The Zacchaeus in us all

 

Luke 19:1-10 There’s a little bit of Zacchaeus in all of us, and definitely Zacchaeuses we can point our fingers at in the world. At first this might not sound like a compliment.  (So, keeping in mind that while the version of the story we just read made it sound like after Jesus invited himself over to Zacchaeus’ house the whole conversation between Jesus and Zacchaeus happened right there on the street in front of everyone, by the grammar of the text, it’s more likely that the rest of the story happened inside Zacchaeus’ house, away from the listening ears of the crowd). Imagine ten years after the moment we just read and sang about. Imagine trying to explain to someone new to town what went down that day with Jesus and Zacchaeus and the rest of them. It might sound something like this: Jesus of Nazareth was coming to our town! It was the most exciting thing to happen in years. Famous for lifting up the poor, healing the sick, scandalizing the powers with his talk of God’s kingdom. Everyone turned out for a glimpse, to see him for themselves, to hear him speak hope and promise. Nobody wanted to miss it. But that little rat, Zacchaeus, that traitor to his people, arrogant and conniving, who hid behind his high walls and his piles of money, he wasn’t in the crowd. Then I saw him, down the road, racing ahead of the celebration. I watched him scurry over to a tree, and then, actually climb up it! Like a little kid! Ha! Looking over his shoulder, left and right, he thought nobody was looking, then hiking up his robes and grabbing a tree limb, he pulled himself into the branches, his feet scrambling to catch hold, and finally settled into the rustling canopy, then he held still half hidden in the branches.  How humiliating for him if anyone were to see him there! Lucky me, I did! I could barely contain my glee. He could never live this down. I would see to that.  Jesus and the crowd had just about arrived right under where he was balancing like a buffoon, but before I could nudge a friend and point up at Zacchaeus, Jesus stopped walking. Everyone grew silent. Then Jesus shouted up into the tree, “Hey Zacchaeus! Hurry up and come down from there! Today I am coming to stay in your home.” Well, if Zacchaeus didn’t drop right out of those branches, the little rat. The look on his face was astonished, ecstatic. He bowed to Jesus and stammered out that he would be most welcome, then ran off home to prepare.  We were dumbfounded; what in the world? The crowd started muttering in surprise and horror. Hadn’t Jesus been invited to stay in the homes of our most respectable people? Did he not know what Zacchaeus was? And yet, he called him by name! What did this mean?  Was Jesus even who he said he was?  Well, he went. He went to the home of Zaccheaus, the filthy tax collector. The whole household had rushed around, and rumor had it they had whipped up a feast lickety-split. No big feat though, while the rest of us might have struggled to pull off a last-minute dinner party for a visiting celebrity—would have spent weeks preparing and days making things ready—Zacchaeus always had more than enough food on hand, and more than enough servants to help prepare it. While they carried on into the night behind those high walls, the whole town was on fire with the gossip. Of all the places he could’ve stayed, why did Jesus choose the home of a despicable sinner? A bad person, who had turned his back on his own people, who lied and cheated every day? What was Jesus up to? Can you believe that? It wasn’t easy to tell you this story because to tell you the truth, I can barely remember what it was like then, what he was like before.  It must be hard for you to hear too, because you do not know Zacchaeus in this way.  You know him as Zach!  Yes! This is the same Zach! The Zach who invites all who are hungry, or down on their luck, to dine with him every night, who sees those in need helps us see them too. The Zach who uses his station to look after our village, to stand up to the Romans when they try to overstep.  Are you surprised that it wasn’t always this way? There was a before and an after; what happened that day changed everything.  After Jesus had stayed in his home, much to our amazement, the very next day, and day after day after that, Zacchaeus visited each person in the village. He brought the record of taxes and revealed in detail how he had cheated us. He apologized, and then, right there, he would open his money bag and pay back four times what he’d taken over the year. Person after person, household after household, he did this. If you think a grown man getting caught with his robes tangled around a tree branch with the whole town looking up at him is humbling, imagine him looking each one of us in the face, with the record of his own wrongdoing in his hands, confessing his sin and making amends.  The day Zacchaeus came to my house, a few weeks after Jesus had stayed with him, he looked so different it was hard to not to stare. His own eyes were clear instead of troubled, his forehead soft instead of pinched, his shoulders drawn back and his back straight and proud instead of hunched and furtive. Honestly, even as he brought himself low before me, he looked taller than he had ever looked. Can you even imagine what our community would be like without him? He's our Zach, humble, brave and compassionate, our trustworthy, village tax collector, Zacchaeus.   *               *               *               *               * Zacchaeus was lost. He had lost his humanity. Cut off from his neighbors, from himself, isolated and hated, feared and ridiculed. Zacchaeus exploited his individual power to get rich off of them, and they used their collective power to mock and alienate him. He thinks he’s such a big man but look at him, the shrimp! It’s us against him!  Then Jesus came to town. Jesus doesn’t play our games, or curate his reputation. Jesus ignores our judgments and rejects our labels. In Christ there is no ‘us and them’ only ‘us all.’ We turn one another into objects—objects of desire, objects of pity, or objects of scorn. Jesus sees only people, beloved children of God, all, every single one of us. No matter how we perceive the world or portray it, there is simply no one who doesn’t already belong to God and to all the rest of us, no person whose life is not for ministry – for caring and being cared for. When Jesus looked up into that tree that day, he didn’t see a corrupt and cowardly tool of an evil regime who had cheated his neighbors and profited on the misfortune of others. Jesus saw a beloved child of God. Filled with loneliness and longing, like everyone else. Born for belonging, like everyone else. Made to care for others, like everyone else. Unique in all the world, like everyone else. Guilty of bringing pain and suffering to others, like everyone else. Trapped in sin, aka, stuck in ‘a misdirection of the gaze' , like everyone else, helpless to free himself, like everyone else. Jesus saw a ready recipient of God’s mercy and untapped agent of God’s ministry. And whatever it looked like to anyone else, however else anyone chose to interpret what was happening in that moment, didn’t matter. Because what Zaccheaus heard was: The pain you’ve caused, the choices you’ve made, the labels you’ve earned or claimed or had slapped onto you by others, these are not who you are. You are Beloved Child of God, son of Abraham, member of the household of God, able to give and receive care.  I see you, Zacchaeus. And I’d like to spend this day with you.  Jesus came to seek and saves the lost. In every one of our lives, there are times when we are lost. Lost in pain or struggle, lost in direction or hope, consumed by the flames of anger or the fog of numbness, lost in who we thought we were or where we believed we were going. We might lose ourselves, become someone we don’t recognize for a time, or be lost to each other, behind walls we can’t break through and seem to keep building higher.  But we are never lost to God. God in God’s mercy—unearned, undeserved, unlimited grace—reaches us right where we are and brings us back home to the love of God that calls us by name and calls us back to each other. God releases us from our isolation and turns our gaze back to what’s real and true and unchanging. This is never not happening. How are you and I Zacchaeus? Where are we hiding in shame, trapped in our pain, stuck in destructive choices, or locked in labels, longing to catch a glimpse of hope as it passes by, but unable to join in?   And who are our Zacchaeuses? What terrible people would we rather mock and condemn than entrust to God’s mercy and receive in God’s love?  Whom would we be horrified to see Jesus choosing? We can’t change hearts—not other people’s and not even our own—but we can hold our hearts out toward God and each other, vulnerable, in humble hospitality to the Holy One who calls us by name, and to these holy ones we’re alongside here on this planet. Ready or not, Jesus keeps showing up among us with mercy, receiving our welcome and reorienting our lives. Thanks be to God, there’s a little bit of Zacchaeus in us all. Amen. (Sin as "a misdirection of the gaze" from Simone Weil, in Waiting for God)