Session Five - Invitation to not come to tea

Hello and welcome to the fifth session of Bishop Joe's course 'Six invitations to Dinner with Jesus'. Press play above to watch and listen and/or you can read the script below...

Hello, I’m Bishop Joe, and this is the fifth of our six part series on invitations to dinner with Jesus. In each session, we’re looking at a story from St Luke’s Gospel, and today our story comes from the beginning of Chapter 19.

[Jesus] entered Jericho and was passing through it. A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. All who saw it began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.” Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” Then Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.”

So: invitations to dinner with Jesus. But this time, Jesus invites himself, doesn’t he?

Jesus looks up at Zachaeus and tells him, ‘Hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.’

The Bible tells us that Zacchaeus made his money by collecting taxes. And the system worked like this. The Roman Empire assigned a certain amount of tax to each region. And then it sold to the highest bidder the right to gather in that tax and send it to Rome.

So long as the right amount was handed over to Rome each year, the local tax collector could charge as much as they liked and keep the profit for themselves. In effect, tax collectors in the Roman system paid for the right to steal from people. For this reason, the popular imagination lumped together robbers, murderers, and tax collectors.

Now, for tax collectors, the real money was made by charging duties on travel and trade: tolls for use of roads; entry fees for markets; vehicular taxes on carts, even the wheels on the carts, the donkeys that pulled carts; import and export taxes. You can see how this could be a real money-spinner. Since no-one knew how much was owing for each of these taxes, you could stop any cart on the road and make up a sum of money, and charge them that.  

And since Jericho was on a busy trading route, and was itself a famed exporter of agricultural produce, it provided particularly rich picking for its tax collectors. Now Zacchaeus was no ordinary tax collector. He had bought up a series of these licences, for Jericho and the surrounding area, and then he hired men to run the business all over this area. So the best model is to think of Zacchaeus as a mafia boss running a bunch of mobsters – and a traitor, a collaborator with the occupying army as well.

Well, so now that we’ve seen all of that background, surely the first surprising thing in today’s story is that Zacchaeus was so keen to see Jesus. Why does he want to see Jesus?

And the second surprising thing is that Zacchaeus was having such difficulty fighting his way to the front of the crowd. Presumably, had he chosen, he could have simply had some of his heavies clear a path.

Well, for whatever reason, he decided instead to climb a sycamore fig tree – a species native to Africa, which also grows in Israel – and he hid there, where he could see without being seen. Only Jesus did see him, and stopped to call to him, ‘Hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.’

The words that Jesus uses are heavy with meaning. In the Bible, when someone is invited to ‘hurry’, it often means that God is at work. And often in the New Testament, when we’re told that something ‘must’ happen, it means that it is part of God’s plan of salvation.

Understandably, perhaps, that’s not how the crowd sees it. ‘All who saw it began to grumble’ we’re told, “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.”’ Given that Zacchaeus is the local mafia boss, it’s not hard to see why they’re upset.

So: this is the fifth in our series of invitations to dinner with Jesus, but will you be getting an invitation to this meal? No! I shouldn’t have thought so. Only Zacchaeus’ family, and the mobsters who work for him, are invited to this dinner. And perhaps some of the Roman occupying force. And even if Zacchaeus had invited anyone else, surely no-one would have accepted the invitation. We wouldn’t have gone, would we? I mean, he’s the local mafia boss. But Jesus invites himself.

And then, when Zacchaeus stands up to make the customary speech at the dinner that evening, the third surprising thing happens. In his speech, Zacchaeus promises to give away half of his wealth to the poor.  To poor people in the area. And then the says that he will pay back fourfold any money he has stolen.

It’s actually quite difficult to see how Zacchaeus is going to do this – since all of his money is stolen money. Unless he inherited money – perhaps he’s going to give away his inheritance too. Either way, he’s going to be left with nothing by the time he has kept his promise. Left with nothing but the shirt on his back.

So, the people of Jericho regain some of their money in the coming weeks and months, as Zacchaeus repays them. Presumably, this cheers them up quite a lot.

But Jesus invites them – and us – to rejoice not for that reason, not because we’ve go that money back but for another reason. “Today,” Jesus says, “salvation has come to this house, because he, too, [Zacchaeus] is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.”

To be lost is to be in the wrong place, isn’t it? So Jesus speaks about the lost coin which was not where it was expected to be, the lost sheep which had wandered away from the sheep pen, the lost son who had walked away from his family. And here Jesus describes Zacchaeus also as lost – for he has wandered far from God in search of ill-gotten riches, and has left the community of his people as he collaborated with those who oppressed them.

But Jesus, the Good Shepherd, has gone and searched for this lost sheep, and now has found him and brought him home. Now again, Zacchaeus has been returned to his right place, as one of the children of Abraham.

How will the crowds treat Zacchaeus once Jesus has left town, do you think? Presumably, he will need a new way to earn a living. He’ll need new friends as well. Protection, even, from the local mobsters, with whom he previously associated. Will the people of Jericho give Zacchaeus what he needs after he has returned to them what was rightfully theirs? Don’t know. What do you think?

This is a story about repentance. We may find it difficult to identify with Zacchaeus, the mafia boss. And yet – OK we’re not mafia bosses, but we too have things in our lives which are out of place – bits of our life which are lost.

Zacchaeus, at the start of this story, surely recognised in some way his need to put things right; and yet it was only when he spent time with Jesus that he found the strength to actually put them right. So Zacchaeus can teach us too about how spending more time with Jesus in prayer and in Bible reading, how that could transform our lives, and set us free.

This is also a story about offering, or not offering, forgiveness, and about finding the grace to allow other people to make a new start in life after they have messed up. Doubtless the people of Jericho found it hard to forgive Zacchaeus. Perhaps some of them found it impossible. But Jesus points the way by inviting them to rejoice that Zacchaeus, who had been lost, is now found.

So, on reflection, perhaps not an invitation to a meal after all, this one. But something better. An invitation from Jesus to spend more time with him each week, and to work on forgiving people who have hurt and offended us.