Zacchaeus’ Tree

This Sunday February 4^th begins the cycle where the Church asks us to slow down a bit and look towards a magnificent season that is coming upon us. It is a prelude, if you will, as we inch towards the Triodium period – a brief season with specific Gospel readings that prepare us for that time of Bright Sadness – the seven-week period of Great Lent, ripe with rich services, more prayer, more fasting, and more grace that get us ready for Holy Pasca.

In Luke 19:1-10, we see Zacchaeus as the far outlier of the story due to his status among his people as a tax collector. But what truly makes him stand out is that he raises the banner for us all to prepare as Christ is coming! Just like Zacchaeus, we have the choice to be among the crowd parroting the culture, or to rise above it.

The Gospel states that Zaccheaus was a little fellow, a man of small stature, who hears that Christ was in his midst. Could it be that his heart was set on fire towards repentance by the previous miracle Christ performed in Jerico when He healed Blind Bartimaeus? Regardless, he was intent on seeing Christ at all costs.

That is why Zacchaeus climbs the tree to be above the crowd as the Church Father’s have likened his action to an attempt to come out of this world, to stop seeing everything through worldly eyes, and to raise his sight to a spiritual place. From that spiritual place he sees Jesus coming and Jesus knows that he’s looking for him as He commands Zacchaeus to come down from the tree and allow Him into his house, into the inner chambers of his heart.

And of course, all the people are astonished at his because what does it tell us about Zacchaeus? Zacchaeus is the chief tax collector, also known as a Publican. Publicans were not popular among the crowds due to an on-going reputation as miserly and merciless merchants. At this time in the Roman empire taxes worked like this:

The emperor would say I need to raise X number of coins from this province and the elites would have an auction about who was going to get that concession to raise taxes and then whomever paid the most to the emperor got that concession. Then for the whole of the next period, whether it was a year or sometimes longer, that family was the only one that could collect those taxes. Meaning they essentially were like the elites of the day who had the power to break people, to subjugate them. They held control of all facets of life.

This is a form of Tax farming, which is not so uncommon in the world even today. Practiced by those who already had abundance, but what they have is not enough. In essence, overwhelming their fellow man. Thus Publicans, we read, have such a horrible reputation in the Gospels almost to the point of being irredeemable in the eyes of their countrymen. But we see here with Zaccheaus this is certainly not the case. The good news, brothers and sisters, is that we’re all redeemable in the eyes of the Lord Who is among us.

St Nikolai Velimirovic says: Zachaeus was a lover of money and had spent his entire life up to that time amassing money in every possible way; mostly sinful ways. He calls it a sickness that inevitably drags a man down to perdition. A fire that burns the more fiercely as more wealth is amassed. There is no sum of money that can satisfy the lust of avarice as fire is incapable of saying, “Don’t put any more wood on me, this is enough, so the passion of avarice does not know how to pronounce the word, “enough.”

Brothers and sisters in Christ, avarice is not so much a want or need to make money, rather it is a condition of those who already make an abundance and due to this sin, they think themselves under appreciated and seek retribution or justice. They put themselves in a position of power to lord it over people – to make themselves gods on earth. But our sense of justice in this world does not always follow the path of the Lord.

Zacchaeus had already set himself apart from the world. He recognizes that these activities had wounded him and had broken his heart. He repented. He does not run from his broken heart but does everything in his power to bring his heart to Christ. This is exactly what Christ seeks from us. Zacchaeus climbs the tree to seek Christ, but the way the Gospel reads it states that Christ sees him first. As He does for any of us when we too bring our broken heart to Him. He says, I see you. Come down from your place and I will come into your home, I will come into your heart.

Zaccheaus is so overjoyed at this union with the Lord that he doubles down on his repentance, and he proclaims that if he has defrauded anyone (which he has) he gives them back fourfold. As we see, his repentance shifts from the basic justice of paying back what he overcharged to that of almsgiving and giving away all that he had. The perfect icon of the almsgiver who shows us that this ministry should always be tied to our repentance and in conjunction with Christ. A broken and contrite heart God will not despise. Psalm 50:19.

Beloved, the one thing that always sticks out to me in this Gospel is, which is never fully answered, if Zacchaeus were to pay everyone back what he had defrauded fourfold, what does that leave him? Does he even have enough in his own treasury to not only pay people back but to do so fourfold? What we can logically conclude here brothers and sisters is that Zaccheaus is more than paying people back or restoring justice, he is indebting himself to his neighbor; he is embodying the sacrificial love Christ has for us.  He is sacrificing his wealth – his worldly possessions. He is so overjoyed that Christ has come into his heart, that there is nothing in the world that is worth saving or amassing that would even come close to what he has already gained in Christ’s healing. Rather, he is more interested in loving others properly.

Elder Aimilianos of Simonopetra says about this type of love: “Today some people say that we don’t need love, we need justice. But we say that we’ll find justice up in heaven; here we need love. And because we know that justice depends on true love, it is justice which guides us, and gives the scepter to love. The aim of love is for one person to give joy to another; for me to voluntarily deprive myself of something so that someone else has more; for me to sacrifice myself so that the other feels at ease, feels secure in his life.”

Let us embrace this good news. That Christ, like He did with Zacchaeus, will see us even before we find him. Only by our intention to seek Him He will see us first and ask us to come into our home – our heart. St. John Chrysostom says, The Lord accepts not only deeds, but intensions.

If we are not ready yet to climb the tree, let us start here, brothers and sisters. Acknowledge that perhaps some of the things we have habitually incorporated in our lives may have wounded us – may have caused us to have a broken heart. Like Zaccheaus, let us not run away from this but turn to the Lord. Most of us do this in our parishes, our new missions.

These missions are our Tree of Zacchaeus. Let us start with an intention and climb up to the Lord.

Fr. Dn. Christopher Purdef