The Fourth Sunday Before Advent Year C
Taken from Twelve Months of Sunday year c
Description
The Fourth Sunday Before Advent
Isaiah 1.10–18
2 Thessalonians 1.1–12
Luke 19.1–10
Luke cuts Zacchaeus even more down to size, describing him with affected pomposity (‘he was a chief tax-collector! He was rich!’) and then pointing out that he was also a bit too small for his own good. Luke here highlights several themes which sum up what Jesus’ ministry has been all about and point to the reasons for the forthcoming events.
Zacchaeus stands for the ambiguity of the Judaism of Jesus’ day. Compromised with Rome, yet conscious of status; aware of a need for renewal, yet clinging to ways of living which made that renewal impossible; children of Abraham, yet lost. Jesus’ response, as ever, is to come shamelessly to where the pain is: ‘he has gone in to eat with a man who is a sinner’ (v. 7) looks back to the accusation in 15.2, and on to the mocking on the cross, when Jesus was for the last time ‘numbered with the transgressors’ (22.37)...