Zacchaeus - Saint George & Saint Joseph Coptic Orthodox Church

+ZacchaeusA Personal Encounter with Christ(Luke 19:1-10)Introduction: A Personal Sense of Involvement with God 1A test was performed on 150 Roman Catholic teenaged boys at the Cook Countyjuvenile detention center. Most of the boys were considered “religious”: 53 percentattended mass once or twice a month, and another 27 percent attended mass everySunday. Even more than that, they believed in God (only 19 percent denied hisexistence). Most of them said they prayed often and knew that the Church’s teachingsregarding stealing, sex, and gang fighting were correct. So, why the enormous gapbetween what they did and what they said?The problem is that they lacked any sense of personal involvement with God. Noone thought God took an interest in him individually. Many were not touched with God’slove personally, nor had a clear personal encounter with the person of Jesus. All of theirexperience was with a discipline or an institution. They learned the commandments, butnot the God behind them.Today, we read the story of a man who had a personal encounter with our LordJesus Christ: Zacchaeus. This personal encounter changed his life. Although this story isfamiliar to most of us, let us dive deeper into its symbols and contemplate on them. Thenwe can conclude with some ideas about how we can experience God personally, allowHim to touch our hearts, and to change the direction of our lives.The StoryThen Jesus entered and passed through Jericho. Now behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus who was achief tax collector, and he was rich.Tax collectors were hated by the Jews. Why? Jewish tax collectors wereassigned by the Romans, to whom all were subject. The tax collectors were free tocollect extra revenues for their own profit. They were generally demanding andunyielding toward their own people. Therefore, they were despised by other Jews, whoconsidered them unclean because of 1) their collaboration with Gentiles (tax collectorsoften had to swear pagan oaths), and 2) their fraud and corruption.We see that the Lord is about to change the life of a man considered to be asinner. He is about to seize one of the devil’s mightiest vessels and destroy it, changing itforever. No one doubts that a tax collector was a sinner, so how much more would achief tax collector like Zacchaeus?And he sought to see who Jesus was, but could not because of the crowd, for he was of short stature. So he ranahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see Him, for He was going to pass that way.Zacchaeus had a strong desire to see Jesus and was rewarded with salvation forshowing eagerness. We will speak more about Zacchaeus’ climbing up the tree and hisdesire to see Christ in a few moments.1 Coniaris, Anthony M. God and you: Person to Person. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Light & Life Publishing,1995 (p. 2).1

And when Jesus came to the place, He looked up and saw him, and said to him, Zacchaeus, make haste andcome down, for today I must stay at your house. So he made haste and came down, and received Him joyfully.But when they saw it, they all complained, saying, He has gone to be a guest with a man who is a sinner.Then Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, Look, Lord, I give half of my goods to the poor; and if I havetaken anything from anyone by false accusation, I restore fourfold. And Jesus said to him, Today salvationhas come to this house, because he also is a son of Abraham; for the Son of Man has come to seek and tosave that which was lost.See how Zacchaeus receives the Lord joyfully and the result of this personalencounter. Not only does Zacchaeus give to the poor, but he restores fourfold to those hehas defrauded. He not only remedies the harm, but he does so with increase. If we thinkabout this, nothing much would have remained of Zacchaeus’ money. Half he gave tothe poor, and, of the half that remained, he gave fourfold to those he has wronged.Zacchaeus seized the opportunity and acted immediately, for he did not say, “I shall givehalf and I shall restore”, but rather, “I give and I restore.”Zacchaeus now resembles Abraham. How could a tax collector previously haveresembled a righteous man? It is clear that Zacchaeus has changed because of hispersonal encounter with Christ.Learning from Zacchaeus: How can we personally encounter Christ?1. We must have the desire to encounter ChristWe must first realize our need for Christ. Christ will never impose Himselfupon us. Christ simply says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hearsMy voice and opens the door, I will come into him and dine with him, and he withMe” (Revelation 3:20). He does not say that He will barge in and sit with us.Therefore, we must have the desire to hear His voice and open the door.The first step in desiring Him is to ask ourselves, “Do we need Him?” At somepoint in our lives, we come to ourselves, and start asking the really deep philosophicalquestions: ‘What is the meaning of life? Why am I here? Where did I come from?Where am I going? Is there life after death? What is the purpose of suffering?Where is the truth in all this?’ We want real and true answers. The realization thatwe hopefully all come to is that Christ is the Truth and answers these questions for ustruthfully.We also come to the realization that this life is temporal and it always seemslike our needs are never satisfied. In the book of Ecclesiastes, Solomon says, “AlsoHe has put eternity in their hearts…” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). We have an eternally-sizedhole in our hearts, and we see many who try to fill it with temporal objects and lustafter temporal things. It’s like filling a giant round hole with square pegs. There arebound to be empty spaces left over. But if our lives are filled with an eternal being tofill that hole, then certainly, we will be complete.We also see that people have a desire to worship something bigger thanthemselves. I believe that this is why celebrity gossip television programs and thefascination with Hollywood is so popular. But who are we looking up to? Aren’tthey just men and women like us? What kind of lives do they lead? In order toprevent ourselves from becoming the God’s of our own universe, a task that none ofus are equipped to handle, let us look up to Christ and worship Him instead.2

2. We must be willing to become fools for Christ’s sakeZacchaeus was a man to be feared among the Jews. Certainly, he was lookedupon as sinner, but he still was the chief tax collector. Imagine the local banker inyour community climbing a tree to see an iterant prophet; a man respected and fearedin the community desiring to see a homeless, wandering prophet, that other respectedleaders condemned. Certainly Zacchaeus would have been laughed at. Certainly,people were gossiping, heckling, and pointing at Zacchaeus up in the tree. The pointhere is that Zacchaeus did not care about what others thought, but maintained his goalof seeing our Lord Jesus Christ.It is not often the struggle associated with becoming Christian and committedto our faith that makes us waiver, because we know that Christ will help us in ourstruggle to come closer to Him. It is often the ridicule of people around us. Will welose our friends? What will others think of us if we progress spiritually?The following story from the Virtues of Saint Macarius illustrates the attitudewe must acquire:A brother paid a visit to Abba Macarius and said to him, “Tell me a word: How can I besaved?”The old man said to him, “Go to the tombs. Curse the dead. Throw rocks at them.”The brother left. He cursed the dead and threw rocks at them, and when he returnedto the old man, the old man said to him, “They didn’t say anything to you, did they?”The brother said to him, “No, my father.”The old man said to him, “Go tomorrow and glorify them, saying, ‘You are apostles,you are saints and righteous.’”He returned to the old man and said to him, “I glorified them.”The old man said to him, “They didn’t say anything to you, did they?”He said, “No.”The old man said to him, “You have seen how you cursed them and they did not sayanything to you, and how you glorified them and they did not respond at all. It should be thesame with you, too: if you wish to be saved, go, be dead, having no regard for people’scontempt nor their honors, like the dead, and you can be saved.” 2Like Zacchaeus, we need to ignore what other people will say about us, andpursue Christ, leaving all behind and clinging to Him. The Lord sees Zacchaeus’burning desire and rewards him with a personal encounter that would change his lifeforever.2 Vivian, Time (trans.). Saint Macarius the Spiritbearer: Coptic Texts Relating to Saint Macarius the Great.Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2004 (91).3

3. We must use the means given to us in order to make our experience with Christcontagiously realFinally, we must use the means the Church has given us in order to meetChrist and have the same personal encounter that Zacchaeus had. It’s one thing totake a can of food and simply read the ingredients and know what’s inside, but it isquite another to use a can opener, take off the lid, and taste the food for ourselves.Our sins and passions often hinder us from seeing Christ, just like the crowdwas hostile toward Zacchaeus and prevented him from seeing the Savior. Therefore,the first step toward a personal relationship with Christ is the tree of repentance andconfession. Zacchaeus climbed the tree to see over the crowd, and likewise, we needto confess our sins and faults to our father of confession in order to see Christ moreclearly.Christ and His Church offers us many other trees, which we can climb inorder to see Him and come close to Him. Have you tried the tree of prayer? The treeof liturgical prayer? The tree of the Eucharist? The tree of virtue? The tree ofobedience? The tree of fulfilling God’s commandments? The tree of loving yourneighbor? The tree of sacrifice? The tree of becoming dead to the world? When werepent and then take positive action, we will have Christ working in our lives andchanging them in ways that we could never have dreamed possible.Conclusion: Keep Your Vision ClearIt is very easy to look at those around us and see many straying off the path. Wemight be disturbed by it, but we need to keep moving forward toward the personalencounter with Christ. We will end with this saying by Abba Hilarion, the founder ofPalestinian monasticism, in order to spur us on to keep a clear vision of our goal, and tonot be affected by the crowd around us. This is also something very important in ourministry and service to others, to always be leading people to a personal encounter withChrist and not just the theories and discipline of Christianity.Abba Hilarion said, “Let me tell you a story. Consider the hunting dogs whichchase after hares; imagine one of these dogs sees a hare in the distance and immediatelygives chase; the other dogs that are with him see this dog taking off and take off afterhim, even though they have not seen the hare. They will continue running with him, butonly for a time; when at length the effort and struggle exhaust them, they give up thechase and turn back. However the dog that saw the hare continues chasing it by himself.He does not allow the effort or the struggle to hinder him from completing his longcourse. He risks his life as he goes on, giving himself no rest. He does not allow theturning aside of the other dogs behind him to put him off. He goes on running until hehas caught the hare he saw. He is careless both of the stumbling blocks in his path,whether stones or thorns, and of the wounds they have inflicted on him. So also thebrother who wishes to follow after the love of Christ must fix his gaze upon the crossuntil he catches up with him that was crucified upon it, even though he sees everyone elsehas begun to turn back.”Glory is due to God forever. Amen.4