Now that I’m firmly ensconced in middle age and have more than a little experience of the world, I think I can safely say that there are few gifts we can give someone than to see them — really see them, for who they are. And the more I read of the Scriptures, the more I see this reflected in their stories too: God reaches out to the enslaved woman Hagar after she’s cast out for following her mistress’s instructions and offers her a covenant of her own, leading her to give God the name “The God Who Sees Me.” Later in Genesis, God sees the patriarch Jacob in all his hard, scheming wrangling, and gives him a new name, Israel, ‘Wrestles with God’. We could easily include the calling of the disciples here, offering them the chance to fulfill their vocations as fishermen as fishers of men. I could go on. But the point is that there is a consistent message in the Scriptures of God meeting people where they are, of seeing them for who they are, and welcoming them into the blessings of God’s kingdom, warts and all. We have a great example of this in today’s Gospel reading, the story of the tax-collector Zacchaeus.
The story goes like this:
Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through it. A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.” So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. All who saw it began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.” Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” Then Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.” (Luke 19.1-10)
Jesus doesn’t welcome Zacchaeus because he is good — the story tells us he was far from being ‘good’. Nor does Jesus welcome him out of foresight that he would become good. He welcomes him because he showed up. Knowing full well that he’d be stuck in a large crowd of people who knew him and hated him, knowing that he’d have to go to embarrassing lengths even to get a glimpse of Jesus, still Zacchaeus showed up. And Jesus saw him. He saw the effort, he saw the boldness, he saw the desire in this vile little man and saw that it was beautiful. And so he welcomed him.
There’s something to be said in all this about All Saints Day, which was yesterday on the Western Church Calendar. As we saw earlier this year in my Lenten series about the lives of the Saints, Christian holiness is not a one-size-fits all proposition. God called them all where they were, from enslaved women to royalty, from divorcees to celibates, from arch-conservatives to revolutionaries. God saw them in all their specificity, and the Church recognized their holiness in all their specificity.
The current social breakdown we’re experiencing in the West is, I think, as much a crisis in seeing as one of understanding. Many today are simply choosing to opt out of seeing others, because it’s a lot easier to think in broad, black and white, categories than it is to accept the complications and full spectrumed nuance that naturally arise when we see people for who they are, for the unique ways in which they have been created to bear the image and likeness of God in the world.
Today and always, may we resist this temptation and take the time and effort to see one another, truly and honestly, just as God saw Hagar and Jacob and Zacchaeus and as God sees each and every one of us. Amen.
Matthew Root 