The story of Zacchaeus is one of the real gems in Luke's Gospel. None of the other three Gospels includes it. Many of us learned about Zacchaeus through a Sunday School song: "Zacchaeus was a very little man, and a very little man was he. He climbed into a sycamore tree for he wanted the Lord to see... ." Like most stories in the New Testament, the Zacchaeus story is lean and spare, condensing a world of meaning into a few sentences.
What do we know about Zacchaeus from the text itself? We know that he was a chief tax collector, which means he was at the top of a complex system that extracted tariffs on all the commerce passing through the streets of Jericho. The Roman Empire imposed the taxes, and people who struggled to earn a living resented it deeply. Jewish tax collectors were hated for collaborating with the oppressive Romans and for making life more difficult for their neighbors.
Luke tells us Zacchaeus was rich. Tax collecting was a franchise operation, and tax collectors worked on a profit basis, remitting the required amount to the government and keeping for themselves whatever the traffic would bear. Chief tax collectors did very well. In contrast with most of their neighbors, they lived a privileged life. In Luke's account of Jesus' ministry, the rich do not come across as being admirable. Their wealth often blinded them to the values Jesus exemplified and invited people to live by.
The text tells us that someone in the story was "short in stature." The interesting thing is that the description in the Greek syntax can refer to either Zacchaeus or Jesus. Some translations choose Jesus as the short one, while others, including the New Revised Standard Version, imply Zacchaeus without being specific. To me the sense of the story argues for Zacchaeus rather than Jesus as the height-challenged one. Actually the physical size of neither man is relevant to the heart of the story.
What can we infer from the story about Zacchaeus that the text doesn't tell us? I think Zacchaeus had reached a point in his life where his money was no longer satisfying him, if it ever had. There was an inner hunger, a longing, he could no longer ignore. His social isolation may have had something to do with it, but you and I know it's easy to be lonely even when there are people all around us. Zacchaeus realized there was more to life that what he was experiencing, and he had heard stories about a new, young teacher who was saying and doing amazing things. A few chapters earlier, Luke wrote that people were saying about Jesus, "This man welcomes outcasts and even eats with them." I suspect Zacchaeus had heard those words and being something of an outcast, he decided to investigate.
He heard that this controversial teacher Jesus would be passing through Jericho on his way to Jerusalem. Jericho was Zacchaeus's place of residence, so he knew the route Jesus would be taking. When he went to the road on which Jesus would travel, he found it already lined with a crowd on both sides. He knew he couldn't see over the heads of the other people, so, sacrificing his dignity, he climbed a tree in full view of his neighbors and perched there for a chance to see Jesus. All the scholarly commentators agree that climbing a tree was something a public figure would not have done in those days without risking the scorn of onlookers.
Zacchaeus didn't care, or he cared more about the longings of his soul than about the derision of his neighbors. He scrambled up the tree and waited. When I think about the longings of the soul, I go back many years to an evening when I was asked to be the piano accompanist for a baritone soloist in the home of some friends. The soloist was starring in the road company of a Broadway show, and after he sang, he and I shared some conversation. He was intrigued by my going into the ministry while maintaining a strong interest in music. He said it reminded him of one of his first voice teachers who would often say to him while he was singing at a lesson, "Go inward with it. Go inward with it." He said that at the age of forty he was just beginning to understand what "going inward" meant on a personal level.
Some people discover their interior world well before the age of forty, and some need more time than even forty years. Often it's a crisis of some kind that drives us to "go inward with it," to explore our interior world. But it's part of who we are, and we ignore it at great peril. Many people who struggle with life know a particular phrase: "We were willing to go to any length... ." It comes from the literature of Twelve Step recovery, and it means coming to a point in life where you will do whatever it takes to move from brokenness toward wholeness. I think Zacchaeus was there. He hiked his robes around himself and climbed a tree.
Maybe you know the great Zen aphorism "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear." Zacchaeus was ready, and Jesus appeared. Going through the small city of Jericho, he came to the tree in which Zacchaeus, the chief tax collector, had stationed himself. As Luke tells it, Jesus looked up and, calling the man by name, said, "Zacchaeus, come down. I must be a guest in your house today." Note the "I must" part. Jesus didn't say, "I want to be a guest in your house." He said, "I must be your guest." God's being with us is built into the structure of the universe; it's God's nature to come to us in our longing.
In the text very little is said about what took place between Jesus and Zacchaeus during the home visit. We really don't know what the height-challenged man may have said or what Jesus said to him. As I have noted, the Gospel stories are lean and spare. But we notice the crowd re-appearing in the story. Remember it was "because of the crowd" that Zacchaeus had to climb a tree in the first place. For us it is often fear about what other people will think that makes us reluctant to talk about our personal faith journeys, and rather than confronting the crowd, we become part of it and hinder other people's search for meaning.
At Presbytery Day a week ago, Peggy Thompson, a woman with long history in Presbyterian mission work, spoke about attending an international gathering of people from different faiths this past summer. She said that during the gathering, people were asked to form small groups and all participants were asked to state the essence of their faith tradition and say why their faith was important in their life. Mrs. Thompson said most of the Christians at the gathering were unable to do that in a way that was understandable to non-Christians. It's so easy to be part of the crowd and keep our good news to ourselves.
The crowd was a passive hindrance to Zacchaeus at first. They blocked his view. But when they re-appear in the story they behave in a familiar way. They murmur. They grumble, as many people do. "This Jesus has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner." As though he could have been the guest of any other kind of person! Do you know anyone who doesn't "fall short" in one way or another? That's what the word "sin" means—to miss the mark, to fall short. It's part of being human.
A lot of church people still don't get it, do they. They have their lists of sins and sinners, and the people making the lists make sure that what they do isn't on the lists. It's usually about what other people do. Christianity isn't primarily about lists of things to believe or lists of things to do or not do—although there is a place in discipleship for belief and practice. For me Christianity at its core is about what took place in Zacchaeus's house two thousand years ago and still takes place in people's lives today.
I believe Zacchaeus looked at Jesus, the man he had longed to meet, and saw reflected in Jesus' eyes the man Zacchaeus yearned to be, the man God had created him to be—a person of infinite worth, a person worthy not because of what he owned or what he achieved or what he looked like, but a person of worth because he was a human being made in the image of God, as all human beings are. Zacchaeus came face to face with God's unconditional, affirming, accepting love. And the terrible weight of shame, guilt, loneliness and fear began to fall away. He heard the truth so well stated in the title of Paul Tillich's classic sermon, "You Are Accepted." Accepted by the source of all being, accepted by the only One we need ultimately answer to, accepted by the One whose very essence is love: God, Higher Power, Allah, Yahweh—whatever works for you.
When what happened to Zacchaeus happens to anyone, change sets in. Transformation takes place. We make amends; we make restitution not because of laws like the one we heard in the reading from Leviticus. We change out of thankfulness for God's amazing grace. We move into generosity. "Half of my possessions I will give to the poor," Zacchaeus said out of an over-flowing heart.
The end of the Zacchaeus story is powerful. It can reduce me to tears—not tears of sadness so much as tears of gratitude. That tenth verse is central to my understanding of the Christian gospel, our good news about God's love. "The Son of man [as Jesus called himself] came to seek and to save the lost." At the deepest levels of my soul I know what it is like to be lost, and I know what it is like to love a family member who at times was very lost. But I also know beyond any shadow of a doubt that God's love will have the last word in your life, in my life, and in the lives of those we love. Nothing in life or in death can separate us, and those we love, from the unconditional, inclusive, affirming, accepting love of God.
Thanks be to God.