Could Friendship Be a Salve for Church Hurt?

I always tell my students that tax collectors were kind of like mobsters. They weren’t your typical blue-collar criminals; they were the worst kind of traitor, getting rich off the imperial oppression of their own people.  

Because of their questionable vocation, tax collectors were treated like they’d sold their souls: They couldn't testify in court, they were often disowned by their families and shunned by their community, and they weren’t welcomed in synagogues  

Talk about church hurt.  

Zaccheus: The Don of Jericho

In Luke 19, we meet a chief tax collector named Zaccheus. If we stick with our mobster analogy, the chief tax collector isn’t just one of the guys in the ranks. Zaccheus is the Don of Jericho. He’s the leader of the syndicate in his city.  

If tax collectors are bad, Zaccheus is, well… extra bad.  

He’s a man who has everything. He’s undoubtedly one of the wealthiest men in his city – maybe even in all of Rome’s empire. He’s corrupt. He’s power-hungry. He’s an extortionist – a man willing to sacrifice his own people on Rome’s altar if it means shaking the pennies from their pockets. 

Even those of us who haven’t seen the movie (It’s me, hi!) can conjure a mental image of The Godfather. When we think of Don Corleone, we think of a man people feared and respected, even as they hated him. It’s not far reaching to extend this persona to Zaccheus. 

Yet, in his story, instead of commanding lackeys from behind a desk, Zaccheus rolls up his sleeves and climbs a tree to catch a glimpse of the strange rabbi, Jesus, everyone has been talking about.  

There’s something profoundly humble and childlike in that choice. Can you imagine Don Corleone in a tree? 

When Jesus sees Zaccheus, he approaches a Jewish mobster hanging from the branches and gives him a beautiful extension of friendship (which, I think, is often lost on modern readers). He calls Zaccheus by name, tells him to climb down, and invites himself over to Zaccheus’ house to stay. Zaccheus, to the reader’s surprise, responds immediately and excitedly. 

But while Jesus is at Zaccheus’ house, the people complain about him. They’re no longer solely disgusted by Zaccheus, but Jesus too.  

It would have been one thing to teach Zaccheus. But to enter his home? To be with him like a friend? That was to refrain from condemning him, and that was too far.  

Bearing his shame and calling him son 

It’s interesting, isn’t it? Even here, before the cross, Jesus is bearing the shame of his people. The people don’t like Zaccheus, and when Jesus associates with him and extends friendship, they decide they don’t like Jesus either. Jesus takes on Zaccheus’ shame.  

And it works. 

Where Zaccheus had been rejected, Jesus offers acceptance. Where Zaccheus had been wounded, Jesus offers healing.  

Zaccheus responds to Jesus’ friendship with transformation: “I’m giving everything I stole back to everyone I stole from, fourfold!” When you consider that the nature of this man’s job is stealing, it’s hard to imagine he’ll have anything left after fulfilling such a promise. 

And, in response, Jesus affirms Zaccheus’ place among the sons of Abraham — the very people who claimed Zaccheus had been cut from the family tree. With his statement in Luke 19:9, he essentially says, our people have rejected you, but I say you are still a child of God. I came for the lost, not those who have already been found.  

This isn’t to say that the things people had said about Zaccheus weren’t true. He was a mobster, after all. 

Rather, it means that Jesus’ acceptance of Zaccheus isn’t contingent upon his behavior or others’ opinions.  

What about us?  

The people who hated Zaccheus, and then Jesus by association, probably felt justified in their hatred. Everything about Zaccheus was antithetical to their religious way of life.  

How often do we hurt people because they don’t fit into our “religious way of life?” Do we feel justified in hurting others because they don’t fit into our understanding of what it means to follow Jesus?  

Ultimately, this wrong and self-righteous belief has led to many people turning away from Jesus, not toward him. 

As Jesus-followers, it would do us well to realize that there are victims all around us, on campus and in the world, who have giant, gaping church-inflicted wounds. Where have you seen your peers experience rejection from the church? I urge you to consider: How might you partner with Jesus to offer them friendship and healing? 

It seems that, to Jesus, ‘right behavior’ wasn’t a prerequisite to friendship. In this story, and in countless others, it was actually his ability to make friends with the “wrong people” that resulted in their salvation. His friendship was a salve on the wound of rejection inflicted by the religious people around them.  

And if we are to be like Jesus, if we are to, like him, be reconcilers on campus and in every area of our lives, then we are also not here for the found, but for the lost.  

Our friendship, like Jesus’, is a balm. Our radical acceptance of people who don’t fit can be their salvation. Entering into their spaces, even the spaces that make us or others uncomfortable, can remind them of the fact that they, too, are a child of God, even if someone has said otherwise.  

I encourage you to pursue friendship with the Zaccheus’ on campus. Because our friendship with the “wrong person”, the person who has been wounded by the church and who is living lost, is exactly the kind of thing God might use to draw them into his beautiful and upside-down kingdom.