Lost with Jesus: 26th Sunday of Ordinary Time

In a sense, this story of Jesus and Zacchaeus the tax collector is the end of Luke’s Gospel. This is the last of Jesus’ many encounters before He enters Jerusalem, and that is a story which all four Gospels have in common. But we have four Gospels, each of which highlights a particular facet of the Good News that Jesus brings. And in this last encounter before He enters Jerusalem, we hear the key to understanding Luke’s Gospel: “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:10).

How, in Luke’s Gospel, does Jesus begin his public ministry? In his hometown synagogue, he read from the prophet Isaiah, “to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the prisoners…to liberate the oppressed and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,” and in his reading of those words, Jesus declared them to have been fulfilled. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus begins by proclaiming the good news to those lost in poverty, prison and oppression.

On our homecoming Sunday, we heard Jesus warn His would-be followers that foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head. Strange to say, but there is Good News in that. Jesus comes to seek and to save the lost, and when He finds them, he walks with them. He shares the plight of the lost. When Jesus tells us the story of the Good Samaritan, He tells us a of a man who was lost, beaten to an inch of his life and given up for dead by his fellow Jews, until his worst enemy becomes the one man who finds him by caring for him. In that compassion, all the boundaries created by human beings fell away into one question: will you reach out to the lost?

Then, we heard Jesus warn His followers that if we follow Him, we risk alienation from the familiar supports of family, tribe, wealth and power, that only now have we realized were never enough to support whatever we building for a secure future. And in that we hear Jesus asking us, will you join me in walking with the lost? Later, we heard Jesus compare God to a shepherd who will risk all to find the one lost sheep. What might Jesus be calling me, calling you, calling us, to risk so that those who are lost might be found?

We have seen the lost in woman ‘sinner” who anointed Jesus’ feet with her tears, but whose sin was not important enough to mention. We have seen the sinner in the tax collector whose sin Jesus preferred to the self-righteousness of the Pharisee.

And today, of course, we see the lost in Zacchaeus, not just a tax collector, but a chief tax collector, hopelessly corrupted by his regular contact with the Romans for whom he collects taxes: a man who has been corrupted by power and corrupted absolutely. Zacchaeus is completely isolated from the community of the sons of Abraham. But even to him, Jesus Christ reaches out with grace and hospitality, not with judgment and condemnation. To which his fellow Jews react with grumbling and a sense of betrayal.

But then Zacchaeus says something very strange. “See, Lord, that half of all my possessions I give to the poor.” That’s what Zacchaeus already does. He knows what a compromised position he lives in, and he already does his best to soften the injustice inherent in the tax system he helps administer. So, when Jesus says that “salvation has come to this house,” He is recognizing that Zacchaeus was already being saved before Jesus saw him on that sycamore tree.

Of course, that salvation is not complete. “If I cheat anyone, I repay them four times as much.” If Zacchaeus has been saved, why would he need to make provision for if and when he cheats anyone? Alas, the Roman system of taxation was simple. Tax collectors were assigned to collect a certain amount of money from their district. Zacchaeus and other tax collectors had to deliver that total amount or else it was their pound of flesh which the Romans would extract. So, the tax collectors had to get their assigned taxes, from whomever they could get money from by whatever means necessary. Under those circumstances, it was likely that they would probably end up squeezing some taxpayers for more than they really owed.

In other words, Zacchaeus is still a sinner. He is still complicit in an unjust system, and occasionally his complicity will become more like collaboration in that injustice. He admits that to Jesus, and yet Jesus still says, “Salvation has come to this house.” Jesus knows that we imperfect human beings cannot simply turn a switch and go from sinful to sinless. And He doesn’t demand that of us. He only asks that we accept his grace, and begin the process of salvation.

And so we come to the end of this Gospel of the lost. In what way are you lost? Fear and uncertainty over the future? Two years ago, I was uncertain over whether God was calling me to stay in Virginia, or move to Alabama. Now I know that God has planted me here on Sand Mountain, to walk with the good people of Christ Church, and to walk with the lost of Sand Mountain, the poor and the seekers. Where are we going together? The Good News is that we don’t have to know where we are going. As long as we are following Jesus, then Jesus is always with the lost, wherever they are. And if Jesus is with us, then we are always being saved. The end.