Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man was there named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. All who saw it began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.” Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look, half of my possession, Lord, I give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” Then Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because, he too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.” (Luke 19.1-10)
Today, all things being equal, we would observe the Third-First Sunday in Ordinary Time. However, because the Feast of All Souls occurs each year on November 2nd, which is today, that feast is elevated above the ordinary sequence we have come to expect, at least on the Roman calendar. However, I have chosen to stay with the gospel text for the regular Sunday observance rather than look at a text from the Gospel of John that is used for the Feast of All Souls.
It is a choice I have made because I feel that the loss of this text from Luke’s gospel is too high a price to pay after our having stayed the course with Luke for the greater part of this liturgical year that is soon to end in a matter of weeks. In other words, we have momentum that I don’t want to lose because the Feast of All Souls happens to fall on a Sunday this time around.
The story of Zacchaeus, the short-statured tax-collector, is unique to Luke’s gospel, one of many that the other gospels do not provide. It is a personal favorite as it is for a good many other readers of Luke’s text. Perhaps some of its appeal is in the fact that the underdog wins in this story, a regular occurrence in this gospel, seen so often that it can be called a Lucan theme.
And while we might cheer for the underdog, the onlookers in the crowd that followed Jesus as he made his way through the town of Jericho did not cheer for Zacchaeus. In fact, Luke tells us that they grumbled, something we have come to expect from the Pharisees at large, but not necessarily seen by people accompanying Jesus. Luke tells us, “All who saw it–meaning Jesus’ going to dine at Zacchaeus’s house–began to grumble and said, ‘He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.’”
The cause for the uproar–perhaps a better description than grumble–is the fact that tax-collectors were despised, even more so than in our times. They were seen as working in cahoots with the Romans since, after all, the taxes that were collected ended up in the Emperor’s pockets. That a Jew would work as a tax collector for the enemy was an unforgivable sin, at least in the eyes of fellow Jews.
Once we understand that reality, things fall into place because we have seen the same reaction in numerous other instances where an outsider or an outcast is privileged and praised by Jesus, his befriending and welcoming those cast off and set apart from the majority becoming salt in the wound of those who saw it happening, particularly those who occupied positions of power or prestige.
While that fact has been a constant throughout the gospel as we have seen, Luke seems intent on bringing it front and center as Jesus nears the end of his journey to Jerusalem that began in Chapter 9. We find the story of Zacchaeus at the start of Chapter 19. The prior two chapters have found Luke putting before us a parade of other outcasts, such as the ten lepers, the persistent widow, the humble tax-collector in the temple, the children pushed aside and prevented from seeing Jesus, and the blind beggar Bartimaeus. It is as if Luke wants to ensure we don’t miss his point as the gospel nears its end.
And in so many ways, all of these stories are tightly interwoven and intertwined, not only in their focus on the outcast, but also in their emphasis on Jesus’ reaching out and including within his embrace and his love these people on the fringes. As we have come to see so often, in Luke topsy-turvey worldview, the lowly are elevated and the high and mighty are deposed from their thrones.
By all appearances, Luke has intentionally paired the story of Zacchaeus with the story of the blind beggar Bartimaeus that immediately precedes it, both figures met as Jesus nears or enters Jericho, a town about eighteen miles from Jerusalem. Bartimaeus cannot see because he is a blind man. Zacchaeus cannot see because the crowds block his sight. When Jesus asked Bartimaeus what he wanted him to do for him, Bartimaeus answered, “Lord, please let me see.” When Zacchaeus cannot see, he raced ahead and climbed a tree that would give him a clear view of Jesus.
Also, we hear Jesus say to Bartimaeus, “Your faith has saved you” and he says to Zacchaeus, “Today salvation has come to this house.” His words to both men are words of blessing, intended to show that those despised and denied access to the community are, in fact, a part of God’s family, going so far as to state that Zacchaeus was “a son of Abraham,” much the same as we heard him say earlier of the crippled woman, calling her a daughter of Abraham.
In many ways, these paired stories answer the question that the disciples had asked Jesus a short while earlier when they said to him, “Who then can be saved?” His answer comes in these two unlikely figures. The blind man Bartimaeus is saved by his faith and the tax collector Zacchaeus is saved by his receiving Jesus and freely disposing of his possessions.
In other words, contrary to popular opinion, it is the lowly and the least likely to whom Jesus promises salvation, not to the high and mighty. As we saw last Sunday, it was the humble tax collector who won God’s approval because of his humility while the Pharisee, proud as a peacock, walked away unjustified, rebuked by Jesus because of his arrogance and disdain for others. And it will be one of the thieves on the cross suffering beside him who also will receive the same promise, not the high priests and the religious leaders who scoff and scorn at him in his last hours.
Some three chapters earlier, Luke presented us with three parables from the lips of Rabbi Jesus. They carry the titles the parable of the lost sheep, the parable of the lost coin, and the parable of the lost son or the prodigal son. The lesson is the same in each. Jesus concludes the first with, “I tell you, in just the same way there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need of repentance.”
Similarly, he ends the parable of the lost coin with the words, “I tell you, there will be rejoicing among the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” And the parable of the lost son concludes with the father saying, “Now we must celebrate and rejoice, because your brother was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.”
Luke’s memory is not so short that he has forgotten the theses of these parables that Jesus spoke. Hence, we should not be surprised with Jesus’ final words in the vignette about Zachaeus. Jesus ends with these words, “The Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.” So, once more, the point is reiterated that the good news is that the Most High God sees the poor and the outcast, looks for the lost and for the least, welcomes the tax-collector and the sinner. They are not overlooked, not by him, even if the world turns a blind eye to them and their cries.
The story of Zacchaeus beautifully re-echoes that message, putting before us a man who was overlooked, not just because of his short-stature, but because of his rogue status in the community. He is looked down upon, shunned by others, and considered a moral outcast if not a physical one. He is in all ways a leper even if he does not suffer from the same skin disease. Like the leper, like the beggar, like the widow, he is considered one of “them,” not one of “us.”
And while the story of Zacchaeus carries many lessons for us–each one important and a show-stopper that calls for our attention–that may be the one we most need in our own times, offering us a reminder that Jesus includes the very people that we exclude, welcomes the same ones that we reject, and stands beside those we knock to the ground.
Lest we forget, he began his public ministry with a recitation of a passage from the Hebrew prophet Isaiah in which a promise was made by the Most High God that his anointed one would “bring glad tidings to the poor, would be sent to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.”
As he nears the end of his ministry, that mission has been made clear to the crowds as well as to those in control. The good news of salvation is offered to the poor and to the outcast, to the lowly and the least likely, to the despised and the desperate because they, more so than many others, welcomed Jesus as did Zacchaeus.
Given that fact, our call and our mission as followers of the Galilean must be the same as his. In other words, we see those others do not see, such as the poor. We welcome those rejected by others, such as the immigrant or newcomer. We include within our circle those excluded by others, such as the woman on the street pushing a grocery cart that contains all her material goods.
On the other hand, we fail as his followers if we align ourselves with the powerful and with the privileged, with the rich and those with vested interests in the status quo, with the Pharisees and the hypocrites who habitually grumble and harangue against those who see things differently, who live differently, and who look different than we do.
It has to be noted that Luke provides us in this section of his gospel with four interlocked stories in close sequence, the first being the children not allowed to approach Jesus, the second being the rich official with many possessions, the third being Bartimaeus, and the last being Zacchaeus. Of the four, three show Jesus welcoming the person or persons.
Not surprisingly, the only one that walks away without words of approval or a blessing from Jesus is the rich official who could not part with his possessions, resulting in Jesus’ statement that “it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” He stands out in the parade of people for all the wrong reasons.
Zacchaeus, on the other hand, overlooked and looked down upon by the many others in the crowd who label him a sinner, runs to get a glimpse of Jesus and welcomes him with great joy. And he is assured by Jesus of salvation, an assurance not given to the rich official who had everything except the most important thing–an open heart to the poor and to the lost in the world.
The long and short of it is maybe this is a perfect reading for the Feast of All Souls, even if it is not prescribed for this day. After all, the feast focuses our attention on the other side of the great chasm, as Abraham called the divide between life on earth and life eternal when scolding the rich man who had refused to give the starving man Lazarus a bit of food from his own table while both lived on earth.
In the hereafter, the tables were turned, as we have heard, a sore reminder, as the story of Zacchaeus also does, that outsiders are insiders in the reign of God, and those overlooked here on earth are front and center at the banquet table of God. In other words, our own entry into the hereafter depends greatly on our treatment of the outcast and the castoff who are condemned to cry out from the outer circles of our communities. These least ones already have reservations for the eternal feast, something not assured to us unless we welcome them to our table here on earth.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 