Liberating Zacchaeus and Ourselves

Lectionary Reflections for the Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost

By Mark MacDonald

Readings for Pentecost 22, Proper 26, Year C, Oct. 31, 2004

Isaiah 1:10-20

Psalm 32

2 Thessalonians 1:1-12

Luke 19:1-10

Luke's story of Zacchaeus is a vivid portrayal of what William Stringfellow called the “episodic” character of the church. A human and heavenly fellowship is created through the liberating challenge presented to Zacchaeus' in Jesus' inviting forgiveness. Echoing ancient tradition, embodying his own experience, and portraying God's promises for the future, Zacchaeus, by generosity and a meal, invites a newly created community to celebrate the goodness of God. The Spirit does more than save a sinner; she creates the church.

In the invitation of Jesus and Zacchaeus' response to it, the Spirit creates a church. It is an event that is only possible through the promise and love of God unfolding in creation. But, as glorious as this may sound, this story also reminds us that the church is often created at times and places we don't expect and sometimes resist. It almost always upsets the principalities and powers that govern the world's affairs and institutions, including – and, sometimes, especially – its religious affairs and institutions.

The self-assured religious folks present in this narrative object to the creation of a church out of such discredited elements. To them, Zacchaeus was an instrument of oppression. He was, locally, the most visible tool of a system that was clearly in conflict with their well-being, their religious law, and, most important, their expectation of the new world that Jesus promised in his Gospel.

[Jesus' critics] clearly do not understand the full extent of the liberation Jesus offers. They could only imagine a complete denunciation of Zacchaeus and the system he embodied. Jesus' message, in word and deed, transcends, transforms, and subverts the opposition between Zacchaeus, the oppressor, and his critics, his victims.

The social and ethical analysis of Jesus' critics is, on one level, absolutely correct (and we suspect his own closest followers are included among those most scandalized). But they clearly do not understand the full extent of the liberation Jesus offers. They could only imagine a complete denunciation of Zacchaeus and the system he embodied. Jesus' message, in word and deed, transcends, transforms, and subverts the opposition between Zacchaeus, the oppressor, and his critics, his victims.

In the liberation of Zacchaeus, Jesus also begins to transcend, transform, and subvert the system that was creating so much misery in Luke's world. In John's Revelation, this system is thinly veiled by the title “Babylon.” We know now that it was the Roman Empire, the latest location of that project of empire that, as we read in both Daniel and John, is a an episodic counterpart to God's church in course of human history. Luke's politics, though a bit more subtle, also emphasize, in the way all of the events are framed from the Nativity through the end of Acts, the way God's New World is in fundamental conflict with the empires of this age. This was never more than a heartbeat away from the thoughts of Luke's readers.

As a sharp contrast to Babylon, Jesus, in the event of Church, offers to absolutely everyone an open door to a new world. It should startle us that the people most reluctant to enter were the respectable people on the right side, politically and religiously, of the conflict with empire. Luke alerts us to the tension and ambivalence that often exits between gospel and religion. It is a tension between a human conception of the best of all possible worlds and the new world that is born in the Gospel of God. It's a tension that most of us in the religious institutions must consider carefully.

The Gospel for this Sunday engages a modern North American reader on more levels than we might expect or like. Like Zacchaeus, we find that the wealth that we hope will provide us with security and contentment has only brought us a growing insecurity and alienation from the rest of the world, even the rest of creation. Like Zacchaeus, we discover that our wealth, even at its best a source of ambivalence, is a means of a greater misery for others and the universe God created.

Magnified in the communal hate and misery of corporate idolatry, our individual greed and lust goes beyond any human capacity to challenge or even comprehend. We may avoid facing the truth of our complicity in evil out of a misplaced instinct for self-preservation. Yet the Gospel tells us not to fear. . . this frightful clarity offers a creative hope.

This narrative displays a vivid picture of the intimate connection between the idolatry of wealth and power that exists in an individual and its communal embodiment in the principalities and powers that rule the nations. Magnified in the communal hate and misery of corporate idolatry, our individual greed and lust goes beyond any human capacity to challenge or even comprehend. We may avoid facing the truth of our complicity in evil out of a misplaced instinct for self-preservation. Yet the Gospel tells us not to fear. It unveils our condition not to condemn but to liberate. Nudged to see that this is a story we are painfully familiar with, this frightful clarity offers a creative hope.

Oppressed by our wealth, we will never be free until the victims of that wealth are treated to freedom and justice. But this freedom for oppressed and oppressor is not found in political analysis and action alone. It is most powerfully present in the unveiling of God's overwhelming goodness and mercy in the event of the church. This suggests that the primary arenas for our struggle with systemic evil are both in public political conversation and, also, our individual heart's prayerful conversation with God – as Gandhi, Dorothy Day and a host of others tried to tell us.

Born in the greed of idolatry, linked in its corporate and individual expressions, empire dies in the world and in our hearts through the revelation of God's goodness in the message of Jesus. In his moment of gospel epiphany, Zacchaeus takes a step out of greed into a discipleship of generosity. At this point, we may note that levels of personal wealth retained by a disciple after Jesus' call takes many different forms in the Gospels. In every case, however, generosity is a primary and necessary characteristic of discipleship and the primary measure of its authenticity.

However challenging we might find this, this is a message of hope for North America, especially North American Christians. Zacchaeus' salvation was more than an inner cleansing. It was a mutual and communal act of liberation for oppressor and oppressed, for rich and poor. We are offered more than a life of forgiveness; we are offered a life of effective love. We are offered the chance to become the event called Church – in our politics, in our religion, in our hearts.

The Rt. Rev. Mark MacDonald is the Episcopal Bishop of Alaska. He is a board member of the Episcopal Church Publishing Company ( The Witness ) and works in ministry with Native people around the worldwide church. Mark may be reached by email at mmacdonald@gci.net .