It is hard to practice radical compassion. Practicing compassion requires several movements. It often, when we are distracted or fully overloaded with many stimuli, we need to pause and take a breath.
Zacchaeus has two obstacles, one is physical and the other is socio-religious. First he is short of stature, and he cannot see over the crowds. Secondly, he is an outsider, a despised tax collector, he collects taxes for the Roman occupiers. Both obstacles are related. His shortness prevents him from overlooking the heads of the crowds. But his social occupation makes it so the crowds who hate him as a national traitor will not make way for him to see Jesus coming. No one will budge and stand aside for him to see. Zacchaeus is shunned as a social pariah and outcast by those who follow a sin management religion with clear walls and boundaries to exclude. I have maintained a sin management religion or church is graceless. Such a religion is graceless when it creates scapegoated folks, stigmatizes them as sinners, and excludes them the faith community. It minimizes, at the very least, grace or overburdens grace with a sin management strategy of connecting to God. But that type of religion is graceless, and it uses shame, guilt, and exclusion to rule people. It leaves out the heart of God, unconditional love. God loves us into loving.
When Zacchaeus, tax collector, climbs a tree to secure Jesus’ attention, he catches Jesus’ gaze in one of those moments of a pause, then noticing him in the tree and waving and trying to secure his attention. He sees the man in own particularity. His attentiveness is open, non-reactive curiosity.
Jesus pays attention to his surroundings, the people in the crowd as well as the man in the tree waving and trying to get his attention. Frank Rogers, in his book, Compassion in Practice: The Way of Jesus, writes:
…we pay attention. We simply notice non-reactively and non-judgmentally what others are doing and what they look like while they are doing it. We gaze upon them contemplatively, the way of the artist would observe them or as if they were character on stage or in a film. In the same way we cultivate a radical acceptance of our interior movements, we nurture a welcoming posture and expansive hospitality toward people we are beholding. This is how Jesus gazes upon people.
People present themselves to Jesus for healing physically or for acceptance from outcast/impure status. But Jesus also pauses enough during his ministry to notice people. I hold that Jesus’ saying in Luke 6:36 is central to Jesus’ teaching and ministry: “Be compassionate as Abba God is compassionate.” He takes the time to understand and assess their social situation.
Jesus pays attention to people. He comprehends people and their behaviors in their own context. Initially, Jesus does not react, but as he understands a person social reality, he responses without judgment and compassionately. And this was a common everyday experience around—people excluded for religious reasons and prejudices. Suffering and emotionally pained individuals were not invisible. Human beings have an uncanny ability to ignore the pain of others, and we make them invisible even when a person sits on the sidewalk with a side, “Am I invisible?”
He is open to their pain and suffering. He is initially non-reactive but becomes responsive to their human situation. His responsiveness includes a loving gaze, trying to understand their social experience. He reads their emotions, their bodily messages.
Bodies and bodily actions can communicate as much as words. Bodies carry the scars and wounds of our emotional and physical struggles. Facial gestures likewise communicate our feelings and struggles.
The gospel carries numerous stories of people’s pain, their grief and oppression, and their heart-felt sorrows. Jesus breaks rules and laws only for the sake of compassion. His healings on the Sabbath or the healing of the centurion’s boy are examples. Compassion is the driving force of his ministry.
When Zacchaeus catches his attention, Jesus recognizes the man’s humanity. He sizes him up. His shortness of stature and the crowd’s reluctance to allow him through indicate that this man in a sycamore tree is a socio-religious outcast. Zacchaeus is tainted because he collects taxes for the Romans, impure Gentiles and conquerors. He is a national traitor. “Zacchaeus
What is remarkable about Jesus to me is Jesus manifests compassionate for those he meets. It propels his ministry of radical inclusiveness and unconditional love in his invitation to an open table.
Compassion is dangerous. The Dalai Lama has said, “Compassion is the radicalism of our time.” Compassion for the outside or the suffering is always counter-cultural and resists cultural norms and power structures. Compassion creates upheavals, for it challenges the core of our prejudices. And we all have been conditioned to some form of social prejudice.
Jesus invites himself: “Zacchaeus, come down quickly, for I must stay at your house.” Jesus, who invites all sorts of suspect people and sinners to the open table, invites himself into the house of known public sinner in Jericho. I want to talk about Jesus’ action here.
Two weeks ago, I preached at the Convention of the Eastern Oregon Episcopal Churches. While preaching about the Great Feast in Luke chapter 14, I talked about Jesus’ open table that tolerates no outsiders.
The open table includes the virtues of extravagant hospitality, but it overlaps with compassion, forgiveness, and unconditional love. It occurred to me that Jesus was the open table, he embodied the open table and God’s grace. It is easy for us to understand Jesus as the open table. But his invitation to the open table transforms us also into God’s open table.
Therefore, when Jesus invites himself into Zacchaeus’ home, Jesus brings God’s open table into his house. He is God’s table, he incarnates God’s compassion and unconditional grace. The radical of his invitation into Zacchaeus’ house is not unnoticed by the crowds of Jericho. He went into that sinner’s house. You hear the voice of the crowd murmuring; “Jesus has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner!” The crowd is often the ones who are scandalized Jesus’ behaviors. Compassion is God’s interruptive, and I would add, God’s liberating grace. It forces the crowd to question their religious expectations and norms.
Jesus creates the open table space within Zacchaeus’ home; he brings the sacredness of compassion, hospitality, and unconditional grace there. Zacchaeus is surprised as well. He has been ostracized, treated as dirt and a traitor by the Jewish community of Jericho. He defends himself before Jesus: “Look, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.” Jesus accepts the tax collector as he is. He does not require him to give up his profession. Jesus declares to Zacchaeus and the crowds, “Today, salvation has come to this house.” Jesus has alleviated the outcast status of the tax collector. His “today” declaration says to Zacchaeus and the crowds; he is a part of God’s community. Compassion not only alleviates suffering, but it transforms Zacchaeus.
Once more Jesus has messed up the socio-religious lines and barriers that protect the insiders from the sinful outsiders. But the real question is “who is the outsider?” Zacchaeus is the sinner and outsider to the Jericho crowds. But I would suggest that crowds are the real outsiders because of their exclusion of God’s table. God’s hospitality messes up Zacchaeus as well as the crowds. For what they believe and practice creates social walls and barriers, and it messes up psychologically and causes suffering to the tax collector but it also messes up those who excluded him.
God’s hospitality disrupts all religious barriers that human beings build. God’s hospitality disrupts those human walls and tears them down. All walls are broken down, even the walls between human and divine. By pausing, listening, and paying attention to the pain and suffering or the deep cries of another person moves us beyond pausing and listening to acting lovingly and with care. When compassion moves us to compassionate action, we see the real beloved child of God, a sibling in need. We unite with Jesus’ compassion and God’s compassion by becoming God’s compassion to another. But grace rebounds on us, for the grace of compassionate love transforms us as well. Our self-less love delights in our compassion connects to a wounded person like Zaccaheus. We recognize his humanity as Jesus did. We bring the open table of grace and hospitality to Zaccahaeus.