Year C / Ordinary Time / 31st Week / Sunday
Readings: Wisdom 11.22-12.2/ Psalm 144.1-2, 8-9, 10-11, 13cd-14 (R/v cf 1) / 2 Thessalonians 1.11-2.2 / Luke 19.1-10
“Zacchaeus, come down. Hurry because I must stay at your house today” (Luke 19.5)
How many of us yearn to hear Jesus make this same invitation to us? Don’t we want him to invite himself into our house, our life? We want to but we may be too embarrassed and ashamed to even contemplate this possibility because of our sinfulness.
The good news that today’s gospel reading proclaims is simple: Jesus comes; Jesus enters; Jesus stays for good.
Haven’t we all experienced a situation similar to Jesus’s coming to Zacchaeus when a stranger or acquittance, a classmate or workmate, a neighbour or parishioner, came up to us and wanted to get to know us better? Might Jesus have come to us through them?
Come in this way because as St Teresa of Avila so poignantly reminds us, “Christ has not body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks with compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blessed all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body.”
Indeed Jesus comes to us through family and friends. They who sit and laugh with us. They who mourn with us in our grief. They who comfort us in our sufferings. They who encourage us home to God when we lose our way in faith.
May be like Zacchaeus we feel unworthy to come to Jesus because our lives are less Christian than He teaches us they should be. May be this is why we might stay far away from Him, climb up a tree and stay out of His line of sight. Yet Jesus comes right up to us and says, “Hurry down because I must stay with you today.” I wonder how we would feel when we hear this.
Jesus comes so insistently – and ever so gently, so intimately, so compassionately – to remind us that we are God’s own and God’s alone. This is the truth of who we are to God and who God really is.
Today we hear the Book of Wisdom also proclaim this truth of God. “You are merciful to all, because you can do all things and overlook men’s sins so that they can repent. Yes, you love all that exists, you hold nothing of what you have made in abhorrence, for had you hated anything, you would not have formed it” (Wisdom 11.23-24).
Indeed Jesus’s action of reaching out to Zacchaeus is to remind him that God made him good, and in spite of his sinful choices and actions, he still has the potential to live the good life with God.
Today Jesus is doing the same for us. Like Zacchaeus, we have climbed up to see Jesus. Up the steps at the church’s entrance. Up from the main road. Up here because we desire to see Jesus, sinful as we are yet hope-filled that Jesus will look favourably on us and turn our lives around.
Isn’t this really our hearts’ desire for coming here to Eucharist? Jesus knows it is. This is why he comes to us. More so, he wants to stay with us. Stay like he did with Zacchaeus who climbed down when Jesus called and followed him.
We have climbed up to be here for Eucharist. At Communion, Jesus will invite us to climb down metaphorically, that is, to humble ourselves to receive him. When we do Jesus will enter into our lives to stay with us. He stays as the love of God that seeks us out in sinfulness, transforms us unreservedly to become more Christ-like and brings us home to God.
We are now in church, God’s home. We have come as Zacchaeus did by giving Jesus permission to lead him back home. There, he repented and saved his life. Jesus wants to do the same for us by inviting himself into our lives. What will be your answer?
Here, many of us will respond by coming to communion. The Church teaches that all should come to communion in a state of grace. Some who come will not be. I wonder what gives them the strength, courage and faith to come. In fact, it is not a what we should be looking at in their lives but who – the one who invites Himself to come and stay with us. His name is Jesus. He is our Saviour.
Some amongst us will however play judge, deciding who can and cannot receive Jesus at Communion. All who do this are Pharisee-like: they are so quick to judge, condemn and punish by throwing the first stone on the sinful. They forget their own sinfulness.
Jesus came to save. He threw no stones. Instead, he lavished mercy and love on all who sinned. We all know this. We have all experienced the truth of being loved sinners. This is how Jesus always looks at us. Like Zacchaeus, we have experienced others judging us unworthy. Jesus does not. In fact, he says to those who judge and to us who he loves immensely, “Today, salvation has come to this house…for the Son of Man has come to seek out and save what was lost” (Luke 19.1-11). If we have received this mercy of God, how can we not be merciful towards another?
We are here today because we have heard Jesus speak these words in the Gospels: “I have come that you might have life and have it to the full,” “be not afraid,” and “I am with you always.” These are Jesus's life-giving words. We believe them.
Today, if we listened more attentively to Jesus’s encounter with Zacchaeus, we might also hear Him say, “I have come to you and now I will stay with you. Will you stay with me too?”
Will we?
Preached at Sacred Heart Church, Singapore
photo by Dave Phillips on Unsplash
photo by Dave Phillips on Unsplash
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