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If you remember, last weekend’s gospel referred to a tax collector in the Temple whose sincere prayer to God garnered the praise of Jesus. Today’s gospel is about another tax collector, Zacchaeus, who likewise is praised by Jesus. What basically goes over our heads but was not lost on Jesus’ audience 2000 years ago, was the hatred Jews had for tax collectors. It’s important for us to know the depth of the hatred for tax collectors, if we are to understand what those stories meant for those people then and what they could mean for us now. 

We pay our taxes reluctantly, we look for loopholes in the system, but rarely do we hate our government and its agents. Whether right or wrong, we have come to terms with big deductions on our paycheques, and the fact that everything comes with an added tax. But for the most part, we believe taxes are necessary, and we hope that our contributions will be reasonably spent in a fair and equitable way. 

Not so, in the Israel of Jesus’ time. Tax collectors, like Zacchaeus, were seen as traitors and people without any sense of morals. Tax collectors were Jews working for the occupying force, the Romans.  It would be like Ukrainians collecting money from fellow Ukrainians and handing the money over to the Russians.  An enemy is one thing, but a traitor is the absolute worst.

When my dualistic mind is made up about a person or a group of people, for me to change my opinion, is a long and slow process. It’s like a cruise ship trying to turn on a dime. Overcoming the dualistic mind—the mind that wants to conveniently categorize people as either all good or all bad, moral or immoral, right or wrong, friend or traitor—may be the biggest challenge in the spiritual life today. There is no dualistic mind in Jesus. He has the mind of God.  Jesus believes, what the author of Wisdom wrote in that first reading, that God loves all things that exist, and detests none of the things that God made for God never would have made them in the first place if God had hated it. 

Back to the tax collectors. They were Jews collecting taxes off the backs of their fellow Jews, and they worked for the occupying force, the Romans. They were not paid a salary but a commission from what they collected.  It was clearly in the interest of the tax collectors to squeeze everything they could from the people, making relentless and often unfair assessments of people’s dues, even deceiving people into paying higher taxes than were owed.  We would call this gouging. That Zacchaeus was very rich says a great deal about his ability to gouge people.  

It’s very interesting that the people, who wrote the gospels, thought Jesus was the most important person in the world, yet they never bother to tell us how tall he was.  If I were to ask you to describe the most important person in your life, you would probably include their height, their eye and hair color, their marital status, and their occupation.  Zacchaeus makes a cameo appearance in only one of the four gospels, and yet we are told how tall he is while we know nothing about Jesus’ height. Why? Because in gospel spirituality, physical descriptions tell you nothing about personhood, who you are as a person. We know a lot about this “unimportant” guy, Zacchaeus: he was physically short, and his reputation was that he was a tax collector, a traitor in the eyes of his fellow Jews, and a man who became rich by gouging others. 

It’s all true on one level, but that’s not the person of Zacchaeus.  At the level of person, Zacchaeus is the same as every other person who has ever lived.  Every person, who has ever lived and who will ever live, has the need to be loved.  Now we know why Zacchaeus is short. 

Whenever someone is withheld love, they stop growing. It’s no different with other living things. Whenever a plant is withheld water or nutrients, it stops growing.  Whenever we are withheld love, attention, occasional affirmation, forgiveness, and companionship, we die.  We can die on many levels: physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.  Zacchaeus, for all intents and purposes, is dead, and he knows it.  He wants to be alive but realizes he’s dead. 

He is in no-man’s land. His fellow Jews can barely stomach his presence, so he’s banned from worshipping with them and socializing with them.  He also does not belong to the Romans. They care nothing for him because he isn’t a Roman.  Zacchaeus knows the Romans are only using him to do their dirty work.  He belongs to no one.  In order to see Jesus, did he climb the tree out of curiosity or out of desperation?  Probably, it was more desperation than anything else.  He always wondered if there was somebody out there who could rescue him from no-man’s land.  He hoped, even with a change of heart, that there might be just one person who could see past his reputation and call him to the new life he always longed for. This one chance was all he had, and he knew had to make good on it. 

So, he does something very undignified for a grown Jewish man to do—he climbs a tree. (Climbing trees and running were considered undignified actions of adult in the culture of the time. Do you remember the Prodigal Son story how the father runs to greet his wayward son? That was undignified as well). Zacchaeus is willing to be considered undignified in the eyes of his fellow Jews if it means he can have a chance at getting close to Jesus.  The desire for a relationship based on love was more important than his dignity.  

Jesus, on the other hand, has his face set on Jerusalem.  He is on a mission to get to Jerusalem.  Jericho was the place where the snooty, rich people resided rather than living in Jerusalem.  Most people were rich in Jericho, and Zacchaeus ranked among the richest of the rich.  Like I said, Jesus is only passing through Jericho; his face is set on Jerusalem.  His priority is Jerusalem, not on a town that has placed its faith in money and certainly not on some guy up a tree.  Jesus has no intention of stopping.  Yet, he does stop.  He puts his agenda on hold.  Jesus senses there is someone nearby who is trapped and suffering in no-man’s land and who doesn’t know how to get out.  Jesus’ drive to get to Jerusalem is superseded by a stronger drive, a drive that says, “God loves all things that exists and detests none of the things he made for God never would have made anything that he hates.” This is what is pulsing through Jesus’ mind as he works his way through the crowd in Jericho. Like a hound dog on a scent, Jesus is lead to a particular tree. He reaches up to the one who is reaching down. Love has found love. 

Zacchaeus goes out on a limb and throws his dignity away for this one, longshot opportunity. Jesus also goes out on a limb and has a meal at the house of someone who clearly has a bad reputation.  Perhaps Zacchaeus would have said the words we will say in a few moments: “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof.” Jesus’ response to him is Jesus’ response to us, “I know, I know, I know, but I still want to eat with you. I’m so madly in love with you, Jerusalem can wait for another day.” 

It does not matter whether it’s curiosity or desperation, on our part, which drives us to seek out Jesus. It is always love, on Jesus’ part, which drives him to seek us out. 

Fr. Phil