Taylor, Zacchaeus, and Salvation

31st Sunday of the Year

Taylor Swift, “Anti-Hero”, (2022)

It may not seem to be the case on the surface, but the Zacchaeus we meet in today’s Gospel has something important in common with the singer/songwriter Taylor Swift.

Last Friday, Taylor released her tenth studio album, called Midnights. She has described this collection of 13 songs as music written in the middle of the night, a journey through terrors and sweet dreams. Like the nine albums that have come before it, Midnights is about heartbreak: her heartbreak and her conflicting desires toward her past lovers for reconciliation and revenge.

But her most recent work contains something new. For the first time, it seems, Taylor is able to admit that she is the problem, at least in part. No longer does she consider herself only the wounded, but also the wounder, and the cause of her restless nights and own broken heart.

This important admission comes in the third track, which is aptly titled, Anti-Hero. In the chorus, Taylor sings: It’s me / Hi / I’m the problem, it’s me. How far has she come from her earlier hit: I knew you were trouble when you walked in. Here, she does not sing of the trouble outside herself, caused by others, but the trouble within herself, for which she is to blame. And while her words may be rather tongue in cheek, and may contain some amount of unhealthy self-loathing, and are undoubtedly born from relationships in which she was unquestionably the victim, her move to look at herself as the anti-hero marks growth in her spiritual life. For the recognition of one’s brokenness is the prelude to salvation.

And here we find Taylor’s parallel with Zacchaeus. She is not like him in his short stature, nor does she share the dishonest means he attained his wealth. Neither has she, to my knowledge, left everything and followed Christ. What Taylor and Zacchaeus have in common, rather, is the recognition of their brokenness. And for Zacchaeus this recognition was—and, please God, it will be for Taylor—the occasion of his salvation.

Prior to running ahead and climbing the sycamore to see Jesus, one could imagine that Zacchaeus also had some sleepless nights, as the people he had cheated and robbed seemed to stand there in the room beside his bed. Perhaps he remembered their names. Maybe he was haunted by the dreams he stole from them. Possibly he flirted with the idea of restoring to them what he took. We do not meet Zacchaeus before this incident in Jericho, nor do we hear from him after, to know what exactly happened before that day. But there must have been something within his heart that moved him to push past and climb above the crowd gathered to see Jesus as he passed.

This would be the only way to make sense of Zacchaeus’ response to his encounter with Christ. When Jesus speaks to Zacchaeus, he makes no demands. Christ does not tell him, as he told others, to sell what he has and give to the poor. Christ does not require of him, as he required of others, to renounce his life of sin to become his disciple. He does not, because he does not need to. Zacchaeus has already been changed. When Jesus looks up at Zacchaeus and tells him to hurry down, the tax collector, of his own free will and without prompt, gives half of what he owns to the poor and repays those he cheated four times over. He does all this with joy, because before Zacchaeus met Christ on the road through Jericho, he had already met him on the road to his heart, a road that passes more times than not through restless nights.

But now his restlessness has come to an end. He has found the one whom his soul loves and the one who loves his soul, who has sought him out in his brokenness and now proclaims to him the good news of salvation. The darkness of his midnights has been conquered by the unconquerable light of the world.

While we may share little else with either Taylor or Zacchaeus, we are no less strangers than they to restless nights. For all our differences, we are all in our own way filled with regret for what we have done and what we have failed to do. Perhaps the record-breaking success of Midnights is an indication of that. Perhaps the enduring power of Zacchaeus’ story is too.

But while we can sympathize with their restlessness, can we honestly say that we share their self-awareness? Do we find ourselves blaming others for our lack of sleep Or do we admit, at least to some degree, that we, too, are the problem? We may, to some degree, admit that we are, but do we do anything about it? Or do we push it off to another day?

Looking at my own life, I can tell you that I possess both an awareness of my problems and a firm resolve to deal with them tomorrow. And we may find passages, like the one we have from 2 Thessalonians, coming to the defense of our desire to defer. Paul is concerned that some are going about the Christian community provoking fear and worry by prophesying that the Lord would return suddenly and soon. Paul writes to settle the people down for neither he nor they know when Christ will come again. Paul is, of course, right: the essence of his message corresponds with Christ’s words that it does not belong to humans to know the day or the hour of his return. But, at the same time, Paul’s message is, in a sense, incomplete. or while we do not know the day when Christ will come in glory, we do know the day when he will come to us. And the day Christ will come to us is, as it was for Zacchaeus, this day.

It is this day—and every day—that the Son of Man comes to seek and to save what was lost. It is this day when, as Wisdom describes, the Lord and lover of souls spares and rebukes and warns those he loves, that they may abandon their way of wickedness and return to the Lord. But for the Son of Man to meet us, to save us, and to bring us back, we need to first admit that we are lost, that we need rescue, that we need a Savior. That is the spiritual place where Taylor is and where Zacchaeus was. It is a good place and rich. And it is where we should be, too.

If we do not know we are lost, we cannot be found. If we do not admit our poverty, we cannot be filled. If we do not recognize our brokenness, we cannot be made whole. If we do not acknowledge ourselves as the anti-hero, we cannot profess faith in Christ, the true hero, who has come to redeem and set us free.

It is this day that Christ seeks to finds us. It is this day that we must admit our need to be found. Let today be the day you let your midnights become the place where Christ meets you. Let today be the day he turns your sorrow to joy. Let today be the day he proclaims salvation to your house. And let today lead you to the day that does not end, when we will praise the Lord, our King and our God, forever. Amen.

Homily preached October 29 & 30, 2022 at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen.