21 May Zacchaeus’ Experience

21 May 2023

ZACCHAEUS’ EXPERIENCE

But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man’s trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many. (Romans 5: 15)

In 2022, I had the privilege of attending the WCC Assembly. Among the deeply enriching worship experiences was one led by members of the Roman Catholic Church. The worship centred on Zacchaeus. The speaker used an effective, interactive approach, inviting worshippers to imagine themselves as actors in the drama of the day Zacchaeus met Jesus.

I share today what I thought of saying when she invited participants to imagine ourselves as Zacchaeus and express what he was saying to his wife as he reflected on ‘the day he met Jesus’.

These are my imaginings: “My dear wife, how our lives have changed! When I think of that day, I still get shivers in my spine. You know, deep in my heart, I was changed. It was as if all that I had always lived for (you know, gathering all that I could to ensure the security for you and the children and keeping our home better than so many of our neighbours) just shifted in priority. As important as those things still are, I just knew that there was more to living than accumulating things faster than those other people.

As I told you, I just said to him, ‘I have decided to give away half of all I have to the poor,’ and any excess that I took from anyone that I shouldn’t have, I am giving it back four times.

The look he gave me, I will never forget. I always knew something was wrong with this foreign occupation by the Roman Empire though I benefited from it. When he said to me, ‘Today salvation has come to this house, I felt so good in myself. I wasn’t even sure what he meant, but you can see how differently people are treating us now. For the first time in a long time, I feel like I belong. I think that salvation thing he talked about was all about relationships.”

Like all the human experiences recounted in the Bible, the Zacchaeus encounter is about so much more than Zacchaeus himself. Each of us can deeply consider what aspects of Zacchaeus’ being are replicated in our experience and what needs to be reconciled. The Church, too, can consider what the Zacchaeus experience means to it as reflected in its history and its being today.

The Reparations movement is a call for justice and a recalibration of relationships in the community. It is echoing in many parts of the globe as a time in which (at last?) the over 300 years of enslavement and trade in African peoples and its legacies are to be confronted.

CWM’s actions over the last decade are to be embraced and affirmed for their bravery and honesty, unearthing the complicity of its antecedent organisations and uncovering levels of complicity in the sin of slavery. Its act of repentance laments the injuries of the period and their legacies and now begins action towards reparatory justice for these wrongs. Some other organisations and denominations are currently doing the same. These are to be lauded and celebrated worldwide and remembered, like Zacchaeus’ experience, for their reconciling capacity.

Some may find Jesus’ confrontation particularly challenging and unsettling. I have no doubt Zacchaeus did. But Jesus never left before Zacchaeus, in an honest and brave response, reckoned with his truth. That day (in Jesus’ words, not mine), ‘Salvation came to this house.

prayer

Triune God, by the presence and power of your Holy Spirit in the world, reconcile us today. We pray, Amen!

for further thought

Imagine yourself in place of Zacchaeus! How would you respond to the suggestion of Jesus?

Gordon Cowans

United Church in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands