Jesus knew well how to do what conventional custom deemed the “wrong thing.” Upon entering Jericho Jesus sees Zacchaeus the tax collector who climbed a tree to see Jesus. The vociferous disgust of the crowd swells as Jesus chooses Zacchaeus as his host while in town. The crowd could only see a despised and corrupt tax collector and nothing more. Jesus could see the interiority of a man who must have already been primed for the encounter with Jesus. He climbed the tree to see Jesus yes, but he was looking, obviously, for some life transforming encounter.
During the meal with Jesus he clearly made a commitment to restitution which might well leave him on the verge of poverty. He promises half of what he owns to the poor and to return any ill-gotten gains four-fold. There probably is little if anything left for himself. A tax collector made his money by defrauding the people and Zacchaeus is a wealthy man.
While we can reflect on the many great examples of saints, like Francis of Assisi or Ignatius of Loyola who through a dramatic conversion experience shed their worldly wealth and power to embrace the poverty of the Gospel, Jesus offers a challenge to us which goes beyond divesting our riches in favor of the poor.
Jesus ate with, embraced and befriended sinners. With Zacchaeus he does so dramatically and very publicly. There is no equivocation on his part, and he left much confusion in his wake. At least one person in that crowd must have expected that Jesus would be dining in his home that evening. No one was more stunned than was Zacchaeus. He was struggling just to catch a glimpse of Jesus, he could have never expected that Jesus even notice him much less come to his home. Anyone one else would have seen Jesus’s visit as a sign of their importance, generosity, and virtuous life, not so Zacchaeus. He recognized his unworthiness evoking the intensity of his gratitude and the authenticity of his conversion. Jesus chose to eat with the most detested person in the crowd. The people knew Zacchaeus on the outside and they knew what he did to them. They thought that in knowing that, that they knew the man. Jesus confronts the crowd with their own prejudices and their haughtiness.
We must be careful not to get ourselves too caught up in the mentality of the crowd. We see with the tax collectors in the last two Gospel passages that it is often the presumed greatest sinners who are most acutely aware of their need for mercy and forgiveness. It is also true that those who presume themselves to be righteous often wish to deny the possibility of forgiveness to these sinners. Like the crowd we can get caught up in a sense of indignation at who dares to enter into the presence of God and even decide whose house Jesus is free to enter.
We know that when we see Zacchaeus in ourselves and step out of the crowd, and when we see in ourselves the penitent tax collector instead of the Pharisee, that we are on the road to reconciliation and eternal life. Hopefully, we are not simply Pharisee’s in tax collector’s clothing.
Father Garry Koch is pastor of St. Benedict Parish, Holmdel.