Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4 Psalm 119:137-144
2 Thessalonians 1:1-5 (6-10) 11-12 Luke 19:1-10
Lectionary Link
Is there hope for the dishonest greedy rich people of the world? If we believe the story about Zacchaeus, we believe that the message of Jesus can transform those who are dishonest, greedy, and rich into those who restore and perform significant reparations for their greedy dishonest ways.
Who is Zacchaeus and what could he represent as a trope in a Gospel story being told within the communities which were reading the Gospel of Luke?
The Gospels often portray Jesus as interacting with tax-collectors, publicans and sinners.
The tax collector in the Gospel setting, was presented as a figure who was a traitor to his people. The tax collector was a Jewish person, who collected taxes on behalf of the Roman authorities, from his own people whose land was occupied by the Romans.
A tax collector could get wealthy by exacting his own share of the tax allotments. A tax collector was one who would have found it difficult to be Jew, adhering to the ritual purity customs of the synagogue, because he would have to interact so closely with the non-Jewish authorities for his occupation and his very status in the synagogue would be compromised.
The price that a tax collector had to pay for dishonest wealth was the loss of social acceptance. He really wasn't welcome to fellowship with the Roman authorities and he was ostracized by his fellow Jews from whom he had to collect taxes.
Zacchaeus represented perhaps an entire class of Jews in the first century who lived in the cities of the Roman Empire and who had to do business with Gentiles on a regular basis. Such constant interaction with Gentiles meant that in they had lost a sustaining connection with their heritage. They were, as it were, lapsed Jews in their ritual practice of Judaism.
Certain mystical social clubs arose throughout the cities of the Roman Empire became a magnet for "lapsed" people, persons who had lost contact with a significant social identity group because of the nature of their interaction with the commercial circles within the Roman Empire.
These social clubs which came to be called churches, were like a new extended family identity group. The story of Zacchaeus encapsulates the kind of social health, social salvation which was being provided by the spread of these home clubs, called churches.
An encounter with the Risen Christ, gave a person entrance into a new family, a new club, a place of significant belonging. The belonging experienced in the fellowship of these social club provided a space for people to get free from their states of ostracized loneliness.
But what was the cost of initiation into this new social club, the fellowships known as churches? The cost was the fruit of transformed behaviors; dishonesty to honesty. Stealing to restoration and reparations.
In the Zacchaeus Gospel story, one can find an identity story of the stories of the newly arrived members of the fellowship of the church.
And what is the fellowship of the church today? It is the gathering of people who have the story of a mystical encounter with the Risen Christ which has changed their lives and who from that encounter have said to Jesus, "You make me want to be a better person." And then begin to the live those better ways of being a better person, the ways of love, justice, restoration, reconciliation and reparations.
Zacchaeus is symbolic of the converted person by the charisma of the grace of Christ, and who is given a place to belong in the family of Christ.
Let us today be those who have been converted by the Risen Christ, and who have come to belong within the fellowship of Christ and who now offer the experience of Christian belonging to all who want it. Amen.
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