This past week the U.S. Department of Education put out an appeal to school administrators, teachers and parents, asking them to help stop the bullying of gays that has been going on in schools all across the country. It seems that the dilemma teachers and administrators are facing is this: if they encourage children to embrace tolerance, it could look like the schools are changing the mores of the nation and pushing an acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle. That causes a backlash, so they tend to ignore the topic. That however creates an environment where bullying happens.
Let me first say that bullying of anyone is completely unacceptable and totally in contradiction to the Christian life. So, let’s look at this bullying dynamic through the lens of today’s Gospel story of Zacchaeus the chief tax collector, and see what Jesus has to teach us.
Poor Zacchaeus! He’s gotten a bum rap all through the centuries as being a dirty old tax collector. The classical understanding of what happens in this Gospel is that Zacchaeus has been a real rascal until Jesus comes along and then his life changes because of his encounter with Jesus.
How many of us have had that experience: being caught in some kind of sin, and then encountering Jesus, and His grace leads us to turn our lives around? If we choose this interpretation, we would do very well in interpreting this Gospel passage in this manner, especially if we do indeed turn our lives around.
However, there is another interpretation of this text that I want to share with you, especially in these days of regarding tolerance as the greatest of all virtues.
The townspeople of Jericho hated Zacchaeus because it was common knowledge that all tax collectors were the scum of the earth. In the time of Jesus tax collectors were people who collected taxes on behalf of the Roman Empire. If that were not bad enough, most tax collectors were extortionists, imposing a tax far greater that what was due.
Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector, which meant that he was a man of means, even before his becoming chief tax collector. He was rich enough to have gotten his position by being the highest bidder. A man became a tax collector by agreeing to pay all the taxes due from a certain region ahead of time. Then he was authorized to charge whatever he liked in order to regain the fortune he had spent on buying his position.
Most tax collectors were hated because they were making themselves rich at the expense of the people, billing them at a much heavier tax rate than what was necessary.
Such was the reputation of Zacchaeus in his hometown of Jericho. It was a judgment based on prejudice and presumption.
However, in the original Greek, something fascinating is said. When Jesus said he was going to lodge with Zacchaeus that night, the people complained that He was going to the home of a sinner. Zacchaeus stands his ground and clarifies what kind of man he was. He said, in the Greek, not: I shall give half of my possessions to the poor (like the English translation has it). The Greek says, I do give, it is my standing practice to give, half of what I possess to the poor. The Greek also says in effect, If I discover that I have (unknowingly) charged what was more than what was due, it is my standing practice to repay such a person four times over.
Somewhere along the path of Zacchaeus’s life, he had heard about Jesus not only enough to want to see him, but he had by God’s grace already taken in Jesus’ call to reform his life. Jesus comes on the scene and allows Zacchaeus to turn upside down the gossip and presumption that his townspeople had spread about him. Then by Jesus going to his home, Jesus was welcoming Zacchaeus back into the community. He was being inclusive.
Here’s the application to our time:
In our time, tolerance has a unique meaning. It means being welcoming and accepting and inclusive, and, here’s the catch for our time: pretending that evil does not exist. This means that in our time being tolerant means being inclusive about the sin as well as the sinner. The choice now before public schools is either to ignore the bullying of gays (which cannot be a choice) or to be accepting of the gay lifestyle. We cannot do that either. We need to remember the words of Scripture, “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil, who change darkness into light, and light into darkness, who change bitter into sweet, and sweet into bitter!” (Is. 5:20)
Jesus is the pattern for how we are to be tolerant. He did not whitewash the sins of Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus had already come to terms already with sin in his life, and Jesus confirms him in his reformed life, and leads the townspeople to see him differently.
Somewhere along the way (or even on that very day, as the classical translation would have it) Zacchaeus had changed his ways. Conversion, therefore, is a key element of the true tolerance of Jesus. Our 1st reading from the Book of Wisdom shows us that the method of God’s grace is to “rebuke offenders little by little, warning and reminding” us of the sins we commit, so that we may abandon our wickedness and believe in the Lord.
So, we must have confidence in the Lord. And we must remember that we are all sinners. Heterosexual sex outside of marriage is as much a sin as homosexual sex. And even within marriage, sex that is not open to the transmission of life is sinful.
So, we are all sinners, aren’t we? Therefore, no one can sit in judgment of another. But we must not “call evil good, and good evil, [or] change darkness into light, and light into darkness, [or] change bitter into sweet, and sweet into bitter!” Nor can we sit on some high horse and judge others for their sin. It's a tightrope we must walk.
Anyone’s encounter with us should be like an encounter with the Risen Lord. That encounter should lead others, and us, little by little, to abandon wickedness and believe more firmly in the Lord. We must have no part in name calling and bullying; these are not the tactics of Jesus.
