When we read through the gospels we see that Jesus is always upsetting the establishment.
And there is this problem that people seem to have with Jesus continually eating with the dregs of society.
The tax collectors and the prostitutes.
As religious people I think we can understand this aversion to associating with people with a disreputable reputation. We talk all the time about making sure we are associating with the right people; people who are going to be a good influence on us and so on.
This was the sort of the same mentality in the time of Jesus, just magnified.
So there is this one story in particular that shows what I’m talking about.
Luke tells this story in his account of the life of Jesus about this tax collector named Zacchaeus. Well I guess we can’t just call him a tax collector because he was a chief tax collector in charge of all the tax collectors in the region he was assigned. Zacchaeus had become very rich.
That’s not very surprising that a tax collector had become very rich.
Tax collectors during the time of the Roman Empire were a little different than the IRS.
A tax collector like Zacchaeus was a Jew, who was collecting taxes for the Roman government. What the Romans did was tax their colonies heavily. And what would happen often times is these tax collectors would take collect more than what was needed to pay the tax so they could keep the money for themselves.
There were various types of tax collectors that existed at this time, but the type that Zacchaeus was, was that he was involved with customs taxes. What the Romans had done was they had created a system of tolls that were collected at ports and tax offices that were near city gates. The rates of these taxes varied from 2 to 5 percent of the value, but the goods that a person was carrying was subject to multiple taxations on a long journey.
Because the system was complex and was based on the tax collectors own assessment of the goods that a person was carrying, this gave way to injustices carried out by tax collectors. They would take more than necessary and would profit from it. This would explain the wealth that Zacchaeus had. Not to mention Zacchaeus, as a Chief Tax Collector was in charge of other tax collectors in that area.
So these Jewish men are employed by the Roman government to take the money from fellow Jews in order to fund the pagan Roman government. That’s not good news to the Jewish people. They don’t like this. Basically this was seen as institutional robbery and the only one that really benefited from it was the tax collector himself.
To enter the house of a tax collector was deemed as an unclean action by this group called the Pharisees who were sort of the moral police of their day. They wanted to make sure that everyone followed the laws as they interpreted them.
So these tax collectors are basically seen as traitors. Traitors to their people and to their God. In an honor and shame culture they not only disgraced themselves, but their families. They were not allowed to be judges in court or serve as witnesses and they were kicked out of the Temple and the synagogues.
Now being kicked out of a synagogue or the Temple was a lot more significant an action than you might think. I mean today when we get kicked out of a church for things we’ve done wrong or whatever, we can just go start our own denomination, and everything is cool.
But during this time that was not an option. Basically if you wanted to worship and experience God you had to do so in the Temple or in the synagogue. God is essentially confined to a building. So this is kind of like someone being excommunicated. By kicking the tax collectors out of the Temple and synagogue, the people were basically saying you are cut off from God. You cannot worship and experience God.
So that’s who Zacchaeus was. The scum of the earth. Getting rich off the poor.
Enter Jesus.
Zacchaeus, the wee little man was he, could not see over the crowd so he run ahead to climb into a sycamore fig tree so he can see Jesus as he walks by.
Wait.
Why is it important that we know that Zacchaeus climbs into a sycamore fig tree?
Well fig trees were at this time considered worthless.
A fitting symbol for this tax collector.
Jesus walks by. He looks up.
Now the text doesn’t say anything about what Zacchaeus was thinking as Jesus looked up at him. But I wonder if his heart skipped a beat for a second. I wonder if he was terrified.
Then Jesus says his name. “Zacchaeus!”
I wonder if at this point Zacchaeus starts to think that a judgmental word is coming.
But then Jesus says, “Come down! I must be a guest in your house today.”
Stop.
Jesus must be a guest at the house of Zacchaeus. We can miss the significance of this action if we don’t understand what it meant for people to eat together in this time.
Just going to Zacchaeus’ house alone is a problem, because remember eating at the house of tax collector makes you unclean. But there’s more going on here.
The way we view meals today is as a system of nourishment. We eat because we have to. We grab some people on our hall and go to Baldwin or we’ll grab wildcat and take it back to our dorm or whatever. But in this culture, being welcomed to the table of someone was far more significant. Being welcomed to the table of someone was soaked in the significance of friendship, intimacy and unity.
These mealtimes were governed by strict and complex social values and customs. So when someone challenged these social norms and values they were looked at as an enemy of social stability.
Most times the meal was shared with people from your extended family. So when you came together to eat there was this sense that you were an accepted and integral part of the group.
Outside of your extended family you would eat with people that came from your social class. So people invited their social or religious equals; people who could return the favor.
During the time of the Maccabees many of the Jews and a large number of priests had turned toward paganism. As a reaction against this group known as the Pharisees came about and began to emphasize this idea from the Old Testament that as Jews they were supposed to be separated from the pagan ways. They started to emphasis this idea of living pure life in the sense of ritual purity every day of their lives. So there was this emphasis that came about on the purity of food and the purity of the people you were eating with.
The Pharisees insisted on eating only with people who were pure. The future of Israel depended on how pure they were.
But if someone is estranged, sharing a meal together is way to open up the path toward reconciliation.
So as Jesus does this. As he invites Zacchaeus to the table, the people begin to grumble.
They are getting upset.
Jesus is upsetting the status quo.
He’s upsetting the established way of things.
He’s opening the door of reconciliation to Zacchaeus.
This reconciliation of Christ doesn’t demand that we do anything.
Christ didn’t say to Zacchaeus, I’ll come to your house when you’ve purified yourself; when you’ve given up your profession, when you’ve prayed about it, when you’ve followed the law well enough. He’s says come down from your tree. Come down and come and eat with me.
I think Zacchaeus was getting up in the tree as a way of seeing Jesus. As a way of just being able to look at him. To watch him as he walked by. I think that in a way we do the same thing.
We climb into our own trees.
We climb into the tree of religiosity to see Jesus as he goes by.
We climb in the tree of Bible studies to see Jesus as he goes by.
We climb into the tree of legalism to see Jesus as he walks by.
We climb into trees because we don’t think we’re good enough,
Smart enough,
Attractive enough,
Religious enough,
And so on.
We climb into these trees to see Jesus as he walks by. But Jesus is looking up at us and saying, come eat with me. Come out of that tree, for I must share my forgiveness with you. Come out of that tree that is keeping you from truly experiencing what I have to offer.
Come be reconciled.
You’re part of the group.
You’re accepted.
You’re loved.
You’re cherished.
You matter.
You don’t have to be good enough.
Follow the rules well enough.
Read the Bible enough.
Pray enough.
Pay attention in chapel enough.
Come down from the tree, and come be part of the reconciliation that I am offering you.
Jesus is restoring the relationship that Zacchaeus has with God. As I was preparing for this message and I read through the history and the meaning of sharing a meal with someone I was almost reduced to tears. Seeing that Jesus is willing to go so far to restore those who have been kicked out to a right relationship with God. People who their whole life have been told they are scum and dirt and not good enough. People who fear to judgment of God so much they have to run up into a tree and just hope to catch a glimpse of Jesus as he walks by. But all the while Jesus is calling to us, begging us to come down and be reconciled.
And the people who are watching Jesus do this, grumble with displeasure and say, “He’s gone to be the guest of a notorious sinner.”
But while the people were saying this Zacchaeus was saying to Jesus that he was going to give half his possessions to the poor and pay back people four fold what he had cheated them out of. He was busy reconciling his debts with others.
While others were grumbling about whether this person Zacchaeus could really be forgiven, Zacchaeus was reconciling himself with those who he needed to reconcile with.
So as I look at this story I see there is this need for us as the church of Jesus to be about reconciliation. Because God has reconciled us to himself through Jesus through forgiveness, and I think that as the church we have the necessity to move toward reconciliation with the world and with each other.
I look at this story and I begin to ask, who are the people who have said aren’t good enough?
The people who we’ve kept from the table of fellowship.
Who are the people I’ve said you can’t be part of the group.
Who are the people as the Church that we have said are outside the table of fellowship.
Who are our modern day tax collectors that we consider unclean, and consider association with to be unclean.
Are they the people who don’t look like us, act like us, think like us?
Are they the homosexuals?
Are they abortion doctors?
Are they prostitutes?
Are they drug dealers?
Are they Wesleyans?
Are they Methodists?
Are they Baptists?
Are they Roman Catholics?
Are they Republicans?
Are they are Democrats?
I think Jesus makes it very clear that he is about reconciliation. Jesus tore down a system that allowed some people to say others are in and other are out. Jesus tore down the system that turns people who aren’t like us into the “others.” He showed us that God loves those who are not good enough for anybody else.
That he’s inviting even the worst sinners to table of God’s forgiveness.
Jesus didn’t show us how to be forgiven by following more rules and regulations.
Jesus didn’t show us how to be forgiven by all the good works we will do or not do.
Jesus shows reconciliation by bringing people in. By showing them they matter to God. By showing them they are important. By showing them they are more than what there sins would tell them.
When the world tells you that you aren’t good enough because of the things you have done, Jesus says, I must be a guest at your table.
When someone draws a line and says you must be on this side of the line to be one of us Jesus says I must be a guest at your table.
This idea of table fellowship paints a picture for us of what the forgiveness of God means.
Think about communion. We celebrate this thing called the Lord’s Supper. The Eucharist. Whatever you want to call it.
Jesus is sitting around a table in Jerusalem with his disciples. He’s there eating with them. At a table. He’s telling them to do this in remembrance of him. He’s telling them this is the new covenant. The covenant of the forgiveness of sins. The covenant that is Christ reconciling us to God and us to each other.
I think what has happened with communion is we’ve missed some of the most important aspects of it. Communion has become a ritual. Some churches take it once a year or once a quarter, once a month, or every Sunday.
Some people call it a memorial, or a means of grace or the Roman Catholics say that the bread and wine actually become Christ’s body and blood.
But I think with all the discussion about how often we take communion or what happens in communion we are missing the simple message of communion.
It points us towards the cross where Christ bridged the gap that divided us from God. It tells us to remember what Christ done for us.
We are a part of the group of people that God has called. I think in a certain way Jesus and Zacchaeus were celebrating communion. They were celebrating his coming back to the community of God. He had been kicked out, but now he was again accepted and loved.
I think this idea has come about that in order to celebrate communion we need to have all of our junk together. We can’t be messed up or dealing with some thing in our life. I find that interesting against the backdrop of who was sitting at the table during the first communion with Jesus and his disciples.
I mean you have Judas sitting there, who betrays Jesus. And Jesus shares the bread and the cup with him.
You have Peter sitting there who cuts off the ear of a guard who is going to arrest Jesus, and then he denies Jesus three times. And Jesus shares the bread and the cup with him.
You have the two hotheads, James and John sitting there. And Jesus shares the bread and the cup with them.
And then as a group all of these disciples abandon Jesus in his time of need. And Jesus shares the bread and the cup with all of them.
Some pretty messed up people.
So I don’t necessarily buy into this idea that we need to have our heart right, or all of the mess in our lives together before we take communion. Jesus shares the bread and the cup with us despite our sins and our weaknesses.
Paul tells us that we are we should be examining our lives when we come to the Lord’s Supper. Communion is a time to come to God saying I don’t have things right. My heart isn’t right, it’s full of all kinds of evil and sinful things. I need your help. I need your forgiveness. And what communion is, is God inviting us back to himself. It’s him saying I know you’re messed up people. I know you can’t get things right but come and be with me.
That’s what Jesus did with Zacchaeus, and that’s what Jesus is asking with communion. And what we see in the story of Zacchaeus is that when Christ offers redemption and forgiveness it compels Zacchaeus to go and reconcile with those around him. It drives him towards that.
The forgiveness of God compels us to forgive others.
In a world where there is so much division and maybe the best example the church can have is that we are group of people that are reconciled to God and we reconcile ourselves to each other.
