Reading Francis

How do we treat a traitor?

Trust in institutions is broad and deep. We distrust almost everyone, it seems, and along with that distrust comes the feeling that people are betraying us, selling us out for power or wealth. 

Maybe it’s insurance executives delaying and denying claims so they can pocket more profit, or private equity firms buying up public goods like hospitals or housing developments and running them into the ground, or athletes and referees betraying their games to cash in a bet. 

Maybe it’s the kid who turns his back on his poor neighborhood as soon as he gets a break, or the scammer who swindles people out of their life savings, or the guy with immigrant parents who helps crackdown on migrants, or the one from a loving family who joins a criminal gang. Or, or, or. There are so many faces of betrayal we can conjure up.

Because Zacchaeus is an easy character to plop into a kids’ story – a short guy who climbs a tree to see Jesus – we lose the context of who he was. As the local boss of the tax collectors, he sold out his people, shaking them down on behalf of an occupying global empire, enriching himself while supporting a ruthless enemy. He was not just a funny little tree climber. He was a mustache-twirling villain.

How do you treat someone like that?

Most people would scorn and shun him. Some of the bolder folks would try to shame him, confronting him with his treachery, even though it likely wouldn’t change his course. Some might even try to do him in, or at least trip him up, as an act of revenge. Humans have a deeply rooted antipathy for cheaters and sellouts across cultures.

How does Jesus treat the guy in the tree?

He sees Zacchaeus as a brother. He invites himself into Zacchaeus’ life and home. He encounters him with joy and celebrates their meeting.

The crowds that followed Jesus were stunned, aghast, angry at Jesus fraternizing with such a lowlife. They would have expected him, at the least, to lecture Zacchaeus about the evils of his ways. Many of them, believing Jesus to be the Messiah, would have expected him to lead a rebellion, to overthrow the Empire that Zacchaeus worked for, perhaps starting with a riot against the sellout tax collectors.

Jesus did none of those things.

Instead, it seems that Jesus’ approach led Zacchaeus to repent of his misdeeds, to the point that he repaid those he had shaken down. In the process, rather than a convicted and defeated ex-villain, Jesus transformed Zacchaeus into a joyful sibling.

This is a hard model to follow, to say the least. It offers some hope, though. For years, we seem to have been focused on digging deeper trenches between the loyal and the treasonous, and we are no closer to peace and wholeness for all the digging. Maybe if we invested less in labeling our enemies as such, and more in reminding them and us of our common humanity, we would finally get somewhere together.

So how do we treat a sibling?