31st Ordinary Sunday – 30th October 2022 — Gospel: Lk 19,1-10
Overcoming Rejection
Zacchaeus suffers exclusion in the society on two grounds: as a short person and as a tax collector. He overcomes his physical problem by climbing the tree, something that a child or young person would do, but not any dignified person. But that extravagant gesture breaks through the barrier and gives him access to Jesus. The visitor’s emphasis on the word ‘must’ portrays the divine purpose that God visits the excluded/marginalized in the place where they are. It also brings home the mission of Jesus and shapes its direction towards his salvation and of his extended household. In welcoming Jesus joyfully, Zacchaeus overcomes his social rejection as well. Jesus brings him in from the margins to the center. His double declaration to share his wealth to the poor and others, articulates about his controversial trade and the exploitation it involves. It also manifests that he has undergone an external conversion with an implicit intention to give up this profession. However what brings him change is his position with respect to the community.
This episode offers the perfect paradigm of the hospitality of God. Zacchaeus, one of the marginalized despite his wealth, provides hospitality to Jesus and receives in return the hospitality of God. He not only gains dignity and decency in the society, but gains welcome into the community of salvation. This exchange of hospitality enlarges the sphere of God’s Kingdom that not only welcomes lost human beings but also offers new life. This salvation takes place here and now (Today) as Jesus seeks out, finds and incorporates within the community the excluded and the lost, like Zacchaeus, the rich tax collector.
Jesus physically looked up to a person of short stature who was used to other people looking down on him. Hearing Jesus’ call to come down, Zacchaeus complied and eventually stood there asserting or announcing the practices of charity and of reparations. This story invites the Church to look up to those who the systems looked down upon, to treat them with respect and honour their efforts to accommodate their own shortcomings, which are caused by the same systems. These systems may be political, social, economic, and religious. In this story, Jesus looked up but we keep looking down on the receivers of our charity. At times, we share tables with people experiencing poverty and homelessness and we look down on them as if our own wealth and lifestyle had nothing to do with their situations. What Jesus wants is that we look up to those who are climbing the systems and have established themselves in higher socio-economic locations and ask them to come down.
