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Luke 19:1-10
Zacchaeus the Tax Collector
Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. 2 A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. 3 He wanted to see who Jesus was, but being a short man he could not, because of the crowd. 4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.
5 When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” 6 So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.
7 All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a ‘sinner.’”
8 But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! [Here and now] I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”
9 Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”
One of my earliest memories of the church comes from a preschool Sunday school class in the little town of Stoneboro, Pennsylvania. The pastor’s wife would lead us in singing at the end of each week’s class, and we would frequently sing about Zacchaeus — a “wee, little man” who climbed up in a Sycamore tree.
But there’s a lot more to know about this story than we were ready to learn as preschoolers in that little Pennsylvania town.
I suppose the logical place to start is with the fact that this story is found in the Gospel of Luke, and that it includes some of the common themes of that gospel. For instance, there’s the theme that’s introduced at the very beginning of the gospel of Luke, when the Virgin Mary responds to the news that she will bear the son of God by uttering the prophecy we call “the Magnificat.” And the heart of that prophecy is the idea that in Jesus, God would exalt the humble and humble the exalted.
That’s a theme that shows up again and again in the gospel of Luke. One of the most famous parables in that gospel tells the story of a Pharisee and a tax collector who go to the temple to pray. In that story, the Pharisee says a prayer, but the main theme of the prayer is how righteous the pharisee believes he is. The tax collector, on the other hand, confesses his sinfulness and asks for mercy. At the end of that passage, Jesus explicitly says that those who exalt themselves will be humbled, while those who humble themselves will be exalted.
Today’s reading tells the story the story of Zacchaeus, a rich and powerful tax collector, who humbles himself by climbing a tree to catch a glimpse of Jesus. The scholars say that climbing the tree would have called attention to his small stature, and so would have made him look undignified. But because Zacchaeus is willing to humble himself, he winds up being praised – “exalted” – by Jesus. So you can see why I say that this story reflects that common theme of the gospel of Luke.
And in another of the stories from Luke, a virtuous and law-abiding rich man went away sad because Jesus told him to give away all his great wealth. But in our passage for today, the main character is Zacchaeus, who is a tax collector and so would be assumed to be corrupt and dishonest. But in the course of the story, Zacchaeus voluntarily gives away a big part of his wealth, apparently without Jesus even asking him to. Luke often tells stories in pairs, and seems to want us to see them together as a way of shedding light on spiritual themes. In this case, I can’t help thinking that Luke wants us to notice this contrast in the two stories – one about a person who claims to be virtuous but who doesn’t want to give to the poor, and the other about a corrupt tax collector who just hands over half his wealth without being asked.
The story of Zacchaeus reflects other themes of the gospel of Luke, too. In that gospel, Jesus is criticized for being “a friend to sinners.” And here in this passage, he shows his willingness to be exactly that. It’s kind of interesting that in this case, it isn’t just the scribes and Pharisees who condemn Jesus for being a friend of sinners. In this case it’s “all the people” who complain. It seems that the people at large objected to tax collectors more than to blasphemy.
I’ve always been a little intrigued by one detail of this story of Zacchaeus. Jesus tells the tax collector that he must stay at his house that day. Why do you think he put it that way? To me the fact that Jesus said he must stay with Zacchaeus reinforces the idea that Jesus understood reaching out to “the lost and least of these” to be the very heart of his ministry in this world.
At the end of the story, Jesus declares Zacchaeus “a son of Abraham” – in other words, a true heir of the covenant – apparently because of his willingness to confess and repent of his sins, and to give sacrificially to make things right. Jesus specifically repeats here that it’s for sinners – “the lost” – that he came into the world. And in this story, one of those ‘lost’ people is transformed by his encounter with Jesus.
Each time this story comes up in the lectionary, it reminds me that one of the problems of the modern church is that so many of its members were brought to Sunday School as little kids, but then never engaged in serious Bible Study after that. If you just heard this story on an elementary Sunday School level, you’d just know a song and some hand motions about a “wee little man.” But you’d miss the way this story gathers up a lot of strands from other parts of the Gospel of Luke. And you’d miss out on the grown-up understanding of this important incident from the life and teachings of Jesus.
Let’s pray. Lord, help us to overcome the obstacles that can stand in the way of a life of devoted discipleship, and inspire our hearts with a hunger to go ever-deeper in the great lessons you teach us in the words and life of Jesus. Amen.
Every Blessing,
Henry
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