He entered Jericho and was passing through it. A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.” So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. All who saw it began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.” Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” Then Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.”
My memory is often fuzzy, unfortunately, but I have a vivid memory of my brief pass through Jericho on a trip with Wilbur Willliams. It is a vivid memory for more than one reason. Jericho is Palestinian, for example, so I was a little nervous. There had been a couple years in the early oughts when Dr. Williams had not taken trips to Israel because of the political tensions, and this was only the second year, I think, since he had resumed. It may have been the first summer that he had started taking people back into Jericho.
We had traveled from Galilee down along the Jordan River in Palestinian territory, which in itself made me nervous. I realized that just a few miles to the West Yasser Arafat was confined to Ramalla.
Certainly some in the city were happy to see us--the merchants. We stopped at a sycamore tree that was the designated Zacchaeus stop, and someone phoned ahead to the ruins of Jericho for the shopowners and camel owners to spring to life. Of course it was no doubt a random tree someone had designated for this purpose way back when.
The story of Zacchaeus is yet another example of Jesus' compassion on sinners. We can presume from this story that Zacchaeus had cheated many people large amounts of money. But he seems to have heard of this Jesus. He seems to have heard that this Jesus. Perhaps he has heard that this Jesus has eaten with sinners in Galilee. Perhaps he has heard that this man may be the king of Israel.
Jesus doesn't disappoint. He seems to know Zacchaeus, and he invites himself to dinner. You simply didn't eat with those whose values you disagreed with. You didn't eat with those from groups that conflicted with your group. To us it seems easy for Jesus to eat with sinners. After all, we think, aren't we all sinners?
But we cannot appreciate this story with these cultural views of ours. We have to think of eating with those we don't like to be around, and we have to think of eating with people whose actions we detest. Neither the biblical authors nor the Jews had the easy comfort with sin that we do.
Zacchaeus knows what he needs to do. Perhaps it has in fact driven his curiousity about this man Jesus. Given the opportunity, he immediately commits to give half his possessions to the poor, from whom all would have thought he had stolen in the accumulation of his wealth.
What does it mean for salvation to come to his house? For Luke, salvation does not principally mean escape from God's wrath or even forgiveness for sins but restoration to health and wholeness. Today Zacchaeus has returned to Israel. Today he and his family have become whole again.
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This morning Father Jim (@ Gethsemane) shared about his recent reconciliation talks in Cyprus(?) with Muslims and (maybe?) some Jews - talks toward stopping "inter-faith" violence. I suppose he offered an example of what it is to eat and talk with people you expressly disagree with.
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