Thirty-second Sunday after Pentecost. Our Holy Fathers and Archbishops of Alexandria Athanasius and Cyril.
1 Timothy 4:9-15; Luke 19:1-10.
Read Luke 19:1-10
Intersections with other people – they can seem random to us. With God, they can be filled with purpose. Jesus “entered Jericho and was passing through.” There was no apparent intention to do otherwise. But when he looked up and saw Zacchaeus, he said, “I must stay at your house today,” a definite intention of purpose.
Zacchaeus was unmistakably full of purpose. If “he sought to see who Jesus was,” his desire to do so must have been stirred before then. “He ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree” – this is not idle curiosity; Zacchaeus’s purposeful physical acts are a precursor to his later tangible acts of restitution in repentance.
When Jesus addressed him, it was with the same intimate foreknowledge with which he addressed Nathanael who he saw under the fig tree. Jesus called him by name and matched Zacchaeus’s level of engagement – “make haste.” And so, he did.
Jesus interpreted this whole intersection between him and Zacchaeus. He said that the reason that salvation came to Zacchaeus’s house is because Jesus “came to seek and to save the lost.” While apparently just “passing through,” Jesus was actively seeking and saving.
God is always seeking saving intersections with us and with others through us. We can be purposeful too, open to what hasn’t happened yet. Praying that God would lead us, as we go about our days, to intersect and connect with others with whom he would deem it good to do so is a purposeful way to begin.