The name of Christ will be glorified in you, and you in him 2 Thessalonians 1.11-2.2
Salvation comes to the house of Zacchaeus Luke 19.1-10
‘Today
salvation has come to this house’. (Luke 19.9)
The story of Zacchaeus is a very
familiar one.
But it’s familiarity should not breed
contempt, or the comfortable assumption that we know what is going on here.
Unlike our reading over the last few
Sundays, this is not a parable.
This is a real, historical meeting, in a
real actual place, still there today, the city of Jericho.
But we shouldn’t read this as remote and
in the past – it has direct spiritual application today!
It sticks in the mind with the image of
the diminutive, celebrity seeking Zacchaeus climbing a tree to get a good view
of Jesus.
There is the vivid scene of Jesus’
seeing Zacchaeus and calling him down and saying that he wants to come to Zacchaeus’
house to eat with him.
Then there’s Zacchaeus, in an act of
reparation, pledging to pay back four times the amount of what he had cheated
from other people.
It is a compelling encounter.
It bespeaks the encounter we are all
called into with Jesus Christ, and one the Michaela is particularly called into
today as she comes to be baptised.
It also reminds us that, as baptised
people, as those who seek Christ today, our life can never be the same: encountering
Jesus, being baptised, means an about turn in our lives: metanoia (μετάνοια) in Greek: literally ‘meta’, meaning
‘beyond’ ‘noia’ meaning thought.
Jesus took Zacchaeus, and takes us,
beyond our own thinking with our limited horizons, into the expansive vision of
sharing his life in the Kingdom of God.
Zacchaeus was seeking something.
He appears not to know what.
He’d heard Jesus was in town and was
clearly intrigued to see him.
He couldn’t possibly have imagined what
his seeking would lead him to.
The seeker is the one who is found.
Jesus called Zacchaeus out from being a
viewer, to being the one who is seen; from being a spectator to becoming a
companion as he sat down to eat.
Following Jesus is not a spectator sport,
it is an act of participation.
This involves us in discerning the call
of Christ in our lives.
It involves us listening carefully to
him, hearing his word; a word that transforms our lives.
It involves welcoming Jesus literally into
our homes and spiritually making space for him in our lives: as the great
Advent hymn puts it ‘let ev'ry heart prepare a throne | and ev'ry voice a song’
(‘Hark! The glad sound’ – Philip Doddridge).
It involves, like Zacchaeus, sitting
down and spending time with Jesus Christ.
We do that in prayer; that is the
grounding for a deep encounter with the Living God.
Likewise Jesus sat down to eat with
Zacchaeus: that’s where bells start ringing for us – Jesus meets us in a meal,
and that meal is the Sacred Banquet of the Eucharist.
And at that meal and from that meal,
flows reconciliation.
This is reconciliation with God; for
Christ is the peace who makes us one with God.
This is reconciliation with one another;
Zacchaeus makes an act of reparation in paying back what he had once cheated
from people.
And this is what the encounter of Jesus
and Zacchaeus is driving towards: ’Today salvation has come to this house…’
Salvation means being saved.
Zacchaeus was saved from a
self-absorbed, locked in life paying no regard to Go or other people; Zacchaeus
was saved from himself.
Salvation, though, needs a Saviour.
Contrary to all the instincts of
contemporary culture salvation - being saved, being healed, being delivered -
is not a self-help exercise.
The Holy Name, ‘Jesus’, is from the
Hebrew name Yeshua (ישוע) and it means: God saves.
Salvation, Jesus, has come to Zacchaeus’
house, to your life, my life, Michaela’s life to save and lead us into life in
him.
And why?
The answer is in the Gospel reading
today: ‘… because [Zacchaeus] too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came
to seek out and to save the lost.’
Today salvation – Jesus Christ – comes to
this house.
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