READINGS

1. Luke 19: 1-10
2. 2 Samuel 12:51

HOMILY

Today we have the story of Zacchaeus.

It means a bit of a jump from where we were last time (the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector).

This account is only found in Luke's gospel and it's rather beautiful for a whole variety of reasons.

It's psychologically extraordinarily apt and apparently legally.

So Jesus enters Jericho and was passing through it.

This means that he's coming towards the end of his journey to Jerusalem.

This would probably be the last stop on his way to Jerusalem.

In the other Gospels, he's been on this long walk or relatively long walk slowly through Galilee and the part of Judea that was between Galilee and Samaria.

As he's gone through, he's brought out how a number of people are children of Abraham: this woman is a daughter of Abraham; this person is the son of Abraham.

This is going to be another in that series and that's quite important as we'll see hint as Jericho and was passing through it.

Now that means he was not intending to stay and there were quite clear ways that a man accompanied by a group like him would indicate that he was on his way through that.

He didn't intend to to stop otherwise; he would have had people friends of his looking for somewhere to stay for him.

So by this stage, remember that Jesus is a famous person; people have heard of him, they've heard of his wonders, his miracles, so there's no doubt a good deal of curiosity as to who he is and where he's going and what he's been talking about and questions about whether he is the promised one.

So he's on his way through and a man was there named Zacchaeus.

Zacchaeus apparently means the righteous one, but it means rather more than that.

It was probably a nickname given to him whatever his name was after this account.

In the Aramaic background, it describes a person who has become just, because he made a legal matter moot; he made a legal matter no longer important and of course that is a very exact description of what is about to happen with the person now called Zacchaeus.

It says here he was a chief tax collector and was rich.

Remember that, to be a tax collector, you had to be rich - own at least double the tax that you would expect to have to bring in. Moreover, you needed to bear on your own two years worth of paying tax if you failed to collect.

Owning the tax farm also means you probably had lots of employees under you.

Now imagine, as those of you who've lived in countries with corrupt police knows how this works, your low-level traffic cop has to fine you a small amount whether you've done something or not, because he himself needs to give a certain amount (maybe the equivalent of five tickets a day) to his boss and so on up the scale.

So the big boss at the top is going to receive a huge whack and there would have been something like that - a pyramid scheme - going on with a tax collector.

Here's the interesting thing that a tax collector - even if he was honest - would have very little way of knowing how dishonest his employees had been.

It was an industry that relied, for instance, on doing as our own Revenue Services do: charging us too much at the beginning of the year and then giving us back at the end, if they've overcharged us.

If the people you've overcharged too much at the beginning of the year had enough legal clout to make you pay them back, then you probably did, but if they were poor widows and other people like that you could probably get away with not paying back.

So, in other words, you were much more inclined as a tax collector to rob the poor than the rich, simply because they could fight to get back what was owed.

Anyhow, you can imagine that Zacchaeus was the sort of person who had a reputation for being an extortionate: someone who did not live according to Torah and was therefore not only a sinner, but impure.

Everything about him was impure. You would not go into his house to eat, because you would be painted by impurity.

He had become the equivalent of a gentile and impure person, owing to his lifestyle.

So now Zacchaeus was trying to see who Jesus was.

Zacchaeus actually wants to see who Jesus was. He's heard and he wants to see, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature.

Of course, that does not only mean in a crowd he will be too small to see who Jesus was, but if you were an unpopular rich tax collector and you were short and in a crowd you might very easily be trampled on and oops it would be accidental (but not).

You were not popular and it would be terrible if something happened to you.

Zacchaeus knows that he's a potential scapegoat; he's much to blame, so he's not going to get in their way easily.

So he ran ahead and climbed a Sycamore tree to see him.

Now why would we have this sort of tree mentioned? It's the only time in the whole of the Bible this particular tree puts in an appearance.

The Sycamore tree was a member of the fig tree family, but it was what one might call a false fig in that it was a member of the Fig family, but had had very faded, rather poor, leaves, rancid and bitter and small fruit unlike fig trees themselves, which can be very leafy and have delicious fruit.

If it were a real fig tree, it wouldn't be much good to Zacchaeus: he wouldn't have been able to see much out of it.

Now one of the things about the Sycamore tree is that you could actually see out of it and indeed be seen from it and there's a little hint here.

Whereas, in the garden, once they became ashamed, Adam and Eve hid themselves with a fig leaf and the Lord came walking in the afternoon; here Zacchaeus hides himself with a fake fig, but it's not going to protect him very well.

So Jesus is passing through (and again the Aramaic word behind is the same from which we get the word in Hebrew when Abraham was a wandering).

So Jesus is passing through and he was going to pass that way in front of this tree, and when Jesus came to the place doing his Abrahamic thing, he looks up and says to him:

Zacchaeus hurry and come down for I must stay at your house today. 

Now we don't know whether he called him Zacchaeus giving him a new name or whether he made a pun as to what he was going to do with him.

Clearly, the calling, the seeing him - and this was a short person who'd never been looked at from underneath, because he was short. He tended to looked at from above and usually with rather unpleasant looks.

Here suddenly he's looked at from beneath by someone who's giving him a name that sounds as though it's to do with righteousness.

He's being seen in a way he's never been seen before.

He's being called into being by the person who is in fact not only the person who he's come to see, but the center of the crowd's fascination.

The center of the crowd's fascination was fixed on him and it's not fixed on him in a hostile way.

It's fixed on him in a gentle, but a bold way and apparently the saying "come down for I must stay at your house today" doesn't actually mean I'm inviting myself to stay overnight, but it means something much more like "I'm going to make a pit stop at your house today"

It's part of the wandering through imagery. It's not necessarily "I'm going to stay for a long time, but at least I'm going to put in a break on this and I'll be making a bit stop at your house today".

So Zacchaeus hurries down and was happy to welcome Jesus.

Zacchaeus received Jesus with joy.

The word for receive here is, as in Aramaic, how God receives people: it's the strongest possible term.

It's how Abraham received God and the Lord and the Lord's two friends when the Lord was wandering in the Book of Genesis.

Now here's the interesting thing: Jesus is about to go into the house of a man who was objectively a tainted person, a hamartolos, the Sinner we think of that in moralistic terms.

That's not how people of the time would have thought of that.

They would have thought of that in terms of "here is a person who objectively speaking is tainted; you become tainted, you would lose your purity; you become impure by going into that person's house and eating; it's against Torah".

In other words, Jesus is running the risk of becoming impure through going into this man's house.

If Jesus is really the person we think he is, surely he would know better than to go into the house of an attempted person like this.

There's no question at all that a person in Zacchaeus position would, whether deliberately or not, have enriched himself by extortion.

And Zacchaeus wouldn't know how much he owed to other people, because of his extortion:

a) such accounts are very difficult to bookkeep;

b) as a chief tax collector, he had lots of lesser tax collectors under him whose small extortions might have got bigger, but would be unknown to him, and yet for which he would be responsible.

So the crowd begin to grumble and say Jesus is to be the guest of one who's a sinner:

• In part, the crowd is jealous of Jesus;
• In part, the crowd is surprised that someone like Jesus shouldn't know whose house he's going.
• In part, the crowd is genuinely shocked, because of the question of purity.

So Zacchaeus, who has now been looked at from underneath, addressed with this name calling him to be something quite different, stands there and says very quickly to the Lord:

Half of my possessions I will give to the poor.

Zacchaeus has to get it out fast, because this is a definite legal promise; he is effectively rendering himself pure again.

There was no problem incidentally for the poor receiving tainted money.

In fact, it was a good thing to give money to the poor.

Having dealings with a tainted person, you would share the taint, but being a recipient of tainted money was a good thing.

and if I have defrauded anyone of anything I will pay back four times as much 

Sometimes we imagine that this is a semi plea for innocence.

The point of it here is it's a legal promise that he is going to do in, as far as he possibly can put right whatever defrauding extortion he made.

Note that giving four times back is a regular understanding in the Jewish Hebrew scriptures as to how much you should pay back in circumstances like this.

In light of that Jesus says to him:

today salvation has come to this house, because he too is the son of Abraham 

In other words, the wandering aramaian has wandered through and has been received into the house like Abraham by someone who has been prepared to recover his own purity at great cost to himself in order to receive Jesus.

Jesus is, as it were, almost blackmailed him into getting rid of his badly gotten wealth.

for the son of man came to seek out and to save the Lost 

Here you have the reference back to what happens in the beginning of the Parable with Zacchaeus seeking out, but Jesus seeing him.

We may have the sensation and thought that we're the ones seeking out, but in fact we are being sought out by Jesus.

This is the way how the Grace Works; how forgiveness works; forgiveness reaches us and has, as its fruit, the breaking open of heart and the giving away of things.

This is how forgiveness produces penitence in us and shows us to be Sons and Daughters of Abraham.

A little note on quite a fun pun, which there is in this Gospel and we wouldn't get in English.

Remember that Zacchaeus hides in the Sycamore tree, which is a fake fig.

When he comes down and apologizes or offers to pay back what he thinks he has defrauded, the Greek word for to defraud or to extort is sykophántēs, from which we get our word sycophant.

Strangely, whilst for us the word sycophant tends to mean someone who lauds excessive and makes ridiculous praise on someone and therefore is a sort of a fake appraiser or sucker up to them, the original word in greek meant for someone who accused people of false dealing in figs.

So we have Zacchaeus both hiding in a fake fig tree and putting right his fake fig accusations.

There're certainly a pun, which is at work there, as part of the story of how Zacchaeus is restored to the family of Abraham.

SUMMARY

1 Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through.

Coming to the end of his journey to Jerusalem. Problably his last stop.

2 A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus;

Zacchaeus means the righteous one. It was probably a nickname given to him whatever his name was after this account.

In the Aramaic background, it describes a person who has become just, because he made a legal matter moot (no longer important).

he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy.

You had to be rich in order to be a tax collector.

You had to be able to show you owned at least the equivalent of double the tax that you would expect to have to bring in and owe to the Roman authorities in any year.

Even if there was one was honest, he would have very little way of knowing how dishonest his employees had been, because it was an industry that relied for instance on doing as our own Revenue Services do: charging us too much at the beginning of the year and then giving us back at the end if they've overcharged us.

He had a very bad reputation. You would not go into his house to eat, because you would be tainted by impurity. He had become the equivalent of a gentile and impure person.

3 He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. 4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.

If you were despised as a tax-collactor, and short, and were in a crowd, you would be easily 'oops' trampled on.

It's the only time the sycamore tree is mentioned. Although a member of the fig family, it was a false fig, because it had very faded and rather poor leaves, rancid, bitter and small fruit, unlike fig trees themselves.

Little hint here of the garden in Eden, when Adam hides himself with a fake fig leaf.

Anyway, if you climb a sycamore tree, you can see through it, and you can been seen in it.

5 When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” 6 So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.

Now this was a short person who'd never be looked at from underneath.

The center of the crowd's fascination was fixed on him and it's not fixed on him in a hostile way, but in a gentle and bold way.

The word 'welcomed' here in Aramaic is how God receives people. It's the strongest possible term. It's how Abraham received God.

7 All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”

Jesus is running the risk of becoming impure making going into this man's house.

8 But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”

It was a good thing to give tainted money to the poor (no problem of impurity).

The point here is that it's a legal promise that he is going to do in as far as he possibly can and put right whatever defrauding or extortion he commited.

9 Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham.

The wandering aramaian has wandered through and has been receibed into the house like Abrahram by someone who has been prepared to recover his own purity at great cost to himself in order to receive Jesus.

10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

Refers to the beginning of the parable with Zacchaeus seeking out and Jesus seeing him.

All along the sensation that we may think that we're seeking out, but we are being sought out. This is the way how Grace and Forgiveness works.

Fun pun: when Zacchaeus hides in the fake fig tree and comes down to apologize and offer to pay back, the greek word 'to defraud' is [...] which is from where we get our work 'sycophant'. The original meaning of this word was for someone who accused people of false dealing in figs.