XXIII Pentecost – October 31, 2010 – Year C, Proper 26
This week’s Gospel lesson from Luke has to do with the universal longing to have a closer relationship with God and the surprising lengths to which folks will sometimes go to bring that closer relationship about.
The narrator introduces Zacchaeus to us as the chief tax collector of Jericho, a man who had to climb a tree so he could “see who Jesus was”.
Whether it was a tree or a shrub or how high his perch actually was really doesn’t matter; he was too short to stand out in the crowd so he did what he needed to do; he maneuvered himself into a better position—let’s call it: “The Zacchaeus Maneuver”.
Now, since Zacchaeus was a fairly important, if rather unpopular official in the city, we’ll assume that he had joined the crowd because he had heard of Jesus and wanted to know more about him.
(I’m suggesting, in other words, that Zacchaeus didn’t just happen to be in the crowd that day—though that is not beyond the realm of possibility.)
In a way it doesn’t matter how Zacchaeus came to be in the crowd that day—to satisfy his curiosity or by happenstance—once he was there he found himself immediately and powerfully drawn to Jesus so that he wanted to do more than just get a glimpse of him.
He wanted to “see who Jesus was”, which is another way of saying that he wanted to meet Jesus face to face.
So he ran ahead of the crowd that was following Jesus and climbed a tree, not so he could see Jesus, but so Jesus would see him.
And I suppose, given the fact that tax collectors were not particularly liked in this town, that the crowd let Zacchaeus know pretty quickly just how ridiculous they thought he looked sitting in that tree: they probably laughed themselves silly.
Not that it mattered to Zacchaeus; he certainly wasn’t used to people showing him much respect anyway, so what was the loss of a last bit of dignity?
Besides, as I am sometimes wont to say, he had bigger fish to fry.
Imagine Zacchaeus’ surprise, then, when Jesus looked up in the tree and called him by name!
“Zacchaeus, hurry and come down,” Jesus said to him, “for I must stay at your house today.”
The one line of a Sunday school song that I can remember from way back when goes like this: “Zacchaeus, Zacchaeus, come down from the tree. For I’m going to your house for tea.”
Now, it really doesn’t matter how Jesus came to know Zacchaeus’ name.
What matters is that in a split second, in that single moment of mutual recognition, everything changed.
Zacchaeus’ life was never the same again.
The details aren’t that important, but Zacchaeus was a changed man.
It must have felt as if he had been born all over again.
If he had been greedy or miserly before—we can only make assumptions based on the uncharitable reaction of the bystanders and his own reference to his having possibly defrauded someone—now he was generous—perhaps to a fault, electing to give away half of his possessions to the poor and offering to pay back fourfold any ill-gotten gains.
We have no way of knowing how happy he might have been before all this happened, but somehow we can sense that, once he had made his move, the move we’ve elected to call “The Zacchaeus Maneuver”, his happiness knew no bounds.
Well, we know what made Zacchaeus take leave of his senses enough to scurry up a tree in full view of the multitude, but it might be worth considering for a moment why Zacchaeus found himself drawn to Jesus that particular day.
Zacchaeus climbed the tree because he wanted to meet Jesus personally and that seemed to be the only way he could do it.
But what made him want to meet Jesus in the first place?
That question was answered for Zacchaeus when Jesus called him by name and told him to come down from the tree and take him to his house.
That’s when Zacchaeus realized that Jesus had wanted to meet him as much he had wanted to meet Jesus.
That’s when Zacchaeus must have sensed that God longed for a closer relationship with him as much as he longed for a closer relationship with God.
And God, in the person of Jesus, the Christ, had made the first move.
Are there circumstances that are particularly favorable for us to meet God and for God to meet us?
For the ten folks suffering from leprosy that we heard about a few weeks back it was being hopelessly mired in the depths of their misery that made them sense God’s presence in Jesus and turn to him for help as a last resort.
For Zacchaeus, the tax collector, oddly enough, it may well have been the very experience of great material success that set him to wondering if there weren’t, perhaps, a little more to life, maybe even a great deal more to life than what he was already experiencing.
Someone has described the universal longing for a closer relationship with God as “the God-shaped hole in our souls” that must be filled over and over again for us to be satisfied.
In the case of the ten suffering from leprosy it was their overwhelming sense of inadequacy in the face of crushing circumstances that led them to make the move toward the God who had already made the move toward them.
In the case of Zacchaeus, the tax collector, I suspect that it was hardly an overwhelming sense of inadequacy, but, nonetheless, it was enough of a sense of inadequacy in the face of a world which may have no longer had the appeal that it once had that made Zacchaeus make his move and find that God was already there waiting for him.
“For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.”
I find myself strangely comforted by Jesus’ concluding statement because thinking about Zacchaeus’ fateful encounter with Jesus helps me to understand Luke’s use of the word “lost” a little better.
All of us have felt lost on occasion.
I know I have.
Feeling lost once in a while may well be one of the trademarks of the human condition (and it may well be related in a positive way to our need to fill the “God-shaped hole in our souls” not just once, but again and again).
But it is precisely when we feel more lost than we’ve ever felt before that it helps to remember who it is who is out there looking for us and who has promised to keep looking for us until every one of us is found.