Brief synopsis of the readings: Our first reading comes (again) from a book that appears only in Catholic Bibles (the book of Wisdom, sometimes called the Wisdom of Solomon). The author is speaking to God about God’s power and mercy: “Yes, you love all that exists, you hold nothing of what you have made in abhorrence.” Furthermore, “You spare all things because all things are yours, Lord, lover of life, you whose imperishable spirit is in all.” Finally, “Little by little, therefore, you correct those who offend, you admonish and remind them of how they have sinned, so that they may abstain from evil and trust in you, Lord.” Luke’s Gospel tells the story of Zaccheaus, a senior tax collector and wealthy man. He wanted to see Jesus and climbed a tree for a better view. Jesus, looking up, said: “Zaccheaus, come down. Hurry, because I must stay at your house today.” Those gathered complained that Jesus was going to a sinner’s home. Protesting this, Zaccheaus announced that he would give half of his property to the poor and if he cheated anyone he would repay it four times. Jesus replied: “Today, salvation has come to this house, because this man has come to seek out and save what was lost.”

So what must we do to be saved? No question in the history of Christianity has sucked up more oxygen than this. This question has also caused the largest schisms in our history. Different people point to different Bible passages as the single answer. We have to believe, we have to accept Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and savior. We have to feed the hungry because “whenever you did this to the least of my people, you did it to me.”

But unfortunately we set this up to make salvation exclusionary. If you are feeding the poor when you should have been accepting Jesus Christ, you’re out. If you profess belief in Jesus Christ but ignore the suffering of others, your beliefs get you nowhere. And what if you believe you have to be born again if you were born into a place of faith and never left?

But what if the question of salvation is greater and more generous than that? Three weeks ago I offered the theory that Jesus healed all 10 lepers even though only one recognized him. I suggested that salvation is broader than “just us.” And I think the book of Wisdom also points to this.

Wisdom was written not long before the birth of Jesus at a time of conflict. The Jews were dominated by the Romans and were influenced by Greek philosophy. Some thought they should adopt the customs of their conquerers while others feared they would lose their identity. They author of Wisdom was clear that, if they were to survive, they had to remember that God and God alone brought them from Egypt and ruled over them. Parts of Wisdom are harsh but here we find kinder words. The author speaks of God loving “all that exists.” God corrects those who sin that they may return.

Parents understand all too well that discipline is both difficult and necessary, and they bring different understandings to it. Far and away the best understanding I’ve heard about disciplining children is this: “I love you too much to allow you to behave like this.” Discipline, in this situation, is not revenge for bad behavior, and it doesn’t see the child as a bad person or unworthy of love. Instead, here discipline takes the long view and says this: you are a good person and I will always love you beyond your understanding. And because of this love I want only the best for you.

So if we see parents in this light, why can’t we seem to see God in this same light? Even the question of what must we do to be saved belies a belief that God isn’t a loving parent as much as dispassionate judge who decides who is saved and who is condemned. Catholics of my generation and older remember being told that missing mass (church), even once, without a good reason constitutes a mortal sin. Dying with an unconfessed mortal sin on your soul meant that a loving God would refuse you salvation.

Not to put all the blame on Catholics, many Protestants continue to hold that those who do not hold a personal belief that Jesus died to save us are also refused salvation. Albert Einstein, Mahatma Ghandi, and Carl Sagan are just out of luck because they chose poorly.

I don’t believe this and I offer Zacchaeus as exhibit A. By any measure he was doing well in his society. I’ve spoken of this in previous homilies, but tax collectors were Jews who “sold out” to the Romans by taking money from their fellow Jews and enriching both themselves and the Roman empire. We learn first about Zaccheaus that he was a senior tax collector and a wealthy man. This would have made him especially popular with the Romans and especially hated among the Jews.

And we have no understanding of his curiosity in seeing Jesus. We see him as a good guy because of how this ends, but at the beginning he may have had no interest other than “who is this guy?” He may have even shown interest in Jesus to make certain Jesus and his disciples wouldn’t interfere with his wealth.

But there was something about Zaccheaus that sparked Jesus’ interest, something that caused Jesus to invite himself to Zaccheaus’ home.

Then, and only then, do we hear from Zaccheaus. Whether or not he expected to be in the spotlight, he reacted to the murmurs from the crowd and he didn’t like it. And that caused him to say something extraordinary: “I’ll give half my property to the poor and if (if?) I have cheated anybody I will pay him back four times the amount.” I think it’s fair to say that he didn’t get to be a senior tax collector by giving away money: this was clearly not something he had been doing all along.

And based on this Jesus tells him that “salvation has come to this house, because this man too is a son of Abraham; for the Son of Man has come to seek out and save what was lost.”

Zaccheaus doesn’t profess belief in Jesus and we have no idea whether or not he actually kept these promises. Yet he gets a blank check.

And yes, in fairness he repents and that is a constant theme in what we think of as salvation. But I also like to think that when Jesus talks about salvation, he’s a little like Oprah Winfrey: “You get saved, and you get saved, and you back there? You get saved too.”

OK, maybe that’s a little over the line, but what if salvation is reserved for anyone who wants it? If we were all given a free pass, would we spend the rest of our lives cheating other people, laughing at people who profess faith? Or would we go in the other direction? I like to think that a deep awareness of our salvation, of God’s love and devotion to us, would take us in the other direction. It would allow us to be kind. It would allow us to not feel like we need to be “better” than others to compete for finite places in Heaven. If Zachheaus, the senior tax collector and a wealthy man, has a place, so do we.

Perhaps the answer to the question of what must we do to be saved is this: Yes.