The 33rd Tuesday in Ordinary Time, November 17, 2020

Luke 19:1-10

At that time Jesus came to Jericho and intended to pass through the town. Now a man there named Zacchaeus, who was a chief tax collector and also a wealthy man, was seeking to see who Jesus was; but he could not see him because of the crowd, for he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree in order to see Jesus, who was about to pass that way. When he reached the place, Jesus looked up and said, “Zacchaeus, come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house.” And he came down quickly and received him with joy. When they saw this, they began to grumble, saying, “He has gone to stay at the house of a sinner.” But Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Behold, half of my possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor, and if I have extorted anything from anyone I shall repay it four times over.” And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house because this man too is a descendant of Abraham. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost.”  

The tax collector Zacchaeus lived in a small town outside the large and very ancient city of Jericho.  Although quite wealthy from plying his trade, he could not live in the city, for the work that made him rich also made him a pariah among the Jews.  He was in effect a collaborator with the Romans.  In addition, as was the habit of tax collectors, he kept a certain amount of the payments for himself through overcharging, and he was in a position in which he could extort people.  The Romans did not care what practices their tax collectors employed so long as they got their cut.  And so Zacchaeus dwelt on the outskirts of the city in a big house of his own, frequented only by other pariahs, male and female.  

Now, Jesus intended to pass through Jericho.  He did not mean to stay there overnight although the sun was now descending.  He seemed intent on passing the night outdoors, as he often had done before.  The crowd moved with him, waiting for his words, for miracles.  Many came out from Jericho to see him and to go along with the crowd for a while.  The crowd would have been visible for quite a ways, and a crowd of such a size at this time of year would have brought people in from the fields to see what was going on.  We are not told what Zacchaeus the tax collector was doing when the crowd attracted his attention.  As members of the multitude began to drift past him, he would have asked questions and he would have learned that Jesus of Nazareth was coming.  He knew this name, and the reputation behind it.  This was the prophet, the messiah, the healer.  Zacchaeus wants to see him and to hear him speak for himself, but aware of his status among the Jews, he knows he is unlikely to be allowed to draw too near him.  He consoles himself with merely catching a glimpse of Jesus.  But looking at the crowd, he realizes that, as a short man, he has no chance of this.  Then he walks along and catches sight of a grove of sycamore trees.  He climbs one, putting his feet on the thick, low hanging branches as though they were the rungs of a ladder.

Zacchaeus stares down.  Jesus pauses and looks up.  The eyes of the two men meet.  Life and joy flow through Zacchaeus and a brilliant light banishes the ambition, greed, and lust that had darkened his mind for so long.  He is a new man with that look of Jesus.  The tiny seed of faith that somehow had been planted in the tiniest bit of good soil in his soul now sprouts and grows with great intensity.  “Zacchaeus, come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house.”  The Lord knew his name!  He had called him by his name!  By speaking to Zacchaeus in this way, the Lord shows that he had planned to stay with him that evening all along.  Zacchaeus had thought that he was the one trying to see, but Jesus shows that he has been looking for him.  Zacchaeus, responding to the stirring of grace, had sought the Lord, and in so doing presented himself to him in a way he could not have imagined.

“Come down!” Jesus calls.  Obeying his inspiration, he climbs up the tree to see the Lord.  He does all that a human can do.  From that point, the Lord calls him and gives him the grace to come to him, to leave behind what he could attain with his human efforts and to live now by the strength of grace.  “Come down quickly!”  He is not to take his time but to hasten at the Lord’s word of command.  He has a new Master.  This is his chance to show how readily he obeys him.  “I must stay at your house.”  The Lord does not say, I will stay at your house, or even ask if he may stay at his house.  Jesus tells him that he must stay at his house, that is, in his heart, and he will do so “today”, now.  The use of “must” here rather than “will” is significant: Jesus is not speaking of an action he will take in the future which will run its course, but that he is coming now to his house with no intention of leaving.  In fact, though we can reject grace and so lose it, it never leaves us through wearing out or some kind of insufficiency.  

And Zacchaeus did come down quickly, and he received the Lord, embracing him with a joy he had not known himself capable of, itself increased by the joy he saw in the Lord’s eyes.  And then he began to bring him to his home.  The locals in the crowd certainly knew this man, and probably some had suffered at his hands.  They grumbled, not untruthfully, “He has gone to stay at the house of a sinner.”  And then Zacchaeus stopped in his tracks.  He faced the Lord and the crowd.  “Behold, half of my possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor, and if I have extorted anything from anyone I shall repay it four times over.”  These are tremendous promises.  He will bankrupt himself doing this.  But they are something more than promises.  The Greek text has the verb “to give” in the present tense, not the future: I give (am giving, do give) to the poor; I repay (I am repaying, I do repay it) four times over. Repentance and restitution do not begin tomorrow, but right now.  The Lord says to him, Come down quickly.  He replies to the Lord, I repay those I have wronged quickly.

“Today salvation has come to this house because this man too is a descendant of Abraham. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost.”  Jesus is speaking to the crowd here, but for Zacchaeus to hear him as well.  “Salvation has come to this house.”  Jesus peaking in Hebrew or Aramaic, the people would have heard the One named “God saves” announcing that “salvation” has come to his house.  It is clear what Jesus was telling them about himself: he is not merely named for “salvation”, but he is himself salvation.  “This man too is a descendent of Abraham”, by faith.  St. Paul will speak extensively on this in his Letter to the Romans.  Here, let us remember what St. John the Baptist said: “I tell you that God is able of these stones to raise up children to Abraham” (Matthew 3, 9).

Those who had come out hoping to see a miracle saw a great one on this occasion: the turning of a stone, hardened in sin and unbelief, into a son of Abraham.

We see how the Lord seeks us out and inspires us to do great things.  Let us not put off the inspirations but to do them “quickly”, “today”, “now”, and so offer him hospitality.