What Biblical Wisdom and the Story of Zacchaeus Teach Us About Hope, Inclusion, and Community

Political discourse in recent years has become extremist, right and left. The negative variety tends to stick in our memory longer than the positive. So it’s natural to hear today’s biblical readings through a suspicious lens. The first reading, Wisdom of Solomon, was originally written for young Egyptian Jews who apparently were losing confidence in their religious heritage. Its author nonetheless sees God’s hand where others find only absence.

You love all things that exist / and loathe nothing that you have made; / for what you hated, you would not have fashioned. / And how could a thing remain, unless you willed it; / or be preserved, had it not been called forth by you? (11:24-25)

To the author, God has a purpose in creating and directing the course of history – to the glory of God.

How does the Gospel of Luke see God’s presence? Jesus is passing through the ancient city of Jericho, but Zacchaeus can’t see him because he’s too short to see over the onlookers. As a hated tax collector, his fellow Jews probably wouldn’t let him in any case. So he climbs a tree where Jesus notices him, “Zacchaeus, make haste and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” The word “must” implies divine purpose in Jesus’s plan to dine with Zacchaeus.

Onlookers object, for “he has gone to stay at the house of a sinner.” To defend himself, Zacchaeus makes a striking public declaration, “half of my possessions I shall give to the poor and if I extort anything, I return it fourfold.” The verbs are in the present tense, but they should be interpreted as a promise to do something in the future. “Today salvation has come to this house because this man too is a descendant of Abraham. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost.” This is a biblical way of saying, “Though seemingly an outsider, he’s one of us; he’s at home among the people of God; he’s included in the beloved community.”

The total statement (“Today salvation. . .”) implies that what has happened to Zacchaeus is not something only for the future. Salvation begins here and now (“Today”) as Jesus  and his  disciples seek out and incorporate within the community those who are excluded like Zacchaeus. The Son of Man has not come to judge and condemn but to seek and include. Jesus brings him in from the margin to the center, from up in the tree to down to his side.

Contemporary bitter political discourse cannot be denied, but as believers in the Lord’s love of the world and guidance of its history, we cannot accept as final the judgment that that the world is divided and its people are perennially at odds. This cannot be what God intends. As the Wisdom of Solomon puts it in the philosophical language of that age, God loves the world and guides its course with love and care.

Richard Clifford, S.J., has taught biblical studies for 55 years, most recently at the Clough School of Theology and Ministry, Boston College, and has written many scholarly and popular books and articles.