31st Sunday Year C

See Commentary on Luke 19:1-10


Homily 1 - 2007

Today’s story of Zacchaeus is just the right story for us as we move towards the conclusion of our liturgical year. In so many ways, it suits our situation perfectly. There was Zacchaeus wanting to see Jesus.That’s us – as we gather today for Eucharist: “O dear Lord, three things I pray: to see thee more clearly; to love thee more dearly; to follow thee more nearly, day by day.”

More importantly, Jesus wants to be with us: I must stay at your house today. The wonderful freedom of Jesus: to be seen with us! to stay with us! Although most of the world does not label us as sinners – they do regard us at least as pretty irrelevant, perhaps a bit odd.

We are an interesting group… - and we’re here together; - and we do our best to feel at ease with everyone else, putting our judgments on hold, welcoming each other. Indeed, drawn together into the mystery of this Eucharist, we know that we are sharing with lots of other Christians throughout our nation and around the world. As the Spirit of Jesus moves us more deeply into Eucharist, we try to keep before our minds and hearts our solidarity with disciples everywhere - [all drawn into the same mystery, the same experience]; our solidarity, indeed, with more even than fellow disciples: with everyone in our world for whom Jesus shed his blood.

When we take our places around the Eucharistic table, within the context of our global village, we realise that we are not all that unlike Zacchaeus – senior tax collectors and wealthy people.  Together with many of our brothers and sisters around the world, we shall soon pray: Give us this day our daily bread - knowing that that prayer may not be answered for many of them because of the few who keep what they have for themselves and are unwilling to share, even their surplus.

In face of the gross inequality, poverty and hunger around our world, Western nations still virtuously proclaim that national interest reigns supreme, and that national interest will not be subordinated to the just needs of the world’s hungry.

In the course of another incident just before today’s Gospel story, Jesus had commented: How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God. People questioned how Zacchaeus stood with God. Their attitude generally was that his position inevitably made him a sinner; and they complained that Jesus had gone to stay at a sinner’s house. Jesus did not deny Zacchaeus’s sinfulness, but he was overjoyed to be able to proclaim: Today salvation has come to this house.

How come salvation? Because something had happened to Zacchaeus – something that freed him from his previous addiction to wealth. He was able to assure Jesus: I give half my property to the poor; and if I have cheated anybody, I will pay him back four times the amount. Incredible freedom! What made the difference? What broke the hold of the former addiction? His recognition simply that Jesus respected him, that Jesus liked him. I must stay at your house today.

How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God. yet, What is impossible for men is possible for God. I think we can relate to that. Whatever about many of our hard-nosed fellow citizens, who addictively prioritise self-interest, [or national interest (the same thing!)] above the possibility of sharing our bread with the hungry, and of relieving the hunger and oppression of so many around our world, we have known something of the wonderfully freeing experience of being precious to God, and of being respected by God.

For many of us, our regularly repeated prayer has begun to be answered: Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed. That word of Jesus that, once it has been genuinely heard, breaks every addiction, is simply: I do not call you servants, but friends… Today, salvation has come to this house. Let us keep going and allow ourselves to get drawn more deeply into this mystery that is Eucharist.


Homily 2 - 2010

We all seem to love to hate someone. Last week we had the Pharisee, who loved to hate the tax-collector, (and possibly ourselves, who love to hate the Pharisee). This week we have the crowd, who also do a job on a tax-collector – unanimous in labelling him a sinner. They even did a job on Jesus, grumbling that he went to stay at a sinner’s house.

I suppose that every culture needs to have those it hates, those it sees itself different from, those it sees itself better than. For some it is homosexuals, or abortionists, or asylum-seekers or perhaps Aborigines, or even just Collingwood barrackers.

It seems to be hard-wired into us that there will be some people with whom we automatically compare ourselves favourably, (and feel comfortingly virtuous in the process). It might even be our own peer group. I like to think myself better than some other priests, and will spontaneously think of half a dozen areas that seem to justify my view of myself – perhaps I pray more or don’t drink as much as or keep fitter than, or get up earlier. There might be as many other areas where they are obviously better than I am – but those areas don’t spontaneously enter into calculation. I am comfortably, and smugly, selective.

A catch is that it is easy for the attitude to escalate – from comparing to judging, from judging to condemning, from condemning to being hostile towards. Our world seethes with mutual hostilities – that can often translate into violence of some kind.

Though comparing ourselves to others seems to be spontaneous, second-nature, and universal, it need not be. I am not like the rest of men – as last week’s Pharisee mused to himself.

We are each unique. We are different. But in the broad scheme of things, the differences are minimal. You sin; I sin. You do some good things; I do some good things. Is the difference between us all that much? Perhaps, from God’s point of view, I am like the rest of men – and perhaps just as well.

The wonderful thing is that God loves us all. Did you notice this morning’s first Reading? In your sight, Lord, the whole world is like a grain of dust … , like a drop of morning dew falling on the ground. And in the light of the overwhelming richness of God’s love, the differences between my goodness and your goodness, my badness and your badness, are infinitesimal. You are merciful to all …, and overlook our sins so that we can repent. God can’t love you more than me; or love me more than you, because God already loves both of us totally and unconditioned.

As the first Reading put it: You spare all things because all things are yours, Lord, lover of life.  The Reading went on: Little by little, you correct those who offend, you admonish and remind them of how they have sinned, so that they may abstain from evil and trust in you. Because God loves us all, God does not wish to leave us in our sin – because sin is bad for us. Sin is the choice to relate to others in ways other than from respect and love – to relate competitively,judgmentally, with hostility.

Ultimately, trusting, loving relationships are the only way to happiness – they are in fact the very experience of true happiness. Sin is the choice against trust.

Jesus had no problem loving anyone. He could love an oppressive tax-collector; he could love a self-righteous Pharisee; he can love me; he can love you. He invites us all to repentance, to think again, to get things in perspective – because it is good for us – good for us as individuals; essential for us if we are to live fulfilled lives together.

And only as we learn to trust can we entrust ourselves to the loving embrace of God. The secret is to keep focussed on the absolutely overwhelming love of God. As the Psalmist put it so beautifully in today’s Responsorial Psalm: I will give you glory, O God, I will bless your name for ever. I will bless you day after day, and praise your name for ever… – fascinated by the absolutely overwhelming love of God.


Homily 3 - 2016

I love today’s first reading. It sums up so well Israel’s insights into just what God was like. Those insights had been growing over the fifteen centuries that God had been working on and with the people of Israel, leading them from their original paganism to what we heard today. “You are merciful to all… and overlook people’s sins. You love all that exists… You spare all things because all things are yours, Lord, lover of life”. The Responsorial Psalm affirmed much the same thing. God “is kind and full of compassion, slow to anger, abounding in love… compassionate to all … creatures”. It is beautiful. But it was hard for the people to learn, just as it is hard for us. So many of them, so many of us, still expect God to be punish brutally those who sin.

We have less excuse than they had, because, in his life and his deeds, Jesus revealed more of the mystery of God. Jesus showed us a God who is essentially three persons relating to each other in love, giving themselves totally and trustfully to each other, and joyfully receiving each other’s love. God does not simply sometimes love and sometimes punish when necessary, but can only love because God is essentially and only Trinity, three persons consciously, continually, totally united and rejoicing in mutual love.

Creation is the overflowing of their loving. St Paul once quoted a contemporary poet, “In God we live, and move, and have our being”. They got it. The catch is we find it so hard to realize, so hard to go with the flow. We find it so hard to see and to respond to the incredible dignity and destiny of every person, of every creature. That is the mystery of sin, which no way interrupts, however, God still loving us. Rather sin is the sad experience of our refusing, for a whole variety of reasons, to love God, or ourselves or each other. We seem to be inherently critical, judgmental and hostile to each other – not just to our obvious enemies, but even within the one household.

Look at the people in today’s incident. There was Zacchaeus, apparently the area manager for taxation for the southern end of the West Bank of the Jordan. There was a group of Jericho citizens. Presumably there were the disciples. And then there was Jesus. Tax collectors were hostile to people generally, and extorted them mercilessly, as far as they could. Not surprisingly, the general population hated them, seeing them all as sinners and so to be excluded from the normal social and business interactions in town. And there were tensions within the group of disciples. Twenty centuries later, and thousands of kilometers distant from Israel, do we react to each other much differently? Just look at the TV News tonight – endless hostility, endless judgment.

And Jesus was there – no judgment, no hostility, but a sense of responsibility that simply expressed his love for all of them. There was no word of criticism for any of them; but his response to the situation did shock them all. He offered friendship publicly to Zacchaeus. It surprised Zacchaeus. It unsettled the citizens. And God knows what it did to the disciples. Jesus challenged all of them, without a breath of threat. Zacchaeus responded. Did the citizens think twice, allowing themselves to be surprised – and pleasantly surprised at that? Let’s hope that the disciples pondered. Would Jesus still have dined with Zacchaeus if Zacchaeus had not responded as he did?

What do you think Jesus meant when he observed, “Today salvation has come to this house”? Is salvation finding the freedom to change? Is it withholding judgment, being inclusive even of sinners, moving from hostility to friendship? Is it stepping into the free flow of God’s energetic, joy-filled love for all? What might salvation feel like – for us, in today’s world? And can we experience it now, even if most others choose not to change?


Homily 4 - 2019

All Saints Day, All Souls Day, even the month of November, can set us wondering about the fate of our deceased loved ones, and of the dead generally, wondering too about our own ultimate destiny. We do not have too much to go on, in fact – so our imaginations have scope to run riot, and have too often tended to let us down. Some things we know. We know that God loves us – but our understanding of love, divine love, even at its most noble, is hopelessly incomplete. Did you hear what the Book of Wisdom, that we heard read as today’s First Reading, had to say of God, “You love all that exists … for had you hated anything, you would not have formed it… How, had you not willed it, could a thing persist? You spare all things because all things are yours, Lord, lover of life.”

And yet we have as well the sound tradition of the eventual coming of the “Day of the Lord”, what we also refer to as the General Judgment, when “we shall all be gathered around him”, as Paul expressed it in today’s Second Reading.

So there seem to be two dimensions. We shall be with God. But we shall not be alone – we shall be with each other – for eternity. And we look forward to both. Or do we? If being “gathered around Christ” is our destiny, eternal life will be a community experience. It will be about relationships, about the quality of our relationships.

Yet we all die with an enormous debt of love undeveloped, of 'unfinished business' – of forgiveness not offered, of sorrow withheld, of gratitude not expressed. In our hearts, though we usually avoid facing the issues, we know that offering heart-felt forgiveness and expressing true sorrow ask of us nothing less than metaphorical death. Jesus advised us as much. We need to “die to ourselves” as a condition of life. In order to enjoy eternal life, we shall need to be free of all concerns, and to feel free, totally free. And this, I think, is where the General Judgment comes in.

Usually we think of judgment in terms of retribution or punishment or legal judgment. Probably because we are not too familiar, unfortunately, with what is called restorative justice – [though it has become a little more common in the juvenile justice system, and through the Truth and Justice Commissions of South Africa and, nearer home, of East Timor.]

God, “the lover of life”, is not interested in our being punished. God offers us forgiveness, and wants us to experience reconciliation with each other, based on truth, on forgiveness and sorrow. God’s justice is not punitive justice, but restorative justice.

Consequently, at the General Judgment the lives of everyone will, I expect, be laid totally bare to everyone. We shall see clearly all those who have hurt us in any way. We shall also see clearly all the hurt that we have caused to others. Since we can never be truly free until we have offered gratuitous forgiveness to those who have hurt us, to all of them, and until we have genuinely expressed our sorrow and repentance to all those we have hurt, we shall, I hope, have the opportunity freely to both forgive totally and to express our deepest sorrow. As well, since our relationships will fall short, and our joy will never be complete until we have said “thank you” to all who have been good to us, in whatever way, and until we have heard and accepted “thank you” from all those to whom we have been good, we shall, I trust, know the delight of doing precisely both. General judgment will be the eventual celebration of the 'finished business' of life.

And we still have to explore the unimaginable wonder of gazing face to face at the infinite mystery of love whom we call God.


Homily 5 - 2022

Luke wrote that Zacchaeus “was anxious to see what kind of man Jesus was”. That says quite a lot about Zacchaeus. He was apparently more than just curious. Something stronger was stirring in him — he seemed to have had a strong desire [Luke said “anxious”] to make sure, for himself, “what kind of man Jesus was”.

I wonder what the energy was that fuelled Zacchaeus’s strong desire. I wonder what sort of man he hoped Jesus might be. Whatever it was, it must have been powerful — powerful enough to move Zacchaeus to risk making a fool of himself before a crowd of people who already despised him more than enough. Jesus had apparently never preached in Jericho before. Probably like the rest of the crowd, Zacchaeus may have heard about him from others. He wanted to check out for himself; and hoped that just seeing Jesus might be enough to confirm his hopes.

Probably Zacchaeus knew himself well enough to appreciate that, despite all his wealth, he was restless. He yearned for more, but was not sure what that “more” might be. Did he hope that Jesus might have the answer? More than that, did he hope that Jesus himself might be the answer?

I suppose that our reactions to those questions depend on our past experiences, and on how well we know ourselves. Today’s Gospel may be the invitation to stop long enough to discover if we ourselves ever felt a strong desire like that of Zacchaeus? Do we feel a restless longing to come to know Jesus personally, even better than we know him now? I do.

There is another thing in today’s story that gets me thinking, and that is the response of the townspeople to Jesus when he invited himself to a meal in Zacchaeus’s house. Luke wrote: “They all complained when they saw what was happening. ‘He has gone to stay at a sinner’s house’ they said.” I think that their response was only too typical — and I am concerned that perhaps in these days, social media aggravate that kind of reaction.

In the minds of the Jericho crowd, Zacchaeus was a “sinner” — because he was a tax-collector for their Roman rulers. The temple authorities imposed even heavier taxes than the Romans. We hear nothing, however, about the priests being labelled “sinners”. In fact, Zacchaeus seemed to have been at heart an amazingly generous man. But the common label was enough for everyone to ostracise him.

It is so easy to categorise people, especially those we disagree with; so easy to lump people in together, saying something like, “They’re all the same” — and choosing no longer to listen to them. I worry about the vicious polarising that is happening, at least in today’s Western cultures; and I worry about the way that I get caught up in it myself. Too easily I can feel spontaneously hostile towards someone who simply has an opinion different from one of mine.

“They all complained”. Hostility, negativity, seem to be powerfully contagious. In company we criticise people we would never bother to criticise otherwise. If I don’t join in, I feel “the odd one out”; I wonder what they will think of me.

What was Jesus’ response to all this? Jericho was Jesus’ last stop on his way to Jerusalem. Within a week he would be tried, found guilty by a “kangaroo court”, and crucified. He died because he was so utterly convinced that Love is the only way to heal/to save our otherwise painfully insecure, viciously competitive, and so often regularly hostile world. What else would we like Jesus to do?

Might we be a bit scared, hesitant, to learn “what kind of man Jesus was”?

There is a simple remedy.