Tomáš Halík on Addressing Zaccheus Types

Embracing Mystery, Dialogue, and Those who are Un-addressed

Tomáš Halík’s imagination for his writing, theology, and public ministry has little to do with keeping the faithful orderly, in line, and comfortable. And it is certainly not meant to, as he says, “convert the converted (Patience with God, 5).” I know exactly what he means. Halík is not interested in spending his time making church folk feel better about their faith or their expression of religiosity, and he certainly, like myself, is frustrated by the idea of sticking to the sisyphean cycle of telling the already converted that they must be converted, which yields little more than expressivist, emotional, and individualist forms of Christian piety. No, Halík feels a calling to reach out to what he calls modern day Zaccheus’.

That is his term — rooted and patterned after the character from St. Luke’s Gospel who hides up in a tree until addressed by Jesus — for those souls that are on the margins, or who as he says, “keeps their distance.” Halík muses, “most of those people did not choose their place ‘on the margins’ voluntarily. It could well be that some of them are also reticent because—like Zaccheus—they are all too aware that their own house is not in order, and they realize, or at least suspect, that changes need to be made in their own lives. Maybe, unlike the unfortunate person in one of Jesus’ parables, they realize they are not properly attired for the wedding for the wedding and therefore cannot take a seat among the guests of honor at the wedding feast (Patience with God, 5-6).” And, importantly, Halík notes that they are “still on the journey.”

That is very important to remember. It is an easy temptation for people of spiritual and religious conviction to assign labels when thinking of others: sheep over there and goats over here. Importantly this sorting has little to do with faithfulness, ethics, or issues of justice; no, all to often it has to do with belief as cognitive assent or at least verbal affirmation. But there are all sorts of modern Zacchaeus’s out there. They are on the margins because they have doubt and have not come to accept doubt as faith’s bedfellow. They keep their distance, because they have yet to accept themselves as they might have heard that God accepts them, so they still live under the weight of shame—they do not feel welcome. If they can’t accept themselves, then how is it that the community can accept them? This is an enormous existential fear. Sometimes these folks are still on their journey, intellectually. They understand many points of faith, and maybe are drawn to them, but have difficulty squaring them with other affirmations of belief. These modern day Zacchaeus’s live in the age of “authenticity,” secularity, cynicism, yet they are still looking for something more!

What Halík reminds us of, and what is so important to remember is that these souls are STILL ON A JOURNEY, and perhaps they are, like Zacchaeus, quietly watching and are waiting to be addressed. If it is your sense that you are called to preach, proclaim, teach, instruct, speak the sacred, direct spiritually, or what have you, then how will you go about addressing those who remain half in the shadows, on the margins, or who “stay back” while the faithful crowd around? There are a few ways to go about it:

1.) You must know those who need to be addressed. Hence, you must spend time with people, learning their stories, and sharing their life. Without this, you run the risk of addressing these modern Zacchaeus’s in overly confident ways that do damage. You can come off as arrogant. You can be dismissive of their questions. You might present answers to questions that NO ONE is asking—too much contemporary preaching does this, if I am frank. You can create new questions without ever having learned of the first ones. You could fumble over the emotional world’s of these soul’s inner lives and cause damage in the long run.

So, it is important to be patient with their doubt. It is important to address them on the journey as Jesus did. It is paramount to listen, engage, and share in the journey together. The point, after all, is transformation not verbal agreement.

2.) Embrace, do not eschew mystery. Halík writes, “truth happens in the course of dialogue. There is always a temptation to allow our answers to bring to an end the process of searching, as if the topic of the conversation was a problem that has now been solved. But when a fresh question arrives, the unexhausted depths of mystery who through once more. Let is be said over and over again: faith is not a question of problems but of mystery, so we must never abandon the ath of seeking and asking. Yes, in seeking Zacchaeus we must often shift from problems to mystery, from apparently final answers back to infinite questions (Patience with God, 7).” Doubt is not an enemy of faith, certainty is! Being a seeker is not something Jesus discourages, it is overly dogmatic and severe conviction. We must lean into mystery so we can learn into a message and life of perpetual seeking: for that is where the divine is encountered.

3.) Find new ways of sharing the message. The days of over-confident, triumphalist, authoritarian, and entertainment driven religious speech SHOULD be over. Let us not get into all of the abuses that have come about because of these sorts of approaches to the holy. But let’s remember that we are increasing in an age of secularity, and skepticism not to mention cynicism over religious institutions. Our speaking must be more creative as it invites people into an experience rather than merely transacts knowledge.

Be patient friends. Walk humbly and gently with others. And be a seeker for the seekers!