Written by If you are a four month old baby here in the UK, since your birth you will have lived through four Chancellors, three Home Secetaries, three Prime Ministers and two monarchs. On Tuesday the UK got its youngest Prime Minister of modern times who, also, happens to be one of the shortest – he’s just under 5.6 in height (the same as Winston Churchill). So, as one joker put it, the shortest serving Prime Minister in British history has been succeeded by the shortest serving Prime Minister in British history.
According to the Office of Mational Statistics, the average height of a man today in the K is 5 feet 9 inches. Back in Our Lord’s time, the average height was nearly the same (5.5) as the new PM. So for the lead character in today’s Gospel, Zacchaeus, to be described as being so ‘short’ that he had to climb a tree to see Jesus (because the people blocking his view), indicates just how short he must have been. And he, like the hero in last Sunday’s Gospel, ws a tax collector.
Zacchaeus, like everyone in his profession, was despised by fellow Jews for being an agent of the Roman government. They were loathed not just because they worked for the foreign power but also because they could be ruthless and merciless is their work. They could learn from informants who had harvested a bumper crop, or made a profitable deal in the marketplace, and then show up to demand a cut both for the government and for themselves. That Zacchaeus is described by St Luke as “a wealthy man” shows just how successful he was in getting the job done. So, understandably, he was despised and shunned in decent society.
Interestingly, however, some tax agents like him were conflicted about their duties and went out into the desert first to hear John the Baptist (Luke 3:12) and then Jesus (Luke 7:29; 15:1). They responded positively to Jesus’ preaching, and he welcomed them into his new community. He showed them understanding and compassion because, for him, no one – not even a despised tax collector – was outside the embrace of God’s love.
In the story Jesus does more than just meet Zacchaeus. To the astonishment of the onlookers, he declares that he will even eat in Zacchaeus’ house. This bold move was in clear breach of the Jewish Law forbidding a Jew to mix with public sinners, such as tax agents, prostitutes and lepers. To do so would make Jesus unfit to worship in the Temple. So here is yet another example in the Gospels of Our Lord knowingly putting the needs of an individual before the requirement of the Law. While the Law might require him to shun Zacchaeus, Jesus did not.
This encounter with Jesus leads Zacchaeus to undergo a profound change. Note that Jesus does not ask him to do anything – he does not ask him to give away everything to the poor; and nor he does not ask him to give up his profession. He accepts Zacchaeus as he is. In response, Zacchaeus is so overwhelmed by this that he promises to give away half of his possessions to the poor. Furthermore, he says that if he discovers that he has cheated anyone, he will do something that at the time would leave his hearers gob smacked.
If you cheated or defrauded anyone, Jewish Law required that you restored the object plus 20 per cent (or one fifth) of its value. If I have cheated anyone, Zacchaeus says, I I’ll go further than that. I won’t just return the capital plus 20 per cent – I’ll repay it fourfold i.e. by 400 per cent. This is how totally overcome he is by the mercy of God he encounters in Jesus.
So how might we apply the Good News we hear in this story?
The first thing to note is that each one of us, like Zacchaeus, is not beyond the reach of Christ’s love. Whatever my past or erring ways, Christ accepts me as I am also. It’s the consistent message of Jesus in the Gospel that no one is rubbish in God’s eyes or written off. Her is the embodiment of the core message in the first reading (Wisdom 11:22-12:2)
“You love all that exists, you hold nothing of what you have made in abhorrence, for had you hated anything, you would not have formed it.”
However much we may have messed up, no one is outside the embrace of Christ’s love. There is no sin greater than God’s love. And the same holds true for our Church for Christ rejected no one, not even the disgraced and despised Zacchaeus. It must be the nature of every parish/community too: together we are to embody the acceptance of Christ for everybody – young or old, married, single or divorced, and whatever their gender or sexuality, all are welcome.
Michael Campion
Holy Name, Jesmond
30 October 2022
Sunday Mass: Saturday 4pm, Sunday 10am 