New beginnings

One of my favorite bibles stories was as a child and continues to be for me as an adult, the story of the Zacchaeus. Do you remember? The “wee little man” who “climbed up in a sycamore tree for the Lord he wanted to see?” The bible narrative becomes a song in my mind every time I read Luke 19:1-10 and even as I write this brief article.

We can picture it: the short, rich, seemingly unfriended little tax collector is up in a tree and Jesus knows him, knows everything about him, and calls out to him with a surprising word, “I’m coming to your house today.”  Jesus is not asking if he can come, in God-like fashion, Jesus is declaring that he is going to get into the middle of things. And, as we find out in this beautiful story, Zacchaeus is changed forever by God’s desire to not give up on him.

The crowd’s response to Jesus’ going to Zacchaeus’ house for lunch is important to note. In St. Luke’s gospel (the only gospel that records this story by the way) we read, “All who saw that Jesus was going to Zacchaeus’ house began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.” Yes, quite right.

With Jesus’ willingness to go into the middle of a messed-up life comes the turn in the story of Zacchaeus and ours. Zacchaeus was changed by Jesus’ willingness to befriend him, to not look for the bad (there was plenty of it) but instead to know that the heart of this selfish man could and would change, becoming a lover of the world and its people that he had once only abused. The Gospel is clear: Jesus is far more concerned about our futures than our pasts. 

The Church is at its best when it first goes into messes and sits with people of every kind. It’s not that we bless what anyone like a Zacchaeus is doing, it’s that we go into trouble and troubled lives in Jesus name because the living church is about new beginnings, too. 

Anyone who says of Christianity that its primary characteristic is to be “judgmental,” doesn’t know the Jesus Zacchaeus welcomed to his house.