One day in Jericho, the salvation of the whole cosmos came to the house of a tax collector named Zacchaeus. I ask you, friends, what might it look like if the salvation of the whole cosmos came to your house or my house today?
God’s mercy doesn’t get portioned out in teaspoons, and it doesn’t pick and choose its beneficiaries against a careful checklist of deserving qualities. Everyone in the temple is doing the best they can; frankly, everyone outside the temple is too. They (and we) all go down to their homes in grace.
Faith is having our lives be fired and ordered by a vision of Shalom Shabbat, Sabbath Peace. Where hospitality is the law, because human dignity is a given.
Jesus is telling the Samaritan that just as his profound gratitude is a verb, the faith at the man’s core is also a verb, and the fruits of that faith – wellness, wholeness, and salvation – are verbs as well. None of them are one-time events, but processes to be lived out and shared in the lives of others. The most important part of what Jesus said to him was, “Get up and go.”
“We are worthless slaves. We have done only what we ought to have done.” You won’t find that mantra in any self help manual. But if the church can be a community of honest humility and thankfulness to God about how we got wherever we are, and a community that nurtures the hope even a tiny seed of faith can create, lives will be changed.