At first reading, this gospel passage would seem to be all about
Zacchaeus. That small man dominates the story, and there seems to be
very little room for Jesus. We hear about Zacchaeus wanting to see
Jesus. Because he was short and the crowd was so dense, he just
couldn’t make his way through. He was trying to push through, I
guess, to the front row. Couldn’t make it. So he got the bright idea,
“I’ll climb the tree.” And so, up he goes in the tree and gets a good
look at Jesus. We’re not told whether he took out his camera or not,
but that, I guess, would be another story. But he’s showing some
initiative. Then, we are told, he comes down from the tree and he
stands his ground and gives a little speech. Well, the episode is not
really all about Zacchaeus. Far from it.

This whole passage is really a perfect example of the tone of Luke’s
gospel, his unique way of revealing to us who Jesus was. In other
words, he reveals to us “one who reaches out to others.” We’ve got to
realize that it is only, ONLY in Luke’s gospel that we find the
parable of the Lost Coin, or the story of the Prodigal Son. It is
only there that we hear of the promise to the Repentent Thief on the
cross, or the words of general forgiveness of the enemies that Jesus
spoke from the cross. It is only there that we are told that it was
the look of Jesus that brought tears to the eyes of Peter. So, this
whole story is very much in line with that. It is the intention of
Luke to portray Jesus as one who reaches out to sinners.

And so, although Jesus would seem to be taking second place in the
story, that is very, very far from the truth. It is Jesus who stops
under the tree, looks up, sees Zacchaeus. It is Jesus who invites
Zacchaeus to come down and who offers himself as a guest of
Zacchaeus, to go to his house. So, in other words, Jesus is very,
very active in this. It is he who initiates the process of
conversion, the invitation to another way of life, a more honest,
just and truthful way, and then waits for a response from Zacchaeus.

Well, this attitude that Jesus shows towards Zacchaeus, toward all
sinners, towards us really, echos the words that we read just a few
minutes ago in the Book of Wisdom, “You have mercy on all, and you
overlook the people’s sins that they may repent. For you love all
things that are and loathe nothing that you have made. For what you
hated, you would not have fashioned.” It is we who are responsible
for trash, not God. God did not make trash. And no matter how badly
we may think about ourselves from time to time, we are not trash. And
that is not the way that God looks at us. God overlooks our sins. He
doesn’t look at them. We are told he overlooks our sins. God loves
all things that are. That’s the word of Scripture.

On the other hand, and bearing all of that in mind, it is not only
useful, but indeed essential, that we face the truth about ourselves
and that we act on that truth, that we have that poverty of spirit
that Father Aidan spoke about last week. And this is what Zacchaeus
did. He acknowledges the truth that lay behind that grumbling of the
crowd when they said, “Is God to stay at the house of a sinner?” We
hear Zacchaeus declaring, “I’ll give half of my possessions to the
poor and, if I have extorted anything from anyone, I will repay it
four times over.” Surely this is at least an implicit acknowledgement
of guilt and, more importantly, a declaration of true repentence, a
pledge of a change of heart and a promise of action. He’s now going
to be diffferent. You know, that will be what we’ll all be saying on
New Year’s Eve, I guess. “We’re gonna change. We’re gonna be
different....” And, interesting enough, we are not really told that
Zacchaeus did change afterwards. We don’t know anything more about
him. But, at least, at that moment he had that intention and that
purpose in his life. And why? Why was it? It was the extraordinary
impact of that very brief encounter that he had with Jesus,
extraordinary impact that he had on that man. It was a contact, as I
said, initiated by Jesus and carried forward by Jesus. I think that
Zacchaeus is being held up to us as an example of how we should try
to respond to the love and concern that God shows for each one of us.
We are called to acknowledge the truth about ourselves, not only the
bad, but perhaps even more so, the good. I think that too often we
neglect to do that, to acknowledge the good that we do, the potential
that is within us to do even greater good. And that neglect is really
a failure on our part to give glory and thanks and praise to God, who
is the source of all that we have and all that we are capable of, all
the potential that is within us. All is pure gift from God, and we
should be praising and thanking God for that, and acknowledging that
good that is within us and the good that we can do.

Jesus clearly saw the potential for good in Zacchaeus and invited him
to greater intimacy, the intimacy of a stay in his house, the
intimacy of a shared meal. And likewise, Jesus sees the potential
within each and every one of us. He initiates the contact and he
reaches out to us and he invites us to greater intimacy with him, the
intimacy of the sacred meal that we celebrate here this morning in
the Eucharist. It is the Eucharist that is going to give us the
courage and the strength and the perseverance to really, really
change our lives, to become different people. It cannot have been
easy for Zacchaeus to change that way of life that he had been
living. And, of course, we know it’s not easy for us. But he was in
the company of Jesus. And that made all the difference.

We too can be in the company of Jesus. He invites us to be in that
company. He invites us to Eucharist. He invites us to intimacy with
him through Holy Communion. And it is this that’s going to help us to
continue our daily struggle to live up to the committments of the
gospel. So, let us never forget that the Son of Man has come to seek
and to save what was lost. And if any words deserve a “Yeah” I think
that does. Don’t you? Yes! God bless you!
Amen.