Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
In the name of our loving, liberating and life-giving God. Amen.
Zacchaeus is very eager to see Jesus. We don’t know what his motivation is. Does he want to see a celebrity? Is he intrigued by stories about this famous healer and teacher? Does he know he needs salvation?
We do know that he has a certain humility, or at least a neglect of convention. Rich people were not expected to climb up trees in their fine apparel and make a spectacle of themselves. He doesn’t care. His desire to see Jesus trumps decency.
When Jesus comes to the sycamore tree where Zacchaeus is perched, he stops and hails him: “Zacchaeus hurry down from there! For I must stay at your house today!” I must he says. That’s quite insitent.
How did Jesus know Zacchaeus’s name? Did Zacchaeus, the chief tax collector of Jericho, have a reputation that travelled? Or did Matthew the Apostle, himself an ex-tax collector, know about Zacchaeus and had told Jesus about him? Or maybe the crowd pointed Zacchaeus out, deriding him.
The name Zacchaeus (a Latin form of the Hebrew Zakkai) means “pure, innocent.” It does not conform with our image of Zacchaeus as a hardened sinner prior to his encounter with Jesus.
Is it possible that Jesus had heard previously about Zacchaeus as benefactor of the poor instead of as a rapacious tax collector and swindler?
You see, I believe those statements that Zacchaeus makes to Jesus are poorly translated in our NRSV version of Luke’s gospel. I was intrigued to discover that in the Greek text, Zacchaeus’ statement is in the present rather than the future tense. The tense used in the Greek text is the present progressive which in his statement denotes repeated, customary practice rather than a single spontaneous act of generosity.
So, consider Zacchaeus as saying: “I am giving, as a habit, half of my possessions to the poor. And if I have cheated someone of something, I make a fourfold restitution.” This changes our perspective on Zacchaeus from an instantaneous conversion to an ongoing conversion in favor of the poor.
And notice the “if” word in the cheating statement. Zacchaeus is not admitting to fraud but is accepting that if he finds out he has defrauded someone, he does restitute what has been defrauded four times (not just an equivalent restitution but the maximum rate demanded by the Torah).
So it would appear that Zacchaeus is doing what John the Baptist exhorted tax collectors to do. The Baptist said "Collect no more than you are authorized to do" (Luke 3:13).
This said, most Jews would still have considered tax collectors as obdurate sinners, not to mention, collaborators with the occupying Roman Empire. For in order to live, most tax collectors collected more than what Rome was demanding. That was well understood and known by the Roman authorities who cared not one bit about that extortion.
So, it is likely that the crowd assumed that Zacchaeus committed extortion as a matter of course. And maybe he did, but with his winnings he supported the poor. After all, his wealth must come from somewhere.
Jesus was known to hang out with people who were not deemed proper by mainstream Israelite society including tax collectors and prostitutes. Jesus by inviting himself to stay at Zacchaeus’s home is demonstrating that these people, these sinners, too are worthy of care and healing. And Jesus is insistent about it: “I must stay at your house today.”
And upon hearing Zacchaeus’s statement of how he conducts himself, Jesus announces Zacchaeus’s honor status as a child of Abraham. He is not to be shunned from the Jericho community despite his economically privileged and shady station in life.
What Luke the evangelist is doing in the story of Zacchaeus the pure, the innocent, is setting a contrast with the story he told just before Jesus’ arrival in Jericho.
In Chapter 18 of his gospel, Luke told the story of the ruler (probably a religious leader) who wanted to be a follower of Jesus. He observed all the main commandments but was unwilling to go where Jesus suggested he go.
He couldn’t bring himself to part with his belongings, to sell everything he possessed, and to give it to the poor. Jesus concluded that incident by saying: “How difficult it is for those who have money to enter the kingdom of God” (Luke 18:24b).
Luke the evangelist contrasts the reluctant religious leader with the willing secular leader, both of them rich. We get the examples of two rich people reacting to Jesus’s teaching in opposite manners.
In Zacchaeus, we get the example of a rich person who participates in the building of God’s kingdom even if he doesn’t reach the level demanded by Jesus from his follower. That is: to sell everything they own and give it to the poor. At least, Zacchaeus is giving a large part of what he owns to the poor. Potentially that giving is difficult, if not painful.
But what Zacchaeus says is his practice is sufficient for Jesus to announce: “Today salvation has happened in this house, because Zacchaeus too is a child of Abraham.” Jesus adds: “For the Son of Man came to seek and save what was lost.” By that, he underscores that even so, Zacchaeus is not perfect, nor do we need to be perfect to be saved. Making real intentional efforts toward the building of God’s Kingdom is enough, regardless of outcomes. And thank God that Jesus has come to save the lost ones because, some, if not all of us, belong in that lot.
God’s incommensurate grace precedes our acts of virtue. God loves us first. We respond with our love in prayers and actions. And if we’re rich or comfortable, we don’t forget the poor, the apple of God’s eye.
Beloved and infinitely loving God, you shower us with graces, graces from before we were born, graces throughout our lifetime and graces beyond our lives. Give us to love the poor as you do. May we show you our love in loving them. Amen.
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