Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time
This is my first year as a citizen… and I am soooooo looking forward to vote!!! Electioneering this time around has been brutal. This has been the mother-of-all negative campaigning. The candidates have tried their best to bring out the worst in the opponent. The goal is to make the other person look bad, so that the candidate looks better is comparison to the worst. I think a campaign should try to bring out the best in the other so that voters can decide who is the best. As a first-time voter in the US, instead of choosing the best among the best, I am having to chose the lesser of the worst.
I found the gospel reading to be a great respite to contemporary politics. The story of Jesus’ encounter with Zacchaeus is a marvelous story of the higher calling of humanity. It teaches us to bring out the best in others and ourselves. It teaches us to conduct our affairs in a way that celebrates our humanity rather than despise it. It is a lesson for not only modern day politics but even for our personal lives. Let me draw three points from this story.
1. God Brings out the Best in Us. People like Zacchaeus were looked down in Palestinian society not only because of their profession but also because they were Jews collecting taxes for the oppressive Romans.. Besides this, tax-collectors were not the most honest people. They overtaxed the people and pocketed the extra. The Romans did not care. As long as they got their share, the could care less for the common folk. However, it is how the story ends that is truly spectacular. Zacchaeus says, “Behold, half of my possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor, and if I have extorted anything from anyone I shall repay it four times over.” Between the time Zacchaeus first met Jesus and his public confession, something happened. The gospel reading does not give us details of their conversation. I am interpreting it to mean that somehow Jesus brought out the best in an otherwise despicable man. For Jesus, this even despicable man was redeemable. As Jesus himself says, “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost.” There is a lesson in all of this for us. Even as we find ourselves a divided nation, even as we find ourselves caught up by all the negativity, even as we find ourselves forced to pick sides, perhaps we can remember Jesus’ interaction with Zacchaeus. Instead of giving into the practice of bashing each other, could we bring out the best in one another? Even in our own homes Jesus teaches us that no body is irredeemable.
2. Lessons For an Electronic Generation. Believe it or not, the ancient Zacchaeus’ story has a lesson for the modern electronic generation. The story teaches lessons in communication. On the one hand, electronic and social media has changed the face of electioneering. More importantly, though, electronic social media has affected our personal and social relationships radically. There is a good side to it… keeping people safe, parents knowing where children are, quick and effective communication. However, it is also destroying our capacity for genuine human interaction. Let me give you an example. Most days when I go to St. Helen’s for morning mass, I drive through the neighborhoods. This is also the time when parents and children wait for the school bus. This is what I see… children entertaining themselves on the side walk, while parents are on their phone texting or simply surfing the net. Nine out of ten parents are on their phones. Social scientist are warning us that we are losing our capacity for personal communication. A recent study tells us that new parents are attending to their new born babies in a different way that parents did even ten to fifteen years back. Mothers on electronic gadgets while nursing, mothers and fathers busy on gadgets while holding their children, texting or surfing instead of silly conversations, giving children gadgets to keep them quiet… these practices are robbing us of our ability for simple, genuine human communication. We are forgetting to look at each other when we communicate. If Zacchaeus were to google Jesus, Jesus would have never seen him up on the tree. It was the meeting of the two that did it for Jesus and Zacchaeus. I have many practical implications for you and me. Folks, let us put our phones down…, smell the roses… for goodness sake, look up…, stop pretending to be busy with nothing…. Siri is never going to be your friend!
3. Writing Each Other Off too Quickly. Perhaps because we live in an electronic age or because we are more comfortable with impersonal communication through e-mails, we write people off way more easily than we did before. In fact, it is true that we find it easier to say things to people via e-mail than we would do face-to-face. We write people off too easily. The Zaccchaeus story reminds us that we cannot write-off even the most despicable people in society. Of all the people who were crowding to see Jesus, there was one weird, short man who climbed a tree. Jesus could have easily dismissed this man as crazy. Instead, Jesus walked up to him and invited himself to his house. Jesus finds ways to be inclusive of this weird man. He says, “Today salvation has come to this house because this man too is a descendant of Abraham.” Whereas the people had written Zacchaeus off, Jesus reaching out to him restored him to the community of faith. The lesson in simple. In our church, in our families, at our workplaces, it is easy to write people off. A Christ-like person always tries to integrate people to the community. Sometimes, it is integration that bring conversion and healing.
This Eucharist is a meal… not unlike the one in Zacchaeus’ house. Christ is here and so are we all who need salvation like Zacchaeus did. And Jesus says, “Today salvation has come to this house!”
- Fr. Satish Joseph