Brief synopsis of the readings: The author of Wisdom describes the world as being like a grain of sand to God. Yet God is merciful to all and overlooks sins to allow for repentance. Furthermore God loves all creation and hates nothing. God also admonishes those who have sinned which allows them to abstain from evil. Luke’s Gospel portrays a tax collector named Zacchaeus who wanted to see Jesus and climbed a tree for a better view. When Jesus saw him, he invited himself to Zacchaeus’ home for dinner. When some in the crowd grumbled that Jesus was dining with a sinner, Zacchaeus took offense. He claimed that he intends to give half his property to the poor and if he has cheated anyone he will repay them four times over. Jesus replied: “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man too is a son of Abraham; for the Son of Man has come to seek out and save what was lost.”

Again with the tax collectors? I’ll give Luke credit for this: he is certainly doing his part to show that not even tax collectors are beyond the love of God. That may appear interesting but not relevant today, but I disagree. Think for a moment what comes into your mind when you hear about these modern day jobs: Used car salesman. Personal injury lawyer. Politician. In the last few decades many have added reporters to that list and COVID has cast shadows on doctors. Interestingly we find comfort in being able to dislike groups of people we don’t even know. I don’t know any used car salesmen and have had only brief encounters with politicians.

There are a few problems with this. For one it allows us to decide on someone before even meeting them. For another it allows us to decide that they are beyond redemption. Used car salesmen will always try to cheat us. Lawyers will never stop destroying good people to win more money for their clients. Politicians will never stop getting rich on taxpayer money.

And now let’s look at our friend Zacchaeus. As I said last week some tax collectors grew wealthy by extorting taxpayers and they were generally despised. I find it interesting that Zacchaeus heard the gossip about him but never confessed to doing anything wrong and we have no indication that he ever did. He said he would repay anyone he cheated but there’s nothing to indicate he had.

We can look at this through the lens of him wishing to justify himself but I think there’s a deeper message here about repentance, reconciliation, and healing. In our first reading we read that God sees the entire world as a grain of sand. If the world is that small, how small are we? And yet we are not so small that God overlooks us.

But God does overlook our sins. If that sounds obvious, imagine a world without forgiveness. It would be a world filled with angry words, ruined dinners and bad memories. It would also be a world of grudges, of self justification and endless attempts to get others to side with us. Like gravity, everything would sink lower and lower.

Now obviously Christianity is not the only source of forgiveness. Atheists heal and forgive all the time and Jews around the world commemorated Yom Kippur last month. They fast for 24 hours, and if they have harmed anyone they are required to reconcile with them before asking for God’s forgiveness.

But if we believe that Christ came to redeem everyone (and we do), forgiveness lies at the heart. In the Catholic tradition when the priest consecrates the wine into the Blood of Christ he says:

take this, all of you, and drink from it,
for this is the chalice of my Blood,
the Blood of the new and eternal covenant, which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.
Do this in memory of me.

(Emphasis mine)

That’s right: at the heart of the Eucharist is the belief that Jesus came to forgive sins. Not (only) usher us into the Kingdom of God, not to make us better than anyone else, not to give us strength to overpower the Roman Empire. He didn’t come to allow us to forgive sins because anyone can do that. He didn’t come just to encourage us to forgive sins because any prophet could have done that.

He came to show us that the ongoing forgiveness of sins marks the cornerstone of what we believe. And I think it’s a message we can’t hear too often.

There is a cultural belief among many that if we’ve been wronged we need to seek revenge. We call it by many names: satisfaction, redress, and sometime we misuse the justice as if the only road to justice is to inflict reciprocal pain.

Forgiveness leads to healing and healing leads to a new path in life. It allows us to see each other in love, not with a checklist of grievances. People who are familiar with 12 Step Spirituality have much to teach us on this. If you’re not familiar the organization Alcoholics Anonymous was formed nearly 90 years ago to allow support for men and women who wished to end their addiction to alcohol. They soon learned that it wasn’t a matter of not drinking but of developing a whole new way of life. Out of this they developed a 12 step program to do this.

I don’t wish to sound like a cheerleader for AA but part of their teaching revolves around asking forgiveness (making amends) to those they harmed. Twelve step also insists in making this healing and reconciliation an ongoing habit where it become almost rote.

Finally this healing and reconciliation can go beyond what we know we’ve done. Zaccheaus tells us that we can ask for forgiveness for sins we didn’t know we committed. He offered the crowd to repay anyone he cheated. He essentially made a public proclamation that he intends to live his life honestly.

I like to think on that day he did something to improve the reputation of all tax collectors. Perhaps the next time someone told a tax collector joke it at least got people to think about their friend Zaccheaus. “Maybe they’re not all so bad.” “I know at least one honest tax collector.”

We live in a world rife with antisemitism, xenophobia, and a general fear of groups we don’t know. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We can know, and we can become, people who break the mold, who commit to honesty, forgiveness, and reconciliation. We can people like Zaccheaus.