Luke 19:1-10
[Jesus] entered Jericho and was passing through it. A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way.
When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.” So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him.
All who saw it began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.” Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” Then Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.”
Most of us know the story of Zacchaeus well. I can’t hear his name without the requisite ear-worm … that oldy, but goody Sunday school classic … “Zacchaeus was a wee, little man; a wee little man was he. He climbed up in the sycamore tree, for the Lord he wanted to see...” Of course, there’s so much more to Zacchaeus than what any of us learned in Sunday school.
He is a pint-sized prototype for the lost and looking. Zacchaeus is the “Mini-Me” for every man, woman, and child who ever had a longing to know – or to know more – about Jesus. Zacchaeus sets a precedent for what it means to know Jesus, to be known by Jesus, and to live differently because of Jesus.
See, it’s important that we’re told Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector – and a rich one at that – because chief tax collectors were first century opportunists who contracted with Roman officials to collect money for the government. It is not a compliment – but more of a comment about the limited quality of his character – when the gospel says Zacchaeus was a wealthy chief tax collector. Because Zacchaeus, as a “son of Abraham,” was a Jewish man, taking advantage of his Jewish brothers and sisters, for his own benefit, and in cahoots with the government that was their oppressor.
And he was short. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that, as far as you and I are concerned. But you can’t help but wonder if that, too, wasn’t a dig or a jab, just like all the rest; that he had to climb trees like a child might, in order to get a better view above the crowds.)
Anyway, because of all of that, it’s easy for us – so many generations later and so culturally and historically removed from Jesus that day in Jericho – to think we don’t have much, if anything, in common with Zacchaeus. People in our neighborhood, in or our congregation; people in our circle of friends or family don’t talk about how rich we are, do they? None of us works for the oppressor, do we? We can’t possibly be any more selfish or self-interested than the average bear, can we?
The easy ways we distance ourselves from the likes of Zacchaeus remind me of a question raised by an ethicist named Peter Singer who asks – almost rhetorically – “If you saw a child drowning in a shallow pond, would you wade into that shallow pond to rescue the child, even if you were wearing your favorite, new pair of shoes?” Most people – and I would suspect everyone of us here – would answer that question with a quick and easy “yes,” myself included. We would enter a shallow pond to save the life of a drowning child without a second thought, no matter what shoes we were wearing.
But Peter Singer suggests that, in reality, truth-be-told, we answer that question in the opposite way, daily – every time we spend our money or use our resources in ways that don’t meet the needs of the world around us. In other words, even though we can’t see them in the water, there are children drowning in proverbial ponds all over the world as I stand here before you in my own favorite new pair of shoes (I have a matching pair in blue, just for good measure); the money from which could have saved any number of children, in any number of ways – be it a simple meal, a dose of medicine, a vaccination, or even a pair of shoes to cover and protect their own fragile, freezing feet, in the coming winter.
Which is to say, I might have a thing or two in common with Zacchaeus, after all. And maybe you do, too.
I mean, Zacchaeus had a home. He had plenty to eat and to drink and to spend. He likely had a sense of security, by way of his connections with the Romans and all. And I bet he had a couple of nice pairs of sandals, too. But apparently, all of that still didn’t matter as much – it wasn’t as fulfilling, perhaps – as he’d hoped. He was still looking for something that made him climb a tree, just to see this Jesus who was rolling through town.
And if you look around – and maybe, even, in the mirror – you’ll see the same is true today. The house, the cars, the boats. The clothes, the toys, the stuff. The school, the degree, the 401K. Our culture works really hard to convince us that there is no such thing as too much money or too many things or enough of our favorite stuff.
Can you imagine an amount of money that would be too much for you and yours? How much is enough before you would feel comfortable giving 10% of it away, as Scripture suggests? And is that likely to happen anytime soon? We could always make more, have more, save more. And we do – or we try.
We try and we try and we try. We run and we run and we run. We climb and we climb and we climb. Until we end up like Zacchaeus – up a tree and still searching. Up a tree and out of tricks. Up a tree and farther away from God and Jesus and faith and purpose than we ever were when we first started to climb.
So today, we’re called to look down – like Zacchaeus did – and to see the answer standing at our feet. Jesus shows up and says “hurry and come down. I must stay at your house today.” “Get down from there. Stop. Come with me. Let me come with you. I know a better way.”
Jesus doesn’t chase after Zacchaeus or hunt him down or shake him out of that sycamore tree. Jesus doesn’t zap Zacchaeus with a bolt of lightening or shame him in front of the crowds. Jesus doesn’t do any of the things the crowd thought Jesus should do to punish the sinner they all saw in Zacchaeus. And Jesus doesn’t do any of that to us, either.
Instead, Jesus invites himself over. Jesus shows up and offers forgiveness, he shows acceptance, he gives love and grace and hope to the one person no one else thought was worthy or capable of receiving it – maybe not even Zacchaeus, himself.
And then Jesus says, “Today, salvation has come to this house.” And he doesn’t say that because Zacchaeus finally antes up and promises to give half of his paycheck away or because Zacchaeus commits to pay back – times four – all those people he’d ripped off in the past. We know too much about God’s grace to pretend Zacchaeus paid for the salvation Jesus promised him that day.
No. When Jesus says, “Today salvation has come to this house,” it’s all about Zacchaeus’ identity as “a son of Abraham.” Zacchaeus, too, was a descendant of Abraham and a child of God. Jesus reminded Zacchaeus … sinful, greedy, tax-collecting Zacchaeus – in his fresh, fancy, favorite pair of shoes … that even he was part of God’s plan for creation; the plan to use his blessings to be a blessing for the sake of the world. And that was life-giving news to the little, first century Scrooge.
We are talking a lot about money around here these days (and making no bones about it) – mostly because we need it to build what we believe God is calling us to build in order to grow our little part of the kingdom at Cross of Grace. But all of this talk about money isn’t just about bricks, mortar, square footage and bigger kitchens. It’s about remembering our call as children of Abraham, to divest ourselves of the things that keep us – and the Church – from fulfilling God’s plan for the world. And it’s about God’s call for us as Partners in Mission in this place; a call to share grace and good news and our resources with all people in ways that are unique in this community.
So, as we pray about and make our commitments to this capital campaign – and I hope each of us will pray about and make a commitment to this capital campaign – let them be made with the same amount of surprise, gratitude, generosity, and joy we hear from Zacchaeus this morning. And let’s do it, not because we have to but because we get to and because we are able. And let’s let the same transformation that came to Zacchaeus come to each of us, as a result.
And when that happens – when we let our lives be changed by God’s grace and by our own generosity – I believe we’ll know something new about salvation, “today,” on this side of eternity. And we’ll get a glimpse of God’s heaven right where we live.
Amen
