Thirty-first Sunday of Ordinary Time

Zacchaeus is one of the most memorable characters in the gospels.  He only appears in Luke: the little man who stands up to a sneering town, promises to make any amends he needs to make, and ends up taking Jesus home to dinner.  He starts off up a tree and ends up entertaining the Son of God.

Maybe this is a metaphor for how religious encounter often happens.  All we can do is place ourself in a position of openness, desire, curiosity, and God does all the rest.  Here we have Jesus taking the initiative, saying I’m going to come into your world because you put yourself out, just a little bit, to enter into mine.

So, we have the rich man who is assumed to be a sinner and we have the good law-abiding Jews, maybe even the disciples taking offense.  I can’t think of a single passage in the New Testament where people take offense and it doesn’t reveal their own problem.

People who take offense are usually proud people, usually arrogant people, usually judgmental people, and I’m sad to say, very often religious people.  But the part of us that takes offense is not God within us.  God doesn’t take offense.  As the first reading said, God loves everything that is. 

So Jesus goes to stay at the house of the sinner.  I guess some religious people today would say he’s cooperating, he’s encouraging, he’s complicit.  But we see Zacchaeus standing up to the challenge and saying yes, I might be a rich man but I am also a just man.  And this is the break-through in the passage.

That riches in themselves maybe are not evil as long as you are just.  And that’s, of course, the word that still needs to be heard.  If we do have more than we deserve of this earth’s possessions, the least we can do, the best we can do is give some of it away.  This is what Stewardship of Treasure is all about.

And we see Zacchaeus going way beyond what is expected – four times over he will repay if he had ever extorted from anybody.  And Jesus responds to him, without any further orthodoxy tests or morality tests, “Today salvation has come to this house.  You are a rich man, but you are also a just man, and you’re not just a just man, but you are a generous man.”  So justice and generosity become, in this passage, the very name of salvation.

The Spirit at work in us enables us to choose service, to reach out to others, to give of ourselves.  True, sometimes we find ourselves hiding up a tree of our own making.  Fear, anger, hurt, depression can drive us there.  But Jesus comes a-calling: Hurry down – I must come home with you.  He waits for us to make the leap, holding out his arms to catch us. 

May this meal of the Eucharist bring him into our hearts, so we can take him with us when we leave, into our lives and our world.

Paul A. Magnano

Pastor