• 31 (C) Ordinary Time, November 4, 2007
• Theme: Jesus Reads Hearts

• Who was Zacchaeus?
• St. Luke tells us that Zacchaeus was the chief tax collector in Jericho, a city that was on a primary trade route.
• Because of its location, it provided lots of taxes for the Romans and a very good living for tax collectors, especially the chief tax collector.
• The city was also a popular vacation spot for the wealthy.
• In the barren surroundings of Palestine, Jericho was an oasis of fruit trees and greenery.
• The rich had quite the life there, and Zacchaeus was one of them.
• In contrast, the subservient Jews were burdened with the unreasonable taxes imposed by the Romans and collected by the tax collectors like Zacchaeus
• Therefore, Zacchaeus was an outcast in his own community –
• A person despised by his own people.
• In addition, earlier in Luke’s Gospel Jesus had criticized the insensitive wealthy class who had gained wealth on the backs of the poor:
• “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom” (18:25).
• Zacchaeus and his kind were not popular people in the community.
• Surely many of those who had suffered at the hands of the tax collectors were in the crowd that day.
• Jesus could have challenged Zacchaeus forcefully as he had done to other officials who abused the poor.
• But that is not what Jesus did.
• He often breaks the pattern of what we people expect.
• Instead, Jesus read the heart of Zacchaeus and revealed God’s grace to him as he does to us today.

• In this story there are echoes of today’s first reading from the Wisdom literature:
• The universe is not small.
• Ever since photographs have come down from the Hubble telescope, we see how vast the universe is.
• There could be billions of galaxies like our Milky Way in the universe, and in each galaxy literally millions or even trillions of stars.
• The encounter between Zacchaeus and Jesus exemplifies what Wisdom describes poetically:
• “God of power and mercy…you have mercy on all”; “you love all things”; “you spare all things.”

• Who is Jesus?
• There certainly were plenty of deserving and respected people among those who lined the route that day.
• We could have been among them:
• Hard working and needy people trying to get a glimpse of a dynamic religious leader upon whom so many had hung their hopes.
• Why did not Jesus pick out one of them and go to the home of a respectable and religious person?
• Why Zacchaeus?
• This story reminds me of the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican that we heard last week.
• The Pharisee – a religious man went away from the temple humbled because his self-serving prayer was not heard.
• The Publican – a tax collector and an outcast – left the temple justified, because his humble prayer was for God’s mercy on him a sinner.
• Today Luke follows with the story of another outcast - Zacchaeus
• Had we been there that day and heard the exchange between Jesus and Zacchaeus, we might have been among the grumblers?
• However, without a doubt, Jesus saw that Zacchaeus had a sincere heart.
• The fact that Christ liked him seemed to have an immediate effect on Zacchaeus:
• “I give half my belongings to the poor. . . . If I have defrauded anyone in the least I pay him back fourfold.”
• Who is Jesus? – He eats with outcasts and sinners.

• Zacchaeus kept his eyes on Jesus
• “Zacchaeus came down from the tree and received him with joy.”
• Joy has been a theme in Luke.
• We are coming to the end of Luke’s gospel as we get ready to close out the liturgical year, but joy has been with us since the beginning of Luke.
• Remember the joy of the shepherds when the angels announced Jesus’ birth to them (2: 10);
• Or the joy that Jesus says comes to those who “hear the word and receive it’ (8:13).
• Later in this gospel, the resurrected Jesus will appear to the eleven and Luke will tell us they were “still incredulous for sheer joy and wonder” (24:41).
• Joy is what happens when people hear the good news.
• That’s the joy Zacchaeus had the day Jesus invited himself to dinner at the chief tax collector’s home.
• The Gospel that we preach is about God’s willingness to extend grace to those who have done nothing to deserve it.

• Zacchaeus gets the point; he accepts the grace Jesus offered him.
• Grace has changed Zacchaeus’ life.
• He can now see—even though the crowd remains blind to what God is offering to all of us through Jesus.

• However, as we see here being a Christian is not a private affair.
• We cannot stay in the tree and just savor the words of Jesus and his company.
• We cannot hide our faith in this church, even though this is a special place.
• Zacchaeus took Jesus home with him and his family members were the first beneficiaries of this grace-filled meeting with Jesus.

• The story of Zacchaeus shows us that the first, most important moment for us is our meeting with Christ.
• There he addresses us personally and offers us grace.
• There we set about to make necessary changes in our lives.
• But we don’t stay in that place.
• We go to the other locations in our lives, changed by grace, filled with joy and resolved to live our renewed lives wherever we find ourselves - home, work, school - the whole world.
• (Among others, cf. Jude Siciliano, O.P.)

• Let God’s Spirit – the Spirit of Jesus – reign in us.
• Amen

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