Jesus and Zacchaeus the Tax Collector St. Luke 19:1-10 (Sunday August 17, 2025)
Today, the Holy Spirit opens for us a delightful event in the public life of Jesus Christ: Zacchaeus, a tax collector, who was determined to see Christ but was unable, because of the crowds, and his own physical limitations – he was short, so he climbed a Sycamore tree to catch a glimpse of this marvellous preacher. His astonishment must have been limitless when Christ caught sight of him and spoke kindly to him and invited himself to dinner at his house.
In first-century Palestine, the tax collector was a despised figure. Hired by the Romans to collect the taxes on the native population, the Romans made no objections to the personal enrichment of the tax collector as he added his own personal tax on the official tax. This made the tax collector loathsome and detested by the population. As perfect God and perfect man, Christ was not unaware of this taboo. Amazingly however, Christ seemed to be perfectly at ease with these characters, even calling a tax collector, St. Matthew to be part of the 12 apostles. Christ did not just merely tolerate these individuals but seemed to go out of his way to engage with them and include them in his work of Redemption.
Our Lord wanted to use their expertise in economic matters to explain in human terms what would be the spiritual economy of His Redemption. Everybody knows that if you spend money on something you should receive value in return. And this is something for each of us to meditate upon in the coming days: God does owe a reward to his faithful servants, because this has pleased God to offer such a reward. He has not only offered it, but he has also promised it. It is His Will that virtuous living and child-like faith should result in eternal happiness and deliberate wickedness in eternal misery. In His crazy love for His creatures, God has put Himself in debt because that is His Will.
Let’s spend this week thinking about the rewards that God has promised us if we spend ourselves in virtuous living. Such beautiful thoughts will move us to become big spenders in this economy of Christ.
+Selim Sfeir
Maronite Archbishop of Cyprus