Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons - 3 November 2013

Duccio - 1336

31st Sunday of the Year C

Have you ever suffered from the ‘unjustly dealt with syndrome’? I expect you have, we all have and it rankles, annoys makes us feel really cross that people do not understand or listen to our point of view. It happens all the time, it happened to Zacchaeus when people moaned and gossiped about Jesus going to stay at his house. Heaven knows what the gossips said, we aren’t told, but we do know Zacchaeus was having none of it. Luke says that he ‘stood’ his ground. I wish I had Zacchaeus gutsy behaviour, maybe because he was a sinner and outcast he had nothing to lose, no reputation to think of, no place in the structure of polite and influential society. Whatever he was, that little throw away statement by Luke shows us somebody very special and important to Jesus, somebody Jesus trusted to be his friend.

I really like that image of trust because this is a wonderful picture of Jesus who is our friend, brother and the healer of our souls being there with us too. Thinking of Zacchaeus whose small stature meant he had to climb up a tree to see Jesus, gives me that hint of change we must make in our situation. Perhaps you and I see Jesus from only one perspective; maybe we crowd him out with the many goings on of our lives? Can we shift our horizon too?

There is a real challenge to us in this Gospel, like Zacchaeus are we able to stand up for our faith, our truth, and our conscience ? It’s a tough call, but we have the company of so many who have already done it and who are there, that communion of saints we celebrate in feastdays and at each Eucharist. They help, Zacchaeus helps us, the Lord is with us too. Salvation has come to us and binds us into the family of Abraham our father in faith, binds us to seek out for Christ the lost throughout our world, binds us to the three faiths of Abraham.

Christian De Chergé, monk and martyr of Tiberhine wrote this: ‘Jews, Christians or Muslims, we will need always to enter into the vaster design which continually explodes the petty boundaries of our quick exclusions and intransigencies; for truly God desires everyone to be saved’.

May Saint Zacchaeus pray for us. Amen.