Peace be with you.
Have you ever been in a room filled with people and felt completely alone or ignored, like you’re in one of those movies where you and die and come back as a ghost that only Whoopi Goldberg can see? It’s frustrating, isn’t it? You may start to ask yourself what makes you different than everyone around you and start thinking that difference makes you less important or even worthless.
This week, I’ve been thinking a lot about little Zacchaeus from our gospel today. His name means pure or clean but he’s far from pure or clean. We know this because he is a tax collector at the time of Jesus. You may remember that tax collectors weren’t paid by the government but, instead, increased the amount a person owed and kept the difference for themselves. It was common for tax collectors to charge more to those who were less likely to beat him up, like widows, orphans, and the poor. If you steal from a powerful person, you risk a powerful response. And, since St. Luke emphasized that Zacchaeus is “smaller in stature”, I would guess he’s really pointing to how Zacchaeus especially took advantage of the least powerful. It’s, therefore, especially interesting, that St. Luke includes this story when he tends to emphasize the poor and oppressed, or the “little ones” as Mary calls herself in the first few chapters of this gospel. Why would he tell this story wherein a guy who victimizes the poor comes out looking like the hero?
I’d like to think it’s because St. Luke knew the Old Testament, and thus would have known the passage we heard in the first reading. This passage could be summarized by saying that God is all powerful and all merciful, two things that seem contradictory. If God is all powerful, he not only made everything but determines if something remains existing, including each one of us. But, instead, God doesn’t simply wipe people off the face off the earth whenever we fail to love him or our neighbor. Why? The answer to that question comes at the heart of this reading, “But you spare all things, because they are yours, O Lord and lover of souls, for your imperishable spirit is in all things.”
Let’s unpack that sentence for a second. On the one hand, the Most High doesn’t destroy people who sin because they belong to Him, as it says in Psalm 95, we are God’s people, the flock he shepherds. There’s a level of ownership that God has over us and all of creation, which may make us at least a little ill at ease. I don’t like the idea of someone, even someone I love, feeling like they own me. I get nervous by technology companies tracking my every move. I get annoyed when people think they deserve an immediate response to a question or request that could have waited or could have been answered in a different way. The idea of someone owning us harkens back to the days of slavery, when someone could be owned. Is this the implication that the Wisdom writer wants us to draw: That we are God’s slaves? Hardly! Actually, the writer of wisdom completes this by saying ...they are yours, O Lord and lover of souls, for your imperishable spirit is in all things.” God’s Spirit is in us. He has put a part of himself in us.
Now let’s go back to the story of Zacchaeus and see if this may help us understand why St. Luke, the gospel writer who tends to focus on Jesus’ help for the poor, tells a story about Jesus being merciful to someone who often took advantage of the poor. St. Luke could see, in the poor, people who were owned by God because he put part of himself inside of them. And, this story of Zacchaeus coming down from the tree, he could see a person learning to see the image of God in others.
This reminds me of how important it is to not allow the busyness of life or work or misguided thoughts of superiority to stop us from paying ttention to people who are often overlooked, the person up a tree like Zaccheaus or the person having a rough day standing behind us at Benders. God is calling us to reach out and include people into his community of forgiveness. How can we be sure to take the time to notice the imperishable spirit present in others so as to be an agent of God’s forgiveness for them.
