Glory to God the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.
If you’ve been Orthodox for a while, then this morning’s Gospel reading may have come as a bit of a surprise. It’s still Theophany, and we’re already reading about Zaccheus!
That’s because today, at the reading of the Lord’s encounter with Zaccheus, marks the last normal week before the Resurrection of Christ. In fact, good news: We are right now only eleven weeks away from the Resurrection of Christ! No, the Great Fast is not starting yet, not for another month. In the weeks to come you and I will still enjoy many bacon sandwiches and steaks and wine and cheese and burritos and taco fries.
The date of Pascha moves around every year and this year, it’s a little early, and that’s why we’re already looking ahead to prepare.
And now we have come round to the Sunday of Zaccheus.
You know, if you drive to Seattle, you’re going to see familiar signposts. There’s Sunnyside. There’s Yakima. Ellensburg. Here’s Snoqualmie Pass… You haven’t entered into Seattle traffic yet, but at each signpost you know how close you are, and you prepare. You fill the gas. You get your tire chains ready.
The church gives us a series of signposts every week, giving us the things that we need to know, and do in order to benefit from the season of the Fast.
Because Lent is coming – but holiness doesn’t just happen when we stop eating cheese. We need to lay some foundations here and now so that Lent will be for our healing, not just to make us hungry. We’re going to have to prepare for spiritual effort and growth if the Fast is going to do us any good.
And I’ll give away the punchline right now: In today’s Gospel reading, Zaccheus teaches us that the first way we need to prepare for the fast is with humility.
Saint Joseph the Hesychast wrote, “Don’t despair when you fall, but get up eagerly and do a prostration saying, ‘Forgive me, my dear Christ. I am human and weak.’ The Lord has not abandoned you. But since you still have a great deal of worldly pride, a great deal of vainglory, our Christ lets you make mistakes and fall, so that you perceive and come to know your weakness every day, so that you become patient with others who make mistakes, and so that you do not judge the brethren when they make mistakes, but rather put up with them.”
You know, there is a kind of confession that is genuinely contrite over sins — not because we feel pain over our disloyalty and lack of love for Christ our God, but because we are frustrated and thought we had gotten over this temptation. We are really confessing, “This was unacceptable, because I know I am better than this!” Our confession is coming from our wounded ego. It’s an exercise in pride.
And God may be choosing at this time not to deliver us from our besetting sins precisely because this painful, repeated experience has not yet humbled us enough so we will stop believing we are not that bad.
Now, we read that Zaccheus was a tax collector, and he was rich. Well, you didn’t need to say that – tax collectors were rich men. They made their living by extorting money from their own people, paying the Romans who appointed them, and keeping all the extra that they collected. So, as a collaborator with the evil empire, and a traitor to his people and a rich extortioner, you can imagine that Zaccheus was not someone you saw in the temple every day.
But here comes Jesus. Preaching, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Zaccheus wants to see him. But as we read, Zaccheus is too short to see Jesus so he climbs a tree. Here’s a government executive, in his pinstripe suit, climbing a tree downtown. How embarrassing! Zaccheus is like a child. He has no care for his reputation. He just wants to see Jesus.
Saint Augustine comments, “Say what you like, but for our part, let us climb the sycamore tree and see Jesus. The reason that you cannot see Jesus is that you are ashamed to climb the sycamore tree. Let Zaccheus cling to the sycamore tree, and let the humble person climb the cross… ‘the foolishness of God is wiser than men.’”
The Fathers who comment on this passage connect Zaccheus’s sycamore tree to the tree of the Cross. “He who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me” (Matthew 10:38). They also add that Zaccheus was short, so he climbed a tree in order to see the Lord. And all of us have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). We are not spiritual giants; we’re too small, so if we want to see God we need to climb the ladder of the virtues. That’s going to take effort.
The Lord calls Zaccheus by name: “Zaccheus, come down!” The Lord knows his name.
Why are you here this morning? Who drew you to Christ in the first place? It wasn’t your idea. The Lord, the Maker of the ends of the Earth, the One who rides on the wings of the wind, called you by name. Before the foundation of the Earth, he predestined you. He foreordained you to be conformed to the likeness of his son. The Lord calls you by name.
Have you seen cross processions on television or on the Internet? In Russia, thousands of people walk on pilgrimage together, either across a city or for miles across the country. In the west, people walk the Camino de Santiago all the way across Spain to meet the relics of Saint James. On these long pilgrimages and processions, they get to know one another. They are fellow-strugglers in a long, slow progress. You see the same thing here. We were at the services many times a week, we come to know each other. You are a fellow struggler on the way of the Cross, and the Lord who walks with you knows you by name.
“Zaccheus! Come down – I must stay at your house.” Christ intends to transform how you live your life as a worker, as a parent, as a child, as a voice and a pair of hands in your neighborhood. The Faith is not a set of dogmas to get right, or a weekly liturgy – Christ wants to be in your daily routine. Saint Peter Chrysologus, bishop of Ravenna, says, “The one whose home Christ does not enter will not attain to the divine dwelling place; and the one at whose table Christ does not sit will not recline at the heavenly table.”
How does our story end? “Salvation has come to this house.” What made the Lord say that? Repentance.
Zaccheus says, “Look, Lord, I give half of my goods to the poor; and if I have taken anything from anyone by false accusation, I restore fourfold.”
Repentance isn’t a feeling, or a deciison to stop sinning. Just not getting drunk any more is not repentance. Repentance is action. It’s restoring what we’ve destroyed, restoring relationships we’ve broken, making amends where we have wronged other people. Being sorry may not heal a broken relationship, but becoming a person they can trust can build a new relationship. That’s why the Lord doesn’t say blessed are the peacekeepers but the peacemakers.
And that’s why there is no repentance after death. In this life we can change our actions and change our heart by what we do. In this life we have hands and can work and give and heal others. After this life, with no body, no goods, no mouth to speak, we have no way to rebuild, restore, and make amends.
Zaccheus sees Christ from the branches of the tree. He sees Christ as he climbs down to the village street and he sees him as they walk to his home and eat together. And he sees Christ in one more place — in his neighbors when he repays them. In other words, everywhere. “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”
After the Ascension of the Lord, Zaccheus accompanied Saint Peter on his travels. History tells us he ended his days in holiness as the Bishop of Caesarea in Palestine.
I want to close with a word from Father Christodoulos, a priestmonk in Greece, who spoke about humility and repentance.
You may have been born in the Church, baptized in its name, raised in its bosom, served its saints, married and buried within its walls and yet be lost. Because it is not proximity to the sacred space that saves, but union with Christ. The Fathers are clear: the Church is not a refuge of habit, but a place of transformation.
Saint John Chrysostom says that “many are in the Church, but few are in Christ.” And Saint Maximus the Confessor teaches that salvation is not a formal participation in services, but an existential alteration of man.
Saint Isaac the Syrian says that “he who has known his sin is greater than he who has seen angels.” For the knowledge of the fall gives rise to humility, and humility attracts Grace.
Many have a relationship with the form of faith. Few have a relationship with the Cross. And yet, Christ called us to die and rise with Him. Good Christians are not the blameless ones, but those who fall, rise, confess with contrition, and partake of His Body and Blood because they deeply know their unworthiness and for this very reason they need God.
Saint Symeon the New Theologian says it bluntly: if Christ does not dwell in the heart, everything else remains a shadow. Salvation is not a matter of being present in the temple, but of Christ’s dwelling in man. Not a matter of “I went there”, but a matter of “I repent”. Not “I belong”, but “I live in Christ.” Let us not just occupy a space in the Church; let us reach Christ as our Life. Because the Church without Christ becomes empty, while Christ in the heart becomes salvation.
To the glory of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
