October 30, 2022
Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 30, 2022 - Wisdom 11:22-12:2; 2 Thessalonians 1:11-2:2; Luke 19:1-10
I’m sure you caught the verb. It was the word see. In one form or another, it’s repeated seven times in that very short paragraph and it’s the key to the story. At the very beginning, Luke tells us that Zacchaeus sought to see. He looked to see. Using the same word twice in the same sentence. He was looking to see. And then, it says he climbed a sycamore tree to see who Jesus was. Then Jesus looked up and saw Zacchaeus. But when the people saw what Jesus was doing, they were angry. At end of the story, Luke says that Jesus said, “I have come to seek. I have come to seek out the lost and save them.”
In October of 1964, a pope came to the United States for the very first time and it was a big honkin’ deal for several reasons. First of all, because in 1964 the United States had no diplomatic ties to the Vatican and so there was no diplomatic channel through which the Pope could be invited to America. And so, the American bishops could not invite the bishop of Rome to come to America. So, they found a work around. The United Nations invited Pope Paul VI to speak there on the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, October the 4th, about peace in the world. And it was arranged through the Secret Service, the Vatican Diplomatic Corp, the Archdiocese of New York and the New York City Police Department that just by accident, the Pope’s limousine would leave the East Side at the United Nations and wander through Harlem to bless a housing complex built in a certain parish through the cooperation of the pastor and parishioners. And just accidentally happen to cross the East River and wind up, somehow or other, in Yankee Stadium where, just by coincidence, 30,000 people would be waiting for the Pope to say Mass. That’s how they did it.
But because the Pope was coming, all the seminaries in downstate New York put their choirs together to sing a special song composed just for the occasion. Remember that, back then, the Mass was still in Latin. The Vatican Council was going on which was one of the reasons why people were so eager to see this particular pope, Pope Paul VI. John the XXIII had just died and they wanted to see the new guy because he was the head of the Council. And so, the only thing that would be sung in English would be this particular hymn that was composed for the occasion. And the altar was erected on the pitcher’s mound in Yankee Stadium and the chairs were behind it facing the dugout. And then, we were, if you were looking at the altar from the second base side, we would have been over on third base. Since there are four or five seminaries in downstate New York - not only Dunwoodie, but the Maryknoll Seminary, there was a Franciscan Seminary, there was a Jesuit Seminary - there were over 200 of us to sing, a huge choir. And each choir director taught their choir in their own seminary, four-part male harmony. But one director was directing the whole thing at the stadium, that would have been the director of our seminary. And we were warned repeatedly, “Do not take your eyes off the director, no matter what the Pope is doing.” Well, needless to say, the Pope came out and made a slow turn around the bases in an open limousine and got to third base and all of us turned and screamed at the Pope. The music went flying. Thank God we all sort of had the music memorized anyway. But we all wanted to see this person. We were looking to see. We were eager to see. And that’s what this story is all about.
Zacchaeus is not on the inside of the religious group in Jericho. As a matter of fact, he is specifically on the outside for several reasons. First of all, he was a tax collector. Jewish people, just like Americans, hated their tax collector. But they hated their tax collector for a special reason. Because the tax collector, a Jew in their own town, was the servant, was the agent of the hated Roman overlord. The very few people who were oppressing them. So, if you were a Jewish tax collector, you were automatically a bad Jew publicly and also religiously because to have anything to do professionally with the Pagans would make you unclean. Which meant you couldn’t go to worship. You were barred from your church, as we would say today. You were not allowed inside. And so, Zacchaeus was a man on the outside and apparently preferred to be that way because it said he was the chief tax collector and a very wealthy man. That’s the only reason why they hated him. Because what the Romans did was, they told each town, “This is what the tax rate is in this town.” They told the tax collector, “You make your money by the vigorish,” - how much over the tax you could get away with charging – “and that’s how you make your money.” So, Zacchaeus was making his money by gouging his friends and neighbors. This is not a nice man.
But consider what he’s doing. He only knows of Jesus by rumor. But it has come to the point where he needs to ask himself the big question. Who is this? What is going on here? What is happening in my life? And so, he makes an extra special effort to try and do that. He goes, so to speak, out on a limb. And that’s what all of us are hot-wired to do in our lives. There is something about every human being that desires to know what are the answers to the big questions in life? Is there a God? Who is God to me? What is life all about? And there are a whole bunch of things that keep us from investigating the big question. Some of those things are good things. We are very busy. We are busy going to school. We’re busy cementing relationships. We’re busy building a family. Making a living. All of those things are good things, but they are a distraction from our ability to ask the big questions. There are also not so good things that distract us from asking the big questions. And you all know what those distracting things can be in your life and mine. And so, we ultimately avoid asking the big questions. But every now and then that drive within us comes back up again and we ask the big questions again.
Notice what Jesus does in the story. He looks. He says, “Zacchaeus, I see you. I see you.” And that’s what God does with us whenever we ask the big questions. He says, “I notice you asking. I’m here.” It’s very interesting what those questions are and how God responds.
You know, we believe, and rightly so, that we have the fullness of revelation. And that’s true because each of the other branches of Christianity that was established from the 1600s onward discarded part of the Christian tradition and, in some cases, began a new part of the Christian tradition that was not part of the original tradition. But nonetheless, each person has to seek and find what makes sense to him or her. And so, for each particular person, what they find as the answer to the big questions is valid for them. And some people don’t even search for the biggest question of all - is there a God - but settle for other questions that are somewhere in between. What does it mean to be a good person? What does life mean? Whatever valid answer people come up with is a valid answer for them. And so, God says, “I see. I see what you’re thinking.”
But notice what else happens in the story. In order for Zacchaeus to latch on to what he sees, he has to surrender something. He has to surrender part of what distracts him, his great wealth. And he has to surrender part of what is evil in his life, his extortion of other people. And so, in all of our lives, in order to hold on to what we understand to be the answer to the big questions, there are certain things which we are called to let go of. And as we do, notice what Jesus said to Zacchaeus at the end. He said about him, “This man, too, is a son of Abraham.” A descendant of Abraham. That’s an odd thing to say because, for all the people there in the crowd to whom Jesus was talking, descendance was based on the twelve tribes of Moses, the twelve tribes of Israel. That was what was important. Were you a member of one of the twelve tribes of Israel? But Jesus looks further bac. He says, “This man is a descendant of Abraham.”
Why? Because, at the time that Jesus lived, the general consensus was that there were 70 different races in the world. That information was wrong, of course. But that was the going information. That there were 70 races, not just twelve. And those 70 races traced their ancestry back to Abraham. And so, Jesus is casting a wider net. He’s saying, “We embrace everybody, all of the different groups of people as they search for the answers to the big questions.”
Why? Because the Book of Wisdom, which guided the people at the first century A.D. and the first century B.C., the Book of Wisdom said, “Everything that God has made (everybody) is good. Because God would not have made what he hated.”
And so, all we need to do is look in order to see.