Fragments for Friday -- Ascending with Zacchaeus

“Today salvation has come to this house.” (LK. 19:9)

According to our liturgical calendar, this coming Sunday is called “Zacchaeus Sunday.” And this particular Sunday is the first “signal” that we are approaching the beginning of Great Lent. Those with the slightest familiarity with the Church’s liturgical cycle know that we are now five Sundays and four weeks away from the Lenten season. Great Lent, therefore, will begin on Monday, February 23. With the four pre-lenten Sundays subsequent to Zacchaeus Sunday, no one can claim that Great Lent caught him/her unaware. We are given ample “warning” for what just may be a seismic shift in lifestyle once we embrace Great Lent.

Zacchaeus Sunday, of course, is based upon the appointed Gospel reading of LK. 19:1-10, and the account there of how Zacchaeus and his household were “saved” by the healing and forgiving presence of Christ. This was in response to the conversion of Zacchaeus and his repentance before the Lord. It is quite interesting that we have the name of this particular publican. Perhaps he was a known member of the earliest post-resurrection Christian community centered in Jerusalem, yet scattered throughout Israel. Be that as it may, this conversion had a strong impact on the early Church as this account was recorded by the evangelist Luke.

In a relatively short, yet very dramatic narrative, St. Luke vividly brings to life not only the encounter between Zacchaeus and Christ, but a series of profoundly interconnected themes that deserve our close attention. These four are clearly essential:

+ desire
+ repentance
+ atonement
+ salvation

Zacchaeus, as Fr. Alexander Schmemann wrote in his now classic study Great Lent, is the “man of desire.” It was his burning desire “to see who Jesus was” (19:3), that led him to “climb up into a sycamore tree to see him.” (19:4) Though despised as a publican/tax-collector who defrauded his fellow villagers in Jericho, that position gave him a certain begrudged “prominence,” so the spectacle of Zacchaeus scrambling up the sycamore tree must have exposed him to public ridicule and derision. Zacchaeus’ desire must have been strong indeed to suffer that anticipated reaction. Thus, desire to “see Jesus” can lead anyone to overcome many of his/her human frailties and limitations, as well as the fear of violating any of the accepted rules of social etiquette if necessary. Our human limitations, that sinfulness that leaves us all short of the glory of God (ROM. 3;23), is represented here by Zacchaeus being “small of stature.” Our own sinfulness “cuts us down to size” and leaves us short of the stature of Christ that we are meant to grow into. Desire to change is a first movement on to the path of this desired growth. In hearing or reading this passage, we learn to humble ourselves in the realization that the sinful publican Zacchaeus has attained a stature that we need to emulate: “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” (EPH. 4:13)

Once Zacchaeus and his household are blessed with the presence of Christ, he openly repents of having “defrauded anyone of anything.” (19:8). His heart has been “wounded” by the obvious love of Christ who, in turn, had to suffer the reproach and murmuring of the witnesses to this event for being “the guest of a man who is a sinner.” (19:7) Jesus had heard this before, but always remained untroubled or “above” such accusations in His messianic role of bringing “good news” to “prostitutes and publicans.” Zacchaeus atones for his former sinfulness by openly declaring “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.” (19:8) This is not a legalistic transaction. Zacchaeus is not purchasing the favor of God. Rather, he is moved to a concrete expression of a changed life that goes far beyond mere words or internal disposition.

The unmerited gift of salvation is how Christ “seals” the initial movement of Zacchaeus toward the restoration of his full stature. Salvation – soteria – means wholeness; the wholeness of soul and body that only God can restore. Zacchaeus has received this gift of salvation because, contrary to certain elements then current within Jewish piety that would have left him marginalized as a religious and social pariah, “he also is a son of Abraham.” (19:9) The salvation of Christ is extensive and intensive: universally offered to all of people, and offered to the “worst of sinners.” This is made clear by Christ’s solemn pronouncement that closes the narrative concerning Zacchaeus: “For the Son of man came to seek and save the lost.” (19:10) All – Jew and Gentile, the righteous and the unrighteous – are lost but God “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (I TIM. 2:4)

In one of the many fine paradoxes - or ironies – found in the Gospels, the despised publican Zacchaeus becomes our teacher: “So the last shall be first, and the first last.” (MATT. 20:16) When that sinks in deeply, we can begin our own ascent to God on the ladder of the virtues, as Zacchaeus ascended on his humble sycamore tree.

A Zacchaeus Moment

Source: christthesavioroca.org

 Dear Fathers, Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,

"For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost." (LK. 19:10)


At Sunday's eucharistic Liturgy, we heard the story of the "towering" figure of Zacchaeus the publican (LK. 19:1-10). 

This is one of the many wonderful paradoxes of the spiritual life that characterize the Holy Scriptures. The paradox is found in the fact that the "towering" figure of Zacchaeus was actually "small of stature." (v. 3) And if indeed he had defrauded his neighbors as he alluded to (v. 8), then he was "small" in even more essential matters. 

Through repentance, conversion, and right action Zacchaeus grew in stature right before the eyes of those who with faith could "see" this transformation. Zacchaeus personifies the type of change that is possible through hearing the Good News and embracing it in thought, word and deed.

This passage, unique to the Gospel According to St. Luke, is thus perfectly placed as the first announcement of the approach of Great Lent. For in the Orthodox Church, this is always the prescribed Gospel reading for the fifth Sunday before the start of Great Lent. The four pre-lenten Gospel readings to follow will then guide us to Monday, March 3, the first day of the lenten journey that will lead us to Holy Week and then Pascha on April 20. (The Western Easter this year will also fall on April 20).

Returning to the Gospel passage, we find the story of Zacchaeus evenly divided into two parts - an outdoor scene (v. 1-5) and an indoor scene (v. 6-10). Outdoors, and in full view of the gathered inhabitants of ancient Jericho, the despised "chief tax collector," the rich Zacchaeus, risks the humiliation of being laughed at because he makes the socially unconventional choice of climbing up into a "sycamore tree" in order "see who Jesus was."

What may have been acceptable behavior among children, would only have drawn the surprised and scornful stares of Zacchaeus' over-taxed neighbors. I always remember that in a meditation on Zacchaeus, the late Metropolitan Anthony Bloom wrote that the equivalent act today would be that of a renowned corporate executive scrambling up a light pole in a downtown area in order to see someone passing by. (For those with a "boss" that you may not be too fond of, perhaps there may be minor consolation in fantasizing such a scenario and its reaction in your own mind). 
There then occurs that life-changing encounter between Zacchaeus and Jesus. For Jesus looks up at the strange figure of this man "small of stature" eagerly looking down upon Him, and says to him in response: "Zacchaeus, make haste and come down; for I must stay at your house today." (v. 5)

The transition to the indoor setting is now made when Zacchaeus "made haste and came down, and received him joyfully." (v. 6) Yet one can sense the oriental custom of a crowd hovering at the entrance or even coming and going with a certain freedom. The raised eyebrows and clucking tongues of an undescribed "they" who look on and articulate their stern disapproval - "He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner" (v. 7) - is a reaction encountered elsewhere in the Gospels when Jesus freely chose to sit at table with sinners and tax collectors (cf. MK. 3:15-17). 

This disapprobation on the part of the scribes and Pharisees then evoked his memorable (and ironic?) saying: "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners." (MK. 3:17) 

The Messiah is not bound by religiously sanctioned social convention that divides people into the convenient categories of the "righteous" and "sinners," "saved" and "lost," the "pure" and "impure." Or rather, by making clear that He has come to bring salvation to everyone, beginning with the marginalized and distressed members of His own society, Jesus reveals the inclusive love of God that tears down all such former barriers. Zacchaeus is a striking and personalized example of this inclusive love of God for "the lost."

Never a distributor of "cheap grace" though, Jesus demands repentance and conversion. And this comes dramatically from Zacchaeus when he publicly declares: "Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have defrauded any one of anything, I restore it fourfold." (v. 8) In this, Zacchaeus goes beyond what the Law required for such an act of restitution. (EX. 21:37; NM. 5:5-7) 

The Lord then signifies or "seals" the truth of this conversion when He solemnly pronounces the joyful declaration: "Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost." (v. 9-10) 

It is interesting to note that the blessing of Jesus is given to the entire household. The household of Zacchaeus, in turn, becomes a microcosm of the entire design of salvation: The Son of Man came to seek and save the entire cosmos groaning inwardly and subject to futility as it awaits redemption (cf. ROM. 8:19-23) In this, we and our households resemble that of Zacchaeus, regardless of how "righteous" we may consider ourselves (to be dealt with next Sunday in the Parable of the Publican and the Pharisee!).

We can never afford to allow our supposed familiarity with a Gospel passage to blunt its sharp edge. It is that sharp edge that cuts through our many defensive layers of evasions and self-deception. Otherwise, the passage "softens" into a didactic story about a bad man changing his life and becoming "nice." 

However, I believe that no matter how well we know the story about Zacchaeus, the only familiarity that we could claim with him is the familiarity of having an equally profound "Zacchaeus moment" in our own lives.

Such a "moment" would initially be characterized by an equal desire to "see Jesus" - above all else. Than we would need to be willing to overcome our own "smallness of stature" by perhaps first overcoming the tyranny of social convention and respectability before we get to our actual sinfulness. This may mean going beyond our own conventional patterns of church going and the "safety" of keeping the demanding call of Christ at a safe distance so that it cannot overly impinge upon our lives. 

There may yet be a sycamore tree that we need to climb.