ECUMENICAL PATRIARCHATE

Exarchate of Parishes of Russian
Tradition in Western Europe

Ascending to Jerusalem

Sermon by Bishop Basil of Amphipolis for Zaccheus Sunday, 1 February 2009, Parish of the Dormition, London (Holborn)

Luke 19: 1-10

Today we heard the Gospel story of Zacchaeus. It is a familiar Gospel, since we hear it every year as we draw near to the Great Fast that leads up to Easter. And as with many of the incidents in Christ’s life, it is important to understand and to have in mind the context within which it happens.

Christ’s encounter with Zacchaeus takes place as Christ is going up to Jerusalem for the last time. This can only have been a very anxious time, certainly for the disciples, and probably for anyone who was involved in or aware of the political and social passions of those years. Just before this meeting with Zacchaeus Christ lets his disciples know what will happen to him when he finally gets to Jerusalem – and they cannot take it in. They cannot absorb what he is telling them. It is simply beyond their power to comprehend, and the Gospel narrative makes this clear.

Then, just before Christ get to Jericho, on the outskirts of the city, a blind man starts calling out to him, ‘Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me.’ In these words, ‘Thou son of David’, we have an implicit reference to the coming of the Messiah. And sure enough, when Christ does finally enter Jerusalem just a few days later, he is greeted by crowds of citizens who treat him as the Messiah and who sing, ‘Hosanna to the son of David.’ In other words, the blind man, even in his blindness, sees Christ as the coming Messiah, and when Christ opens the opens of his body, he is simply bringing his bodily eyes into line with the eyes of his soul. For us, of course, the message is that Christ is constantly trying to open the eyes of the blind.

And then in the midst of all this, as Christ is walking through Jericho, he stops everything when he sees a man up in a tree, trying his best to engage with him, ‘to see Jesus who he was.’ We need to place ourselves in that scene. To climb a tree is in fact a very undignified thing to do, and anyone who knows the Mediterranean world knows that the male of the species does not do anything that is undignified in that world if he can possibly help it. Nevertheless, Zacchaeus climbs into a sycamore tree.

But it is worse that that, for he is a man known to the public. He is a tax collector, and everyone will know just who he is and what he does. And yet, in spite of his notoriety in society, Zacchaeus, in effect, makes a fool of himself. Well, Christ makes a fool of himself as well, because when he sees this man in a tree he disregards all social constraint and says to him: ‘Zacchaeus, today I must abide at thy house.’ When he does this, the crowds start saying, ‘How can he possibly be doing this. How can he stop and spend time with a man who is a sinner, interrupting his ascent Jerusalem?’

What we need to remember here is that we are all – as Christians and followers of Christ – ascending to Jerusalem. And we are doing this on two levels. We are doing it, yes, in the same way that Christ did, in that we are moving towards our own death and hopefully towards our resurrection. But we are also doing it the way Christ did it in the sense that we are ascending towards heaven, towards the Father. Those two realities cannot, in fact, be separated, and they are not to be separated as we watch Christ, on foot, climb up to the holy city.
So what should we take from this story? The first thing we should take is that Christ comes especially to those who are looking for him. Zacchaeus is looking for Christ, and that enables Christ to stop – to stop everything he is doing – and come and be with him. But it also tells us that if we want to be like Zacchaeus and enter into this world where Christ reveals himself to us personally, where he is willing to spend time with us, we should not be afraid of what others might think of us. It doesn’t matter.

The whole context of the story, however, also tells that even when we hear the message of Christ, it is quite possible for us not to understand it. The disciples are told of the suffering, death and resurrection that lie ahead, and yet they cannot take it in. This is very much, in fact, like what happens most of the time in marriage. If you tell someone who comes to you to prepare themselves for marriage that the crowns used during the wedding service are in fact the crowns of martyrdom, they will smile and say, ‘Yes, I understand.’ But I can assure you, they do not understand. They have no idea what really lies in front of them. The same has to be said about Baptism. We understand Baptism as a sacramental entry into the death and resurrection of Christ, but it is not simply the child that has no idea what this might mean. Even an adult, someone baptised as an adult, will not understand what it means for them. They will not understand what it means truly to enter into the reality of Christ’s path in this world.

The fact of the matter is that we are all in this position. We all start in darkness; we all start in some sense blind; we all start in some sense in ignorance, and it is only with God’s grace that we move towards the light. That process is never completed without personal experience, the actual experience of death and resurrection in our inner world. And for us it is extremely important that we do not back away from this fact, that we actually face this possibility with open eyes, because if we do, and if we truly desire to get to know Christ, then he is willing to ‘stop everything’, and to come to us and say, as he said to Zacchaeus: ‘Today, I must abide at thy house.’

Amen.