Sunday Reflection with Canon Robin Gibbons: 30 October 2022

Thirty First Sunday in Ordinary Time

The story of Zacchaeus, recounted by Luke (Lk 19:1-10) can be understood easily. It's a fairly straightforward account of a meeting between a rich tax collector and Jesus that ends in the conversion of the tax collector's whole manner of life. That tale in itself is a clear mirror held up for each of us to look at, like Zacchaeus we too desire to find and know Jesus and like him are called to 'repent and believe the good news', so when we look into that mirror we can ask ourselves, 'am I like Zacchaeus in my openness to the truth of the gospel and the love of the forgiving Christ ?'

However there is more to think about isn't there? The lovely imagery of Luke, a short man, wanting to see but prevented by the crowds, climbing up a sycamore tree to gaze at Jesus passing by, catching his eye and being asked to play host at a meeting later on in the evening-despite the obvious concern and annoyance of the crowd, and then the open repentance, repayment and restoration of anything extorted by Zacchaeus. Those final words of Jesus sum it all up : 'For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost'.

(Lk 19:10) But there is more, I am more convinced than ever that this story is definitively a mirror that Jesus holds up for our gaze-there is a definite strategy in Luke's portrait, for are we not called by Christ always to seek and delve into what he teaches, look at the many layers placed there for our examination?

Might I offer a partial help? In this story we are asked to examine ourselves in terms of three images, Zacchaeus himself, the crowd and Jesus. Let's start with Zacchaeus. Despite himself and his despised profession there is a layer of goodness in the midst of the unsavoury and callous behaviour one would expect of somebody big into extortion. He wants to meet the one he has obviously heard much about, but he is not afraid of Jesus, unlike so many tax collectors and Pharisees we see in the gospels. That to my mind shows a singular honesty in him. Sinner he may be, corrupt official he is, yet within him is a truthfulness that often goes with acknowledgment of sin, I would say he knows himself well. His climbing a sycamore tree is not an incidental image, for these trees were biblical symbols of regeneration, climbing up he is secure, he can see and dialogue with Jesus, but called down he is called to take the plunge into the unknown, to a new life with Christ. It is then he finds himself in the company of the Lord who comes as a friend to him, rather than the other way around. It is then that his half formed character, his low stature truly becomes filled with that Spirit and he makes restitution for all done wrong. That is also our first mirror image, here we too are, let's pray about that and enter into the connection and contact Christ has with us not only in our homes, but deep within our hearts and the challenge to become authentic for His sake.

The second image is the crowd, in a way this is much easier to deal with because it places us where we often are, biased, aggressively righteous, annoyed at things, and if we are religious often complaining perhaps about the way things are in Church and parish, in faith and theology, the imbalance of power and leadership (or not) of the clerics and the powerlessness of the laity. You can make up your own list! But the mirror question here is not the obvious, we know crowds, groups, factions can be destructive and wrong - yet that last phrase of Jesus about seeking the lost, applies to faithful religious people as well. There is a danger in religion, it can take over areas it should not, and cloak in piety and custom living encounters with the untrammelled Christ who calls us to seek him in our world of the here and now. So are we prepared yet again to keep on examining ourselves as a group, as a Church and keep a check on our prejudices?

The third image is Jesus himself, on who we are expected to model ourselves and by whose teachings especially the Beatitudes, we are expected to try and live. The mirror here shows us where Jesus might be found, but also how we are to deal with His presence in others especially the lost-we are to go the extra mile, give others the benefit of the doubt if they claim transparent honesty, we are, as he did, to see in sinners redemptive love at work and help make it work! Like Jesus we are to call our Zacchaeus people to come down and welcome us right into their lives, but as we do, unlike the Jesus who is not a sinner, we do it as equals who also need forgiveness and in that humility discover together mercy and love. The name Zacchaeus means pure or innocent in heart, and that is what he became, this is what we too are called to be. Amen .

Lectio

Thomas Merton

No Man is an Island

"God has left sin in the world in order that there may be forgiveness: not only the secret forgiveness by which He Himself cleanses our souls, but the manifest forgiveness by which we have mercy on one another and so give expression to the fact that He is living, by His mercy, in our own hearts."

Tomáš Halík

Patience with God: The story of Zaccaheus is continuing in us

"The only person capable of addressing Zacchaeus, however, is someone for whom those people hidden in the branches of a fig tree are not strangers or aliens - someone who doesn't disdain them, who has concern for them, someone who can respond to what happens in their hearts and minds."

"Truth happens in the course of dialogue. There is always a temptation to allow our answers to bring to an end the process of searching, as if the topic of the conversation was a problem that has now been solved. But when a fresh question arrives, the unexhausted depths of mystery show through once more. Let it be said over and over again: faith is not a question of problems but of mystery, so we must never abandon the path of seeking and asking."

Syriac Dialogue Poem

On Zacchaeus (5th/6thC)

On the Sinful Woman I 2, 5-7 (trans. Brock, Sinful Woman)

The Compassionate Doctor turned aside;

towards sinners did He direct His path,

showing humility towards them

so that they might come to Him without fear. . . .

He caught Zacchaeus from the fig tree

and Zebedee's sons in the boat,

likewise the Samaritan woman beside the well,

and the sinful one from Simon's house.

The sinful woman heard the report

that He was dining in Simon's house;

she said in her heart "I will go along,

and He will forgive me all I have done wrong.

I am yearning actually to see the Son of God

who has clothed himself in a body.

Just as he forgives Zacchaeus his sins,

so in his grace he will have compassion on me."