimes we feel we will suffocate under the pressure. The what-ifs, the whys, the how-comes that keep us awake at night, pacing the floor of our bedrooms. The shadows of the past, of things done and left undone, that flee around the corner, just out of sight, but always felt, always taunting us with reminders of how we’ve messed up. Haints. 

I hope the kids in the Sunday school building never know the reality of that type of ghost story. I hope they never become acquainted with that haint. But many carry them around. 

I bet Zacchaeus carried one around. Zacchaeus is a familiar story. We learn about him and how short he was in Sunday school. But that’s not what sticks out to me in this story now. What sticks out to me now is the lengths Zacchaeus goes to to see Jesus; and once he meets Jesus, the extraordinary lengths he goes to to show his repentance. 

Luke tells us that Jesus is visiting Zacchaeus’s town, and that Zacchaeus was the chief tax collector and was rich. Tax collectors generally got rich by cheating their neighbors, charging high interest and fees on top of already high taxes. For that and for their collaboration with the occupying Roman Empire, they were hated. Zacchaeus hears that Jesus is coming to town, so he runs to see him. He can’t see him, though. Luke tells us it’s because he is short in stature; maybe so, but his relationships in town didn’t help him at all. It’s easy to imagine him being pushed to the back of the crowd. So Zacchaeus has to run ahead, away from all of those people, and he climbs a tree. Why? Well, surely so he can see Jesus. But I also wonder if he wanted to hide behind the branches and leaves. 

As we read the story, it’s clear Zacchaeus is desperate to lay eyes on Jesus. He had no doubt heard about him. He knew what Jesus was famous for, and he just had to see him pass by. I can’t help but imagine that Zacchaeus may have been like that man with the haint. Zacchaeus was carrying some things. Some guilt, some shame. He was being followed by the ghosts of his past, the ghosts of what he had done and left undone, all in the name of greed. But he hears Jesus is coming, and maybe he thinks if he can just see Jesus, he can finally shake those haints. 

Jesus sees him. We know the story. Jesus has lunch at his house. And Zacchaeus shows he is truly repentant; he is ready for a change, and he not only says as much, but he backs it up with his actions. He tells Jesus, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” He’s shaking off that haint. He’s confronting his past head on. He’s making right those things that are wrong, bringing into the light those things that rest in the dark. 

Jesus responds: “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham.” Jesus is telling him he’s a child of God. He’s done some things in the past, but the guilt and the shame can no longer take him as a prisoner. His past can no longer define him. Zacchaeus is a child of God. He belongs to God, and God belongs to him. The shadow is dispelled; the haint is gone. 

Like the man, like Zacchaeus, we carry around shadows. We carry around haints. The past, guilt, shame. Jesus dispels them all. The light that lit the world shines into our hearts, even into the darkest recesses, and speaks peace. The Word that spoke the world into being speaks into our hearts, even into those secrets never heard, never spoken, and speaks forgiveness. The Son that gave up everything speaks into our hearts, into the most haunted corners of our consciences, and calls us a child of the Most High God. 

Jesus is calling. He has called us out of our sycamore tree, off of our porch with its haint blue ceiling, away from all of our striving to handle things ourselves, to keep the haints at bay. Salvation has, indeed, come to our house since Jesus stepped under our roof. We have not been left alone, wandering about, lost. Jesus has come with healing, with victory, with the peace of God, with salvation. There is no more room for those things that haunt us, for we belong to Jesus, and he belongs to us. The haints of the past have no claim on our lives, for Jesus claims us as his own, now and forever.