Isaiah 1:10-20
2 Thessalonians 1:1-5(6-10)11-12
Luke 19:1-10
Psalm 32 or 32:1-8
It seems to me that the people in the gospels can be divided into two sets: there's Jesus, on the one hand, and there are the people who need Jesus, on the other hand. And those, in turn, are divided into two types: there are the people who KNOW they need Jesus, and there are those who need him, but don't know it. Zacchaeus is one of the first kind, and the other folks in the story seem to be the second kind.
The lectionary sneaks up on us this year: remember what we read last Sunday? It was the story about the Pharisee and the tax collector. The Pharisee, you'll recall, was a really good person in every respect, except that-like the people of Jericho in today's story-he didn't think much of the tax collector. And remember who it was who went home justified? Mm hm.
Now Zacchaeus, our hero for this week, is not just a little tax collector like the one last week; he's a chief tax collector, the little tax collector's boss, the one who sends the little guys out to prey on the poor folks while he sits at home and waits to take his cut off the top.
You see, the tax collectors in the Roman provinces worked on commission: they had to bring in a certain quota every year, and anything over and above that amount they got to keep. And the chief tax collector had his quota to fill, and whatever was extra, he got to keep. It was a wonderful system for producing extortion and keeping everybody (except the people at the top) very unhappy. The people who had to pay the taxes resented the men who came to put the arm on them directly, but they realized that those guys were pretty poor, too. The ones they really resented were the chief tax collectors, who didn't do any work and didn't care who got hurt as long as they got theirs. People like Zacchaeus. It says right here: he was a chief tax collector and he was rich. How did he get rich? Not in a way that would make him number one in the popularity polls in Jericho, you can bet.
So the word goes around that this Jesus of Nazareth fellow is coming to town. What does Zacchaeus do? Does he send one of his slaves to graciously invite the teacher to come for supper? No. A Pharisee would do that, and Jesus might even go. But Zacchaeus is sure that the great teacher would not accept an invitation to his house. And he just has to see him. So he tucks up his robes and trots down to the town square and climbs a tree (because he's a little short guy, and he can't see over the heads of the crowds). He goes out on a limb for Jesus, you might say.
What happens? Jesus comes walking by, and being Jesus, he knows that someone who needs him, and knows that he needs him is close by. He looks up in the tree, and there is Zacchaeus. And then Jesus does the most amazing thing: he invites himself to Zacchaeus's house! Zacchaeus positively tumbles out of the tree and goes skipping and laughing ahead of Jesus to make his house ready.
But the crowd that is following Jesus is enraged. It reminds me of that other time, when a woman came into the Pharisee's house where Jesus was eating and began kissing his feet. The respectable folks around the table said: "Well! If he were really a prophet, he'd know what kind of woman that is who is touching him!" (He did, of course, but that was the whole point, wasn't it?) Now they say: "Well! Of all the houses he could stay at in Jericho, he chooses that one! Maybe he just wants to sleep on silk sheets and doesn't care about the kind of person he's taking hospitality from!" They don't realize that Jesus always goes where he's most needed, where people know they need him-and that if they were more aware of how much they need Jesus, he would probably stay at their houses, too.
So Zacchaeus turns around at the door of his house. He wants to have this issue out in the open with Jesus before they go inside. Now, here's where it gets complicated, because we don't know exactly what he is saying. The verbs are in the present tense, so literally he says: "Look, Lord, I give half of my possessions to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I pay back four times as much."
Modern Bible translators read that as a promise, something Zacchaeus says he is going to do. And that may be right. This may be a conversion story. But it's equally possible that Zacchaeus has been living, we might say, a secretly righteous life, and here he finally stands up for himself: "Look, Lord, I have been doing the best I can to be a good Jew, a true son of Abraham, but nobody will believe it because I'm a tax collector."
Either one of those interpretations fits what Jesus says next: "Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham." Either Zacchaeus has been doing the right thing all along, giving alms to the poor and doing justice, or else he has promised to start doing the right thing: either way, he is accepting his duty as a Jew. And something more: from this moment on, Zacchaeus knows how and why he can do these things: because the love he has always had for God-maybe had forgotten he had-has met its partner in Jesus. When Jesus looks at Zacchaeus-or at you-and loves him, or you, it's almost impossible not to love him back.
To avoid entering into a love affair with Jesus, you have to build up barriers so you don't see him: barriers like hatred and resentment and mistrust. Those were the things that were keeping the rest of the people in Jericho from seeing their need for Jesus, and from seeing his love for them. Remember that story last week? The Pharisee saying "Thank God I'm not like that tax collector"? We read that and we say "Thank God I'm not like that Pharisee"-and gotcha! Because as soon as you say that, you are just like him. You are making decisions about who's good and who's not: and those ideas about other people are walls that block our vision of the love God has for everybody, no exceptions. We practically have to climb a tree to see over the very walls we ourselves have built.
The folks in Jericho were happy to know that they were not like that Zacchaeus. And they weren't. Zacchaeus may have been better than they were (if he was already doing all those heroic things with his money), or he may have been worse (if he had been selfish up to now), but he wasn't finding his satisfaction in thinking how much better he was than somebody else. He was "waiting for the kingdom of God," and in Jesus he found it. Maybe the rest of the people who saw his happiness, when he found Jesus-or Jesus found him-had a conversion, too. Maybe they stopped thinking about what made them different from other people and began to see what they all-we all-have in common: that we need Jesus.
I'm so glad we get to read the story of Zacchaeus this week, when we're celebrating the festival of all the saints, because Zacchaeus is one of my favorite saints. The thing about saints is not that they are especially good. Some of them were real stinkers, at least up to a point. The thing about saints is that they are madly, hopelessly, head-over-heels in love with God. That sometimes makes them do crazy things, and let me tell you, there are some truly irresponsible saints, like the ones who sat on pillars for years, as if they wanted to get in the Guinness Book of World Records before there ever was such a thing. Or there was Philip Neri, in the sixteenth century, who enjoyed making himself look ridiculous by wearing funny clothes or shaving off half his beard. He was a great practical joker, too-but he loved God so much that he had to ask the altar server to watch out and grab hold of his vestments if he got so carried away while saying Mass that he started to float off into the air.
Saint Augustine once gave the formula for saintly living this way: "Love God and do as you please." I recommend it. But if you try it, you may find that, like Zacchaeus, you are going out on a limb. Don't worry if you do: that's where the sweetest fruits are found. Amen.