This morning’s Gospel reading is Luke 19:1–10:

At that time, Jesus came to Jericho and intended to pass through the town. Now a man there named Zacchaeus, who was a chief tax collector and also a wealthy man, was seeking to see who Jesus was; but he could not see him because of the crowd, for he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree in order to see Jesus, who was about to pass that way.

When he reached the place, Jesus looked up and said, “Zacchaeus, come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house.” And he came down quickly and received him with joy. When they all saw this, they began to grumble, saying, “He has gone to stay at the house of a sinner.”

But Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Behold, half of my possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor, and if I have extorted anything from anyone I shall repay it four times over.” And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house because this man too is a descendant of Abraham. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost.”

For whom did Jesus come? Today’s reading brings that question into sharp focus in this gospel reading of the repentant tax collector. This encounter with Zacchaeus comes to us as history rather than parable, and it illustrates both the love and mercy of the Lord as well as our necessity to repent and conform to His will. However, to discern its meaning, we need to pay close attention to our first reading from Wisdom, which addresses another key theological point on which our path to salvation rests.

For centuries, theologians debated whether the duality of good and evil also applied to the Creation and the duality of the material and spiritual worlds. Was the material evil, and the spiritual pure goodness? Did our concupiscence of materiality reflect a need to despise the world? The Gnostics argued that very point, to the point of believing in a god or demi-god of the material world apart from the Lord, an argument that still appears in some forms in more recent belief systems.

To believe that, though, one would have to believe in a non-omnipotent Lord, as well as a system of polytheism. The author of Wisdom — traditionally considered the written record of oral teachings of Solomon — addresses that very issue, emphasis mine:

Before the LORD the whole universe is as a grain from a balance or a drop of morning dew come down upon the earth. But you have mercy on all, because you can do all things; and you overlook people’s sins that they may repent. For you love all things that are and loathe nothing that you have made; for what you hated, you would not have fashioned. And how could a thing remain, unless you willed it; or be preserved, had it not been called forth by you? But you spare all things, because they are yours, O LORD and lover of souls, for your imperishable spirit is in all things! Therefore you rebuke offenders little by little, warn them and remind them of the sins they are committing, that they may abandon their wickedness and believe in you, O LORD!

This reading clearly shows that all of God’s creation is good and loved by Him, even when it turns away or against him. The fault is not in the material world, or the spiritual world either, but in the choices made of free will in both. It is those choices that turn to evil, either by malice or by carelessness, and those choices are the sins which separate us from the God who loves us.

Understanding that reminds us that our sins are the issue, and it is incumbent upon us to move back to the Lord. In our Gospel today, that is precisely what Zacchaeus does — he bridges the gap he created through his sin to reach out to Christ after He reaches out to Zacchaeus.

To understand this, one has to put Zacchaeus’ sins in their proper perspective. Tax collectors were not analogous at all to today’s IRS auditors. They were collaborators with an occupying military force, on top of which they frequently stole from their fellow Judeans by overtaxing them and keeping the difference. They betrayed their communities in every way possible while publicly demonstrating the power of their wretched wealth. In modern times, such collaborators are to this day executed when occupations fail, and not exclusively through judicial processes. They are loathed, and for good reason.

Clearly, Zacchaeus has plenty of reasons for atonement, and just as clearly knew that to be the case. Zacchaeus understood his sins and admitted to them, at least internally at that moment, rather than rationalize them away. When this powerful teacher is walking through town, what does Zacchaeus do? He climbs onto a tree to see Him — because he was short in stature, but also because he was desperate for some kind of connection to his faith and for redemption for abandoning it.

After having climbed the tree, what takes place next? Jesus invites Himself into the home of Zacchaeus — this execrable traitor, thief, and collaborator. This led to grumbling, according to Luke’s Gospel, and likely a lot more than just grumbling. However, Zacchaeus comes down and declares his sins publicly, pledges to atone for them to his victims “four times over,” and share his wealth with the poor as penance. Jesus then proclaims Zacchaeus’ salvation and declares that His mission is to “seek and save what was lost.”

God never stopped loving Zacchaeus; Zacchaeus stopped loving God. And in his shame, just as with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, Zacchaeus hid from Him until Jesus came to open the path for reconciliation. But to get there, Zacchaeus has to at least move toward the Lord by climbing the tree and recognizing his sins before that pathway opens up. The Lord doesn’t force His way to Zacchaeus or anyone else, nor does He change truth and abandon His own will in the process.

In that sense, this reminds me of a passage I’ve quoted before from the end of the 1981 film The Chosen, a very fine and touching film about conflicts between fathers and sons and the Hasidim and other Jews in the US after World War II.  The protagonist, Reuven Malter, tells of a story in the Talmud about a king and his rebellious and estranged son:

The son was told, ‘Return to your father.’ The son replied that he could not. The king then sent a messenger to the son with the message… ‘Come back to me as far as you can, and I will meet you the rest of the way.’

I love this passage for the comfort it provides, in knowing that the Father has such love for His children that He is willing to come the rest of the way to save us. To do this, though, we must first acknowledge that we need saving and wish to live within the Father’s love again. The story of Jesus and Zacchaeus models this very message from the Lord to all His sons and daughters. We cannot make ourselves divine and accomplish a full reunion with the Lord no matter how much we atone. We can only go so far, and no farther, thanks to our predilection to sin and the weight of that upon us. The Lord sends Jesus to meet us where we are when we choose to reconcile, and bring us the rest of the way home.

Zacchaeus did exactly this; he chose to reconcile, went as far as he could to encounter the Lord, and Jesus took him the rest of the way. And while this is written as history rather than parable, there is no avoiding the analogy of Zacchaeus having climbed a tree to effect that reconciliation. Jesus Himself would climb a tree of sorts to achieve that full reconciliation for Zacchaeus and everyone else who chooses to align themselves to the will of the Lord.

To achieve salvation means to make choices between good and evil, between the Father’s will and sinfulness. We have to climb that same tree to put our sinfulness to death in order to live within the Trinitarian life of the Lord, on the path that Jesus opens for us. We must bring our sinfulness and all of the rationalizations and obstinacy that sustains it to the foot of the cross and recognize them for the lies they are. The Father beckons and welcomes us no matter what those sins may be, but on His terms — but He loves us so much that He will meet us at any point along that path once we have made the decision to love Him in truth.

This brings us back to the first question: for whom did Jesus come? The Gospel reading today makes that clear: “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost.” And what was lost? All of us — all of us were lost, rich and poor, powerful and humble, of all nations. We only need to recognize the path for us to be found again, and the best way to see that path is to climb that tree and recognize just how lost we have been.

The front page image is a detail from “Jesus and Zacchaeus” by Gillis van Coninxloo, unknown date in artist’s lifetime (1544-1607). On display at the Ekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts. Via Wikimedia Commons. 

“Sunday Reflection” is a regular feature, looking at the specific readings used in today’s Mass in Catholic parishes around the world. The reflection represents only my own point of view, intended to help prepare myself for the Lord’s day and perhaps spark a meaningful discussion. Previous Sunday Reflections from the main page can be found here.