THE THIRTY-FIRST SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME – C

Wisdom 11:22 – 12:2
2 Thessalonians 1:11 – 2:2
Luke 19:1-10

Dear Jesus,

Conversion stories are touching even as they are difficult to believe. I think the sinner’s conversion is the hardest thing for believers and non-believers alike to accept. Deathbed conversions, death-row conversions, sudden changes of heart of known wicked people, all these stories are met with something akin to I bet from those who hear about them. I wonder if that is because the scoffers have not had conversion experiences of their own. Believers don’t remember how they came to faith and have forgotten that faith is a gift of the Spirit. Non-believers can’t imagine believing.

You came to bring God’s mercy promised in the reading from Wisdom: You rebuke offenders little by little, warn them and remind them of the sins they are committing, that they may abandon their wickedness and believe in you, O Lord. But how much rebuking, much less reminding of sins, was part of your mission and ministry? Tax collectors and sinners enjoyed your company and shared your table. Would that have been the case had the principal topics of conversation at table been their sins and the magnitude of their wickedness? How often as you broke bread with them and shared the cup were you rebuking them? Had that been the case, I doubt there would have been enough of these encounters to make them the source of condemning cause for your crucifixion: This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.

Do you love people in their sinfulness? I don’t mean that you love their sin. Do you love the sinner who seems to be lost on his/her way and may not even know it? They may be wandering in the darkness until you become the source of their light. Is conversion the result of their feeling accepted by you even as they listen to your stories and find themselves in them? Do their hardened hearts thaw as it dawns on them that you are telling them they are the beloved ones of God? I know that this is often the theme of my prayer and why I weep remembering.

In this week’s Gospel, it seems obvious that your reputation had reached Zacchaeus before you met. Someone must have told him about you or he had overheard others talking about you so that there was this burning curiosity in him about you, burning enough to put himself in the ridiculous situation of perching on the limb of a tree to catch a glimpse of you as you passed by. The people who despised him so would have derided him even as they spat at the base of his tree.

A crowd blocked Zacchaeus’ view of the parade. Those people might have been shouting to gain your recognition, hoping that you would stop and speak to them, touch them. You saw Zacchaeus. Did you look at him with love? You called out to Zacchaeus and invited yourself to his home. The horror of what you did sent shock waves of revulsion through the crowd who are quick to enunciate Zacchaeus’ sins perhaps having already consigned him to damnation. I must stay at your house. For how long would you stay? Were you saying that you would dwell with Zacchaeus and his family indefinitely? You will live in your disciples and accompany them on The Way.

Zacchaeus’ conversion is remarkable. Half my possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor, and if I have extorted anything from anyone I shall repay it four times over. What would be left for himself and his family? He had made his living extorting from his neighbors, adding to their tax bills for his own profit. Zacchaeus is the prime example of the price paid by those who became your first disciples and then had to leave everything familiar behind, everything they could no longer do or share in if they would go through the dying and rising of Baptism. Being a tax collector is all Zacchaeus knew. His days of wealth were over as salvation came to this descendant of Abraham. You found what had been lost.

Sometimes, I wish I could hear this story as if for the first time. With familiarity almost everything loses impact. If I heard it anew my heart would melt and any temptation to hopelessness or despair would vanish, especially if I thought that what you said to Zacchaeus you were saying to me. Perhaps I need to nosh on this for a while, take it in and digest the substance to make it my own. And believe.

Ah, but there is another point you want me to get out of this. It’s one thing for me to recognize my commonality with Zacchaeus and to repent. It is another for me to recognize that I must have your attitude toward today’s Zachaeuses, those who are despised and outcast, those who are deemed to be the sinners. This is the work of the faith community that has gathered with you at your table to share the Bread and the Cup. We must love the unlovable. They must be embraced and told that you want to dwell with them, that they are the ones for whom you came. That’s the message, isn’t it? That’s what you want me, want us, and want the church to believe and live.

Now I have to think whom I have consigned to those dark places, those I have judged to be sinners beyond forgiveness and redemption and then forgive and love them. Will you help me to do that? I cannot do it on my own.

Sincerely,

Didymus