NOTES for Luk 19:1-27

If earlier Jesus displeased pious people by associating with tax collectors, that is, tax farmers, and sinners, those who openly did not keep the law, now He crosses every boundary: He enters the house of the chief extortioner and declares forgiveness of sins to him simply because he promised to change his ways. He explains this by saying that Zacchaeus too is, after all, a "son of Abraham." In that language this means that he too is a human being, that God created him for Himself, for life and joy.

In theory, we too know that "man is created for happiness," but for us humanity is still divided into those who have deserved this happiness and those who have not, into the worthy and the unworthy. We ourselves, of course, end up among the "better part"; that is why the Pharisees, like all normal people, "began to grumble" when Christ turned out to be in the house of a "sinful man." The Lord knows how to see a human being in everyone, and this is a skill that should be learned.

"And Zacchaeus comes to mind too, the tax collector, a short man who wanted to catch even one glimpse of the Savior. He could not make his way through the crowd, and people despised him because he was short, but he climbed a tree and sat there, and watched... And the Lord called him and came to his house. And we too are short in stature, spiritually. We have not earned at all the right for Him to come to us. Yet He does come...

The Lord said to Zacchaeus: "Today I will be with you." And to each of us He says: "Today I will be with you." "I will be with you," says the Lord; what else do we need? Only to understand well that He comes into a poorly prepared house, not into the kind of house where everyone is waiting for the Guest, where everything shines and everything is decorated, but into a shabby, dark house, full of dust, as if abandoned.

Such is our soul, with its little faith and negligence, spiritual laziness, with prayer that barely glows like a dying flame. With neglect for the commandments and church rules, with constant irritation at everything, with continual bitterness and judgment of one another.

You come to us,
while our thoughts at that moment wander far away...
And it turns out that You are not our King,
but our pride, self-will, self-love,
ambition, vanity,
all the bustle after which we run,
to which we cling"

(Father Alexander Men, from Andrei Eremin's book "A Pastor at the Turn of the Century")

Sometimes, in order to see Jesus, we have to do something that seems impossible to us. This is not because God wants to punish us. God wants to show us that He created us for more, for eternity, for love. God cannot simply gather all perishing sinners and change them - that would be coercion. God helps those who are ready for it, who want to change, who want to give something up, to become different.

Perhaps Zacchaeus, the proud chief tax collector, would never have dared to promise what he promised Jesus ("Half of my goods I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will restore it fourfold") if beforehand, overcoming his pride, his shame over his short stature, and his awkwardness, he had not climbed a tree in order to see God. Jesus saw him in the sycamore tree, and while sitting there, blushing with shame, Zacchaeus had already changed something so important in himself that it was not hard for him to change his whole life completely. Zacchaeus took a step toward humility, and the Lord moved him to step into love.

Today we read Luke the evangelist's account of the conversion of Zacchaeus. Beginning with this day, the Sunday Gospel readings will give us food for reflection and prayer that will help us prepare for Great Lent and, therefore, to a certain extent, for Pascha. And this path begins for us with the story of Zacchaeus, the chief tax collector, who disregarded his social standing just to see the Lord Jesus.

A man of short stature, he could not get close to Christ because of the crowd. It is important to notice exactly what Zacchaeus had to give up. He was not only a wealthy man, but also the head of the tax office. He represented Roman authority, and his work of collecting taxes and duties touched every inhabitant of Jericho. The Jews despised tax collectors as traitors, but feared Roman power. Therefore, to "lower himself" in the eyes of the townspeople meant for Zacchaeus both countless difficulties and an outburst of social contempt. All this, to use the words of the apostle Paul, he "counted as loss."

We read this story because during the approaching fast every Christian is given the opportunity to seek Christ without thinking about how he looks in the eyes of those around him. That is why Zacchaeus's example is so important for us. And that is why it is so important that the Lord rewards him with the words: "Today salvation has come to this house."

Zacchaeus is an amazingly likable person. The evangelist tells us that he was short in stature. On the one hand, this is needed simply to explain his unusual action. But on the other hand, let us try to live a little into this image. People of short stature very often have a sore or vulnerable self-esteem, because in childhood, and later too, they are often teased and boys mock them. Recall in confirmation at least Wilhelm Hauff's fairy tale "Little Longnose." And now imagine: such a person climbs a tree in public, as if he were a cat, not fearing once again to become a laughingstock among people. This remotely reminds us of something holy-foolish. We always stand before this choice: people's opinion or striving toward God. If you live in an atheistic environment, people may tell you to your face or behind your back, and you always feel it, that you are not quite right in the head, that you go to church, that every family has its black sheep. Anything can happen. But what difference is there between people laughing at you and your being able to see God? In one of Vladimir Vysotsky's songs there are these words: "The giraffe is tall; he knows better." And if you are so short that even an old parrot will not stand up for you with such words, how much love for God must one have in order to overcome everything. Let us therefore try to see living people in the gospel figures, for that is what they were, and somehow make friends with them, as we make friends with members of our community.

How does the Savior find the people whose house He is ready to enter? Perhaps the same way He finds those whom He calls to follow Him. And yet, how? Here is Zacchaeus, a man who by no accepted standards in a religious environment was suitable for a visit. Not merely a tax collector, but a chief, as we would say today, of the local tax office. The occupation itself was questionable, and in those specific conditions all the more so, since one had to work for Roman power, for strangers, one might say, for occupiers.

Of course, even the most religious Pharisees paid taxes, and no one except perhaps the Zealots doubted their piety. But the Zealots were true fanatics, calling for a religious war with Rome until final victory, until the Messiah came. Yet paying taxes is one thing, and helping collect them is quite another. The first is forced; the second is voluntary. And voluntary sin is not forgiven, one cannot be cleansed of its consequences even after sincere repentance. The will to evil is a terrible and irreversible thing, so believing Jews of that time thought.

Zacchaeus apparently very much wanted that very reversibility. That is why he climbed the tree, despite his respectable position. He had evidently heard that Someone was traveling through Judea and Samaria who could cleanse even from sin committed by one's own free will. And such a desire for purity, for deliverance from sin, is immediately visible to God's gaze. That means it is visible to the Messiah's gaze as well, for He sees the situation with God's eyes. And He at once goes to the house of the one who wants deliverance from the power of sin. That is why Christ came: to deliver from the power of sin those who want to be delivered from it. And to give such people the chance to begin life with a clean slate, in His Kingdom.

Christ's words bring us great joy, yet following these words is also the hardest thing of all. The position that the Lord Jesus expresses in these words provoked the greatest indignation and protest from the scribes and Pharisees around Christ.

These words of Christ place great responsibility on us. Above all, it is very important to remember them when we see people who are unpleasant to us, whose appearance or actions arouse our indignation, people whom we consider "bad." It is precisely them, the lost - not those in the process of perishing, but those already finally lost - whom the Lord Jesus came to find and save. After that, contempt for them is plainly impossible.

But most importantly, He came to seek out and save us, each one of us. Not some splendid righteous people who earned a reward and became worthy of it, but us, lost under the weight of incurable sins.

Jesus’ words bring a big enjoyment to us, but to comply with these words may not be easy at all. The position, that the Lord Jesus marks out with these words, created most of all indignations and protests from Pharisees and scribes who surrounded Jesus.

These words of Jesus bind us to many things. It is above all important to remember them, when we see persons, who don't please us, who by their appearance or acts “make our blood boil”, those that we consider of being "bad". It is exactly for them, the lost (not those who are getting lost, but those who are already lost), that the Lord Jesus came to find and save. Obviously, it is in no way possible to disdain them after this.

But the main thing here is that: He came to seek and to save us, each of us. Us means here we that are lost under the irreparable burden of sins, and not some kind of gorgeous righteous men, who deserved and became worthy of the reward.

The evangelists mention more than once that Jesus, during His earthly ministry, visited all kinds of houses. Some of them were places where, from the point of view of the devout religious people of that time, it was simply improper to be. But Jesus pays no attention to commonly accepted opinions. He goes where He considers it necessary to go and speaks with those with whom He considers it necessary to speak. And the point, of course, is not that He is seeking scandal or wants to shock respectable society. The point is simply His ministry. And His earthly path.

A path that, in general, was determined not by society with its standards and opinions, but by His heavenly Father. Yet the nature of His ministry, of course, also mattered. Jesus Himself said that it is not the healthy who need a physician, but the sick. One cannot be a physician and associate only with people who are healthy and well-off. Of course, in all this there was also another side, which today we usually call ritual. Although it would probably be more accurate to call it the problem of preserving purity.

Defilement, after all, was the central problem for Jewish religious society. And not only for Jewish society: fear of defilement has belonged to religious consciousness in every age. This is understandable: defilement interferes with sanctification; it interferes with God's action upon a person. Defilement separates a person from God, and whatever a person may do, as long as he is unclean, everything is useless.

Moreover, after becoming defiled, a person rolls backward in his relationship with God: one need only become defiled, and everything sometimes called one's "spiritual achievements" goes to waste. And association with conscious sinners, staying with them in the same house or especially at the same table, was considered in those days to defile a person as such, even if the one associating with such people did nothing bad himself.

Jesus associates precisely with such people, from whom one can become defiled. Of course, if He were an ordinary man, everything would have been exactly, or approximately, as the devout people around Him expected. But He bears within Himself the whole fullness of the Kingdom. A fullness that surpasses every sinfulness. Therefore defilement is not frightening to Him. For every defilement is the triumph of sin. And there is no place for sin in the Kingdom; therefore no impurity is frightening to the Messiah.

The image of a harsh master who "takes what he did not deposit and reaps what he did not sow" may seem somewhat strange. Indeed, according to the general meaning of the parable, the issue is not a person, but God. But everyone sees God in his own way, usually according to his own spiritual state.

Indeed, even if we confine ourselves only to the text of the parable and keep in mind the image of the master that we see there, one can hardly speak of him as greedy and cruel. Of course, leaving a certain sum to his servants, he hopes for a corresponding profit on his return, but that is the essence of money: it must be in circulation, otherwise the very possession of any more or less large sum loses all meaning.

Of course, there is risk here, but the master is not against those to whom he entrusted his money taking risks. We do not know what the master's reaction would have been to losses from an unsuccessful investment, but his reaction to the refusal to put the entrusted sums into circulation is described in the parable with complete clarity. And as in every parable, the money put into circulation here symbolizes something related to spiritual life. Moreover, one should probably speak not even of money as such, but precisely of the readiness to put it into circulation. Of that dynamic without which money ceases to have meaning.

God gives a person life so that it may exist in constant dynamic movement. Life, in all its manifestations, from the highest and spiritual to the most ordinary and natural, can exist only dynamically. And only a person's openness to the world and trust in God can make this dynamic real. The servant who preferred to hide the money had neither one nor the other. He was sure that the master was giving him the money so that later he would have the opportunity to demand an account from his servant and get his own back. It never occurred to him that benefit from the master's money was possible both for himself and for his master.

He was sure that nothing good at all could be expected from the master. And he received according to his expectations. God gives a person life not in order to find one more occasion to reproach or punish him, but so that this life may grow in him to the fullness that the person can contain. But if a person sees a trap in God's gift, he will find himself in a trap. And it is not God who drives a person there. A person walks into his own trap himself. By his own choice.

These are the closing words of the parable about three servants who received different sums from their master and used them in different ways. The parable itself is inseparable from the context in which the Lord tells it. He offers it to the disciples precisely while going up to Jerusalem, and this means that He compares His coming to Jerusalem for the Passion with the master's return to his servants. It is precisely now that the day of God's visitation comes, as the Lord Himself called this moment. It is precisely at the Cross that it becomes clear what you have done with the life God entrusted to you. Our faithfulness to Him is tested not when people want to "take" Jesus unexpectedly and "make Him King." On the contrary, faithfulness to God is required of us when He is humiliated and diminished before people, when the human race mocks its Creator and derides Him.

The main demand placed on the servants in the parable is to use what was given to them to manage in the way the master himself would have done. What matters is not even the increase of the wealth given to them to manage: the master makes no complaint if the growth is not very great. Judging from what is said to the last, negligent servant, what matters is precisely conformity to the master's way of acting. And another essential aspect of the parable is that it does not even occur to any of the servants that the silver left with them belongs not to the master, but to themselves. Indeed, such a thought would be obviously mistaken. Since the silver here serves as a symbol of a person's life and possibilities, what is said can be extended to them. Neither life nor the ability to act in this world belongs to us ourselves; it is a gift we receive from God in order to use it according to His image and likeness. We are given the freedom necessary for this, but together with it responsibility is laid on us for how we dispose of the life given to us.

The Lord tells us that the fate of the gift of life we have received depends on how we use it. The one who does this in accordance with the Lord's design receives in abundance. The one who acts otherwise loses everything. These words frighten us and often provoke protest. The fate of the negligent servant terrifies us, and therefore the master's sentence seems unjust. But the silver in the parable and our life in reality do not belong to us, so there is only one way not to fall under the fate of the negligent servant: to be faithful. This is a choice that must be made and answered for, but after all, one cannot really refuse this responsibility.

Experience shows that this parable is very difficult even for established Christians. The image of the king, as described in the parable, clearly points, according to the messianic biblical symbolism already familiar to us, to the Most High Judge, and the situation itself is very much like the Last Judgment. But this image itself can evoke nothing but rejection, revulsion, and animal fear: cruel, unloved by the people, greedy... and he confirms all this by his own words and deeds. But is this really so? What is this image in reality, who is its true prototype, and if it is only an image, on whose consciousness is it imprinted?

Let us pay attention to the words: "By your own mouth I will judge you, wicked servant." We must dwell on this for a long time in order to read correctly the words that follow: "You knew that I was a harsh man, taking what I did not deposit, and reaping what I did not sow." When we read these words at an ordinary pace, we usually see in them only confirmation of what we already see: that this king is greedy, that his people do not love him, that he orders those who disagree with him to be killed before his face. All of this fits into one image and hardens in the mind, while the words "by your own mouth" remain truly unnoticed. But if we listen to them, the picture instantly changes radically. This is only one negligent servant's idea of the king, and an idea that did not help him do anything good.

People will say to us: what, then, about the idea held by all the "citizens" who sent an embassy and did not want to have such a king? But that too is only their idea. And finally: but he himself says, "slay them before me." Yet let us think: perhaps this is only an indication of the well-known words of the psalm: The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet (Ps. 109:1), or of the words of another psalm: "I have set My King on Zion, My holy mountain; I will declare the decree: the Lord said to Me, You are My Son; today I have begotten You; ask of Me, and I will give You the nations for Your inheritance and the ends of the earth for Your possession; You shall strike them with a rod of iron; You shall shatter them like a potter's vessel" (Ps. 2:6-9)? Then this is indeed only an indication of the day of Judgment.

In fact, there is a very important point here. What often undermines our faith, what makes us suffer in confusion and doubt? Often we see people who, it would appear, should know God better than anyone saying something that sounds like complete nonsense to us. And this troubles us. But we must not forget that this is only their idea about Him, although at times it appears to us, as when reading this parable, to correspond so obviously to reality. Finally, let us note that we never learn the idea about the king held by some of the people mentioned in the parable. The idea held by the people who simply took the money and earned more. What do they think about the king? We do not know.