Sunday of Zaccheus

In the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. So today we begin to anticipate the coming of our great and holy Lent, which is an amazing and wonderful period of time where we search our hearts and our minds and prepare ourselves for the resurrection of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ. And so the theme of today is Zacchaeus. And Zacchaeus was a tax collector, and I'm going to just read the gospel again, and then we can look at it closely.

"He sought to see who Jesus was, but could not because of the crowd, for he was short of stature. So he ran ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was going to pass that way. And when Jesus came to the place he looked up and saw him and said, 'Zacchaeus, make haste and come 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, 'Behold, Lord, half of my goods I give to the poor, and if I have taken anything from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold.' And Jesus said to him, 'Today salvation has come to this house, because he is also a son of Abraham, for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which is lost.'"

So here it is, we have our Savior and Zacchaeus, and it's in the area in Jericho, and Jericho was an important city on the road between Jerusalem, Galilee, and the home of our Lord. And he passed through, when he passed through Jericho, crowds pressed upon him. And so Zacchaeus comes and here he hears that the Savior is coming and he wants to see him. And Zacchaeus is of short stature. This is a little man, and so he climbs a sycamore tree, and here's this sycamore tree, and the sycamore trees were very plentiful in this area because they had a large span of leaves and they were planted along the roadways and so on to create shade so that people could come and stand under the sycamore trees when they were traveling and rest a bit.

And so here is Zacchaeus, and he's a very short man, and he hears the Savior and he understands that the Savior is coming, and something strikes his heart. His heart is opened and he desires to see him, but he's in the crowd, and so he climbs up the sycamore tree, and there he sees our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ. And so it is that our Savior saw him there, and he understood, our Savior understood who he was, he knew through the Holy Spirit, he knew that he was a tax collector, and he knew that he was despised, but he also saw the capacity for repentance in Zacchaeus. He understood that Zacchaeus could change. And when Jesus came, "Make haste and come down, for today I must stay at your house."

So here we have the Savior, his insight penetrates the heart of Zacchaeus and knows that Zacchaeus has the capacity to repent. And when they, that is the crowd, saw this, they all murmured saying that he was gone to be a guest with a man that is a sinner. This is of course a very beautiful statement for all of us because if we look deep within our own souls we understand that we are all sinners. We all have faults, we need to be transformed, we need to be changed, and as it were, you might say, re-created in the image of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ.

And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, "Behold, Lord, half of my goods I give to the poor, and if I have taken anything from anyone by false accusation, I restore him fourfold." The presence of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ struck him and enlightened him. And it's very interesting because I think many of us have sins and we have a past of sinfulness, and yet we've had this ability to cover it over and to suppress it and make it so it's not visible to those around us, and really not even visible even to our own selves, so that we create where we have good feelings about ourselves, and yet underneath this there is darkness and there is sin and disregard of God.

So here Zacchaeus making this statement again, "Behold, Lord, half of my goods I give to the poor, and if I have taken anything from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold." And so in these words, Zacchaeus is recognizing that Christ is the Lord and that he's a source of sanctity and holiness. And he's also recognizing his sinfulness, and he proclaims repentance. And Jesus said unto him, "This day is salvation come to this house, for as much as he also is a son of Abraham, for the Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which is lost."

So in this very beautiful statement, "This day is salvation come to this house, for as much as he also is a son of Abraham, for the Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which is lost." That we will open our hearts and minds to the reality of the love of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ, and in opening our hearts and minds, the Savior will enter in and cleanse us and restore us and give us new life and redeem that which has been lost.

So, brothers and sisters in Christ our God, on this day we remember Zacchaeus. And we remember him in his humility and his directness and his forthright actions in the presence of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ. The little bit to another topic. So here we are, Zacchaeus begins our pilgrimage. And next week we have the publican and the Pharisee, and then the Prodigal Son, and then the Dread Judgment, and then Forgiveness Sunday, when we gather in the Holy Church in the light as it were of repentance.

And it's very fascinating on Forgiveness Sunday. You know that the light of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ has many hues. That is it can change in certain ways and it can be intensely bright, it can be so bright that it would blind us and burn us even. And yet it can be gentle and loving and embracing us. On Forgiveness Sunday there's the light is very unusual and it has the presence of repentance in it. So that not only to participate in the resurrection of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ, but the light of repentance will be with us throughout the pilgrimage, and we need this light because we are weak. We're very weak. And also we're in a state of denial. We deny who we are with regard to our sinfulness and our weaknesses. And we need the continuous assurance of the love of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to encourage us, to be strong during the great and holy Lent. And be strong in order to keep the fast.

And obviously caters to our passions. It comes to us in all kinds of forms. And I wonder, you know, if we now of course in Orthodox Great Lent we try to the best of our ability to give up meat and dairy products and to eat in very simple meals and to do this for forty days. And it's very difficult. But the purpose is that it's a known fact that rich foods and meats and drinking and so on can be brought to a point where it actually invigorates, it enhances our passions. And we know in our own selves that our passions can rise up in anger and in all kinds of judgment and so on. And so the Savior gives us this time of Lenten denial to confront our pride and to lead us into obedience, because pride fights against obedience, it leads us into obedience and then to as it were open up our hearts and minds in such a way that the mystery of the resurrection of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ can come upon us and fill us so that we are raised up in part, raised up in part in each and every great and holy Pascha.

And so here we are already anticipating this pilgrimage of Great Lent. I wonder if the Savior were here with us today, which he is here with us, but if he were with us in the flesh, if he might say to us that the most important thing for this fast is to give up television and the internet. Seriously, think about it. I mean, the devil is amazing because on the one hand, you know, he can tempt us with all these things that are carnal and part of our flesh and our taste and so on and so forth. But then he has given us in the last fifty years or so, these portals. And the truth is, is that we can say, well, you know, this is very interesting and it's very educational and so on and so forth. But it always comes with a price. And the price is that once we enter into the portal, we're hooked to the portal and then you know we look around a little bit and we see things that interest us, and because obviously things are presented to us in a way to cause us to take notice. And so we just take a little notice here and a little notice there, and before we know it, our souls are darkened. And this of course is a serious, serious crisis in our not just in our society, but in the whole world. That this portal opens up.

So on the one hand, we're exhorted to attend the divine services in fullness as much as we can. It's very difficult. Many of us travel and it's so difficult. But absolutely on the Saturdays and Sundays and then in Holy Week we really need to have set time aside and try and be here for the holy services, particularly beginning on Wednesday with holy unction, and then of course through to the end of the week and then the resurrection of Christ. But on the other hand, wouldn't it be amazing if all of us just turned off the television particularly. And if we have to use our phones we use them for very necessary purposes and so on, but wouldn't that be an amazing thing? Because I think we would realize that a very profound change would happen in us as a result of this abstinence that we would partake of.

He knows each of us, he knows who we are, he knows what our needs are, and he is there to help us and take us by the hand and lead us to the victory of the resurrection of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.