Drill Baby Drill

Exploring the meaning of being “a descendant of Abraham”

11/19/2024

LK 19:1-10 At that time Jesus came to Jericho and intended to pass through the town. Now a man there named Zacchaeus, who was a thief tax collector and also a wealthy man, was seeking to see who Jesus was; but he could not see him because of the crowd, for he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree in order to see Jesus, who was about to pass that way. When he reached the place, Jesus looked up and said, “Zacchaeus, come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house.” And he came down quickly and received him with joy. When they saw this, they began to grumble, saying, “He has gone to stay at the house of a sinner.” But Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Behold, half of my possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor, and if I have extorted anything from anyone I shall repay it four times over.” And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house because this man too is a descendant of Abraham. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost.”

Jesus pays Zacchaeus a great compliment in today’s gospel – calling him “a descendant of Abraham” – that I would like to drill down into a little further. As our friends in the oil and gas industry like to say, “Drill, baby, drill!” But first we should note that Zacchaeus is not only a wealthy tax-collector, he is a greedy man, or as the crowd said, “a sinner.”

That was the ostensible reputation of tax-collectors: greedy Jews who worked for the occupying Romans. But when diminutive Zacchaeus meets Jesus, he has a profound conversion. That is, he exchanges his greed for generosity, adjuring to Jesus: “Behold half of my possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor, and if I have extorted anything from anyone I shall repay it four times over.”

In other words, Zacchaeus understands that following Jesus is his greatest treasure, and his worldly wealth suddenly didn’t seem so important to him. As St. Paul puts it in Phil 3:7, “Whatever gains I had, these I have come to consider a loss because of Christ.” A couple of verses later, he would call it "rubbish."

Seeing Zacchaeus sincerity, Jesus says to him, “Today salvation has come to this house because this man, too, is a descendant of Abraham.” In other words, Jesus declares that what it takes to be a true “descendant of Abraham” is to have the faith of Abraham, which ultimately means to have faith in Jesus.

You see, the true Jew is not one who stubbornly follows his ancestors’ traditions, and stays staunchly Jewish. But rather he sees that his ancestors, especially Abraham, were awaiting the Messiah, and the Messiah had come in Jesus. The best Jew, therefore, becomes a Christian.

A few weeks ago I visited a family for dinner and they asked me if I had watched the series called “The Chosen.” And I said “no.” If everyone is watching it, then I’m not. So they invited me to watch a clip of a scene where Jesus returns to his hometown of Nazareth. As we know, Jesus reads from the scroll of Isaiah, and then dramatically declares: “Today this passage is fulfilled in your hearing."

The rabbi of the synagogue takes offense and asks indignantly: “Do you mean to say you are greater than the law of Moses?” Jesus stares at him steadily, and answers coolly: “I am the law of Moses.” In other words, the time has come to stop being a Jew and to start being a Christian. Why?

Because faith in Christ is precisely what the Jewish patriarchs like Abraham and Moses were pointing to. That fullness of Abrahamic faith is what Jesus meant when he called Zacchaeus “a descendant of Abraham.” Our Lord did not mean Zacchaeus was a good Jew; he meant he was a good Christian.

St. Paul will pick up on this point in his combative letter to the Galatians. In the third verse from the end, Gal 6:16, Paul writes: “Peace and mercy be to all who follow this rule [being a Christian], and to the Israel of God.” Did you catch that curious connection? The Apostle to the Gentiles argues that the Church is the true Israel, and therefore, the old Israel is obsolete. The authentic Israeli, therefore, is the Christian.

Let’s drill a little further. Have you heard the Old Testament referred to as “The Hebrew Scriptures”? Modern Scripture scholars who use that title feel that the name “The Old Testament” sounds pejorative, as if those forty-six books were second class and somehow inferior to the New Testament.

But that is exactly the correct reading of the whole Bible. How so? Well, the old has prepared the way for the new and now the Old Testament stands waiting upon the New Testament, like a handmaid waiting upon her queen. That is what Jesus meant when he called Zacchaeus "a descendant of Abraham", and when he declared defiantly, “I am the law of Moses.”

Here is one last drill bit, another way to illustrate this crucial point. Have you heard of the Crusades? They were military expeditions launched from Christian countries in Europe to win back the Holy Land. Incidentally, I attended the University of Dallas, and we were called the Crusaders. Anyway, from 1095 t0 1291, a series of crusades were undertaken to wrest control of the Holy Land back from the Muslims who had over run it.

Why did we do that? Because we believed that the Holy Land of Israel really belonged to the Christians, just like we believe the Old Testament really belongs to the Christians, and we believe the title “Israel” really belongs to the Christians, and we believe being “a descendant of Abraham” really belongs to the Christians. I am not suggesting we put on armor, strap on our swords, mount our steeds and fight the Crusades all over again. I just hope we can appreciate why the medieval Christians did.

Praised be Jesus Christ!