Homily – 31st Sunday Cycle “C”
Jesus claims at the end of the gospel passage today: “The Son of Man has come to search out and save what was lost.” This word “lost” is interesting, and essential to our understanding: it does not mean damned, or doomed or vanished; it means out of its own place, in the wrong place. That’s what we mean most of the time when we say we’ve lost our car keys.
A man or woman is lost when he or she has wandered away from God. We can find our way to the wrong places in life, the wrong paths, the wrong directions, no direction at all. We are found when we once again take our rightful place as obedient children in the household and family of our heavenly Father. Again, this is what Jesus says when he speaks of himself as the Good Shepherd, leaving the 99 and going in search of the one sheep that is lost.
Jesus responds to Zacchaeus as a lost sheep of the House of Israel, one of Abraham’s sons. Zacchaeus was very wealthy, hated and despised: a tax-collector for the Romans in an occupied country. Certainly an extortionist and exploiter. He was rich but he wasn’t happy; Zacchaeus was an outcast, who had heard of this wandering teacher, Jesus, who was rumored to be kind and forgiving toward tax collectors and all kinds of sinners.
Zacchaeus is determined to see this Jesus, but he is short of stature (or, “vertically challenged,” as we say in this politically correct age) - he can’t see over the crowd around Jesus - and his neighbors are not making room for the likes of him! But Zacchaeus didn’t get rich by giving up easily and not having an alternate plan: he climbs a tree! It’s along the road down which Jesus will walk. It may be curiosity, it may be worldly, but it is the beginning of grace. You might say that Zacchaeus, up in that tree, is ripe for the picking!
And Jesus picks him! Jesus comes to the tree, looks up, and says: “Zacchaeus, hurry down. I mean to stay at your house today.” Jesus invites himself into Zacchaeus’ house, into his life. And look at the irony: Just as Jesus calls Zacchaeus to come back to his rightful place in God’s family, the crowd jumps to the conclusion that Jesus, not Zacchaeus, is in the wrong place. They murmur: “He has gone to a sinner’s house as a guest.”
It’s worth noting that, nearly 2000 years later, the Church Jesus founded is still exercising the same bad taste in people as its founder did; people still murmur about Jesus’ Church: that it spends too much of its time and attention and treasure on the poor, on the homeless, on the oppressed, on immigrants, on criminals in prison and even on death row; that it condemns convenient, useful actions like abortion and euthanasia, that the Church condemns too easily and too often what people feel like choosing, and forgives too easily people whom others feel like despising and condemning.
So Jesus reaches up and plucks down Zacchaeus with grace-much to the crowd’s distaste. But now it is Zacchaeus’ move: Zacchaeus must let grace change him, and change is painful. That’s why all of us are tempted to resist God’s grace so often. But Zacchaeus does let the grace of Jesus change him: he takes steps to show Jesus and all the community that he is a changed man. He is famous for and defined by his money: very well, he will use what he owns to show what he has now become-he will give half his belongings to the poor; he will pay back anyone he cheated four times over. Jesus is very proud of him; Jesus always calls a sinner to a change of life, not just a change of words or sentiments. It is not enough for Zacchaeus to merely admire or yearn for a different path, back to the right place in the heavenly Father’s kingdom-he has to change paths, change directions, as Jesus has called him to do. When he does so, Jesus says, approvingly: “Today salvation has come to this house, for this is what it means to be a son of Abraham.”
This is what St. Paul means in that second reading about Jesus being glorified in the Christian and the Christian being glorified in Jesus: true parents and children; true of students and teachers. True of Zacchaeus in the gospel today. True of us as well.
We can be “lost” or “out of place” or “in the wrong place” in any number of ways: a temptation or sin we refuse to take a step against; help we refuse to ask for, from God and from others, because we are afraid or proud; reconciling or forgiving we are afraid to step toward, because we are afraid or proud or angry or bitter, or any combination thereof; minds we have made up about, or hearts we have closed toward this person or that, this group or that; obsessions with this idea or that (like the Thessalonians with their fear and anxiety about the Second Coming of Christ-they can’t focus on anything else!)
Perhaps we know we are out of place, or lost, a bit or a lot. We’ve gone so far as to wish for a different path, a change of direction, but we are still “up in the tree.” Well, we are in Jesus’ house right now; his word has been proclaimed to us; within minutes we will receive his body and blood in Holy Communion. He says to each of us, calling us by name: “Hurry down. I mean to stay at your house today.” That is the invitation of grace: Jesus invites himself inside you, inside the “house,” the dwelling of His Holy Spirit-your mind and heart. Now it is your move, as it was Zacchaeus’: maybe you and I can’t help losing our car keys, but we can help losing our souls-with Jesus’ grace, they don’t have to end up in wrong places, on wrong paths, “lost.” Jesus says that he has come to search us out and save us. Each of us needs to take courage from the story of Zacchaeus, to hear Jesus call, to know what exactly “hurry down” involves in our own case, and then, of course, we need to hurry down to our right place, at the Savior’s side.
By Most Rev. George H. Niederauer
