Tuesday of the Thirty-third Week in Ordinary Time
In today’s first reading, Jesus says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, then I will enter his house and dine with him, and he with me.” It sounds pretty simple and pretty great: just open the door and Jesus will come to dinner. This line from Revelation hearkens back to all of the stories in the gospels where Jesus eats with people in their homes. These stories often include a judgment from someone around Jesus. A Pharisee or other onlooker will ask how it is that Jesus could possibly eat with “those people.” We can get a good picture of God from Jesus’ eating habits. The table of God is meant to be full of people whom we’d rather not invite to dinner. In some cases, maybe we are those very people. Maybe we’ve felt the marginalization of the cast of characters in the gospels whom Jesus singles out for a meal.
One of these characters appears in today’s gospel reading. We know a few things about Zacchaeus: he is a tax collector, he is rich, he is short, and he is (eventually) saved. Being a tax collector meant being an agent of the Roman empire, as well as someone who would have been made rich on the backs of his own Jewish brothers and sisters. As if being a tax collector wasn’t bad enough, Zacchaeus was the “chief” tax collector and the text is clear that he has been made wealthy from it. When Jesus singles Zacchaeus out, asking him to come down from the tree he has climbed, the people are upset. In fact, our translation says that they “grumble.”
But this act of compassion and charity on Jesus’ part opens the space for Zacchaeus’ salvation. He “opens the door” to Jesus both literally and figuratively. Zacchaeus’ story is a challenge for us, though. The challenge comes when we consider the very content of Zacchaeus’ faith. The question is, what makes Jesus say that “Today salvation has come to this man’s house”? Does this simply mean that Jesus was there? Surely, that’s part of it. But the challenging part is that his salvation seems to have something to do with his giving away half of his possessions and repaying those he has extorted.
Zacchaeus’ conversion has a decidedly economic character. Therefore, when Revelation tells us that we should open the door to Christ and that he will eat with us, there is an implicit challenge that we examine our own economic lives. Salvation comes to our house when we give of ourselves in the way Christ models for us. Such giving is difficult, counter-cultural and may actually seem a little crazy. Who among us wants to give away half our possessions? We must each discern what God demands of our households in this regard. It is a mistake, however, to read Zacchaeus’ conversion as purely one of the mind or heart; true conversion requires regular commitment to changing the way we actually live our lives in material terms as well.
- Katherine Schmidt