Jesus looked up and saw Zacchaeus

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 Once I went to hear a band in Houston in this strange downtown bar that had an open air patio out back. Actually, I think it had once been another room that lost its roof, and they converted it into a lovely, crushed-granite-floored space with open air windows under the one or two stars visible above the glow of Houston's lights. As I listened to the band, I was also working on a sermon about Jesus and Zacchaeus. Remember Zacchaeus climbed up a tree so he could catch a glimpse, and Jesus looked up and saw him, and had dinner with him later. As I sat there listening to the music, I jotted in my journal my imagining of Zacchaeus peeking over the wall to see what was happening inside. Would anyone notice? 


Zacchaeus was easy to write-off. He was not a beloved disciple religious man. He was a tax collector, in cahoots with the Roman occupiers. Jesus didn't see those labels, he saw a human being longing to be loved by God; longing to be noticed and welcomed. That's what Jesus did in that moment. He really saw the human Zacchaeus, and became his companion. 

I am trying to learn how to let go of the labels we put on each other, and see the real human beings that are each so much more than those labels we are asked to carry. This is impossible to do, except with God's help. I can notice when I am seeing not a person, but labels, then in humility, accept the Holy Spirit's intervention to give me new, loving eyes. I can then try to see the other person I encounter as a beloved child of God, just as God sees them. I'm not going to go have dinner with everyone like Jesus did with Zacchaeus, but I can change the way I respond to people based on their God-given humanity and my own humanity rather than the labels I have learned to use. Sometimes it's challenging because people get so caught up in those labels. Sometimes we believe they give us identity, instead of God. Sometimes, we promote the labels as if they are more valuable, or we hide our longing for connection behind those labels. Instead of doing that, maybe we should follow Zacchaus's example, and go climbing to catch a glimpse of Jesus. Jesus, who will see our effort, truly see us, and be our companion forever. No institution, however helpful, can replace the love of God. No ideology can fill the longing for God's companionship. The God who made each of us knows and loves us because God made us. That's all. 

"Zacchaeus was a wee little man, a wee little man was he." Goes the children's song about the story. I'm just a wee little man, too. Each of us is vulnerable. God sees and knows that and loves us. God sees and is ready to come sit down and be our companion, to break bread with us, right where we are, to fill us with the love we can find nowhere else. 

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