31 st Sunday in Ordinary Time - C

Tonight we will host another dialogue involving members of our St. Thomas a Becket Catholic community and members of the Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation here in our own parish hall beginning at 7:00 PM.

This dialogue will be a fruitful exchange of ideas and a very grace-filled sharing of faith.

The participants in the dialogue will not be theological experts but rather ordinary members of our two congregations sharing their experiences and inviting our reflection on how we as Christians and Jews see ourselves walking in God's path, trying to live faithfully our religious commitments with a better understanding of one another in the midst of a culturally diverse and religiously pluralistic society.

I have no doubt that this dialogue will do much to advance both our understanding of our own faith and that of our Jewish brothers and sisters, and it will also do much to help us grow in respect and friendship with one another as people of faith.

All are not only welcome, but invited and encouraged to attend!

 

Growing in respect and friendship with people who are different from us is certainly a message that is at the heart of today's gospel.

Last week, Jesus gave us the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector to remind us to be wary lest we be self-righteous like the Pharisee and also to be on guard lest we imitate the Pharisee's example of trying to make himself look and feel better by pointing out the short-comings, the faults, the weaknesses, and the failings of others, including the tax collector.

This week we meet another tax collector in the gospel – not an unnamed or anonymous tax collector, but a real person, a human being, a person with a name and a face – a tax collector named Zacchaeus.

If we remember our description of tax collectors from last week, we can imagine that Zacchaeus was a Jew, held in disdain by his countrymen because he was collecting taxes from Jewish people to send to a Roman emperor oppressing his own people, and he was making money for himself by collecting more from people than they actually owed and was keeping the difference for himself.

But Zacchaeus was not only your garden-variety, run-of-the mill, generic caricature of a tax collector as the man in last week's gospel was.

Zacchaeus was a real person, and we learn one specific quality about Zacchaeus in today's gospel that we didn't have in the description of the tax collector in last week's gospel – we know that Zacchaeus was short.

Zacchaeus was so short in fact that he needed climb a tree in order simply to see Jesus as he was passing by on his way through Jericho on his journey to Jerusalem .

Why is it important to remember that Zacchaeus was short?

Probably because that was one quality that people might have identified in order to pick on him or make fun of him because it was the only was they could hurt him as a person they did not like.

We can imagine if Zacchaeus was fat, that that fact would have been recorded in the gospel.

Or if he dressed in a way that was peculiar or different from other people or not up to people's standard of style, that might have been recorded in the gospel.

Or if he talked with a lisp or if he had some other quality or shortcoming or weakness that people might have latched onto to criticize or make fun of him, that too might have been recorded in the gospel.

The great thing about Jesus is that knew all the reasons why people hated and made fun of and criticized Zacchaeus – and he still went out of his way to show Zacchaeus that he loved him.

Out of all the people on the crowded road from Jericho to Jerusalem, Jesus went out of his way to say to Zacchaeus, “I mean to stay our your house this day,” or in other words, “I don't care why others may criticize you or condemn you or make fun of you or put you down, I love you, and I will be with you this day and always.”

Salvation came to the house and to the heart of Zacchaeus that day, and it was a gift that no one could ever take away from him.

 

It is certainly a great thing for us today to participate in our Dialogue with our friends from the Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation, and to participate in the pulpit exchanges that will also take place over the coming weeks in the month of November.

We can take some pride in the extent to which we are coming to know one another better and to grow in respect and friendship with one another.

But before we congratulate ourselves on our contributions to inter-faith dialogue in our Church and in our world, it might be good to look into our hearts to see if when enter into these dialogues at peace in our relationships with one another in our homes, in our parish, in our schools, in our neighborhoods, in the places we work each day.

It doesn't do us any good to dialogue with people of other faiths if we are not first living at peace with those in our own household – either the household of our families or the household of our own faith.

And so as we reflect on the encounter of Jesus with Zacchaeus today, we might ask ourselves, are their people in our lives whose shortcomings we point out, whose weaknesses we criticize, who we make fun of because they are different from us or are not as sophisticated or intelligent as we are?

Do we realize that we have a choice today to stand with the crowds who point out the shortcomings and the weaknesses of others, or to stand with Jesus who has a special love for the poor, the weak, the one who is alienated or ostracized or criticized or condemned by others?

In his encounter with Zacchaeus, Jesus promises salvation to all those who are put down and criticized by others.

As we continue to foster our dialogue and understanding with people whose faith is different from ours, let us pray that we may imitate the example of Jesus and love in a special way those whom we ourselves may sometimes be responsible for alienating or criticizing within our own household – in our families and our schools and workplaces, and in the household of our own faith.

Thomas P. Ferguson
November 4, 2007