Zacchaeus: An Unlikely Prospect

October 25, 1987

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You know, God is so funny in some ways. And I don’t mean funny, ‘hah-hah’, I mean funny, odd, surprising, startling, unpredictable...You can never put God in a box, or anticipate God. Afterward, you can look back and say, “Of course, I see it now”, but ahead of time---God will fool you on every turn.

Think of it---If you had been planning the cosmic drama of human redemption—be honest now---would you have picked Bethlehem of Judea as the place for the Redeemer of the world to be born? Wouldn’t you have picked Stuttgart, or Nairobi, or even Rome, Georgia before that little Judean town?

Would you have had the King born in a manger, a backyard stable, for crying out loud? Wouldn’t you have selected something nicer, or at least cleaner than that?

If you had been in charge of the production, would you have chosen a Cross, the ancient world’s equivalent of an electric chair as the instrument of redemption?

Indeed, out of all the possibilities open to you, would you have chosen the Jewish people to be the nation in which the dream would be born and nurtured?

God’s sense of humor comes through most clearly in the type of people God sometimes lays hands on to be His helpers.... Really now, would you have picked Elijah...a firebrand, a hyper-kinetic, non-deodorized, loud talking radical? Would you have picked Jeremiah...almost pathetically shy, an introspective, bordering-on-paranoid old bachelor?

Would you have picked Simon Peter...a rough, look impulsive, uneducated fisherman? Have you ever known a fisherman who maintained a close working relationship with the truth? Would you have picked David, an adulterer, Rahab, a prostitute, Moses, a murderer? GOD DID. It really is sort of funny.

And here it is again in this strange, bizarre little story only Luke records. If anybody in the world could be called an unlikely prospect to be one of God’s special people, surely it’s Zacchaeus. Why, even the name puts him at the end of the alphabet.... ZACCHAEUS. When you say it slowly, it comes out with a kind of slimy feel.

Do you know what kind of guy he was, what he looked like? This is one of the few vignettes in the Gospels to give us at least a little bit of visual detail about physical characteristics. We really don’t know what Paul, or Bartholomew, or Salome looked like.... Matthew Brady[1] wasn’t there....no Polaroid cameras, no records were left to give us a picture.

But of Zacchaeus we have just a tantalizing hint. The children sing a song about him. Did you learn it in Sunday School, too? He was a “wee little man, a wee little man was he.” He was a runt, that’s what he was, a sawed-off, little runt. Somebody wrote a song a few years back about short people...not a very complimentary song. You’ve heard it, I suspect. Seems they ain’t got NO BODY.[2]

Well, that was Zacchaeus...short, diminutive, puny...physically very unprepossessing. In fact, he was so short he had to climb up in a tree to see the parade go by. The story identifies it as a sycamore tree.

It would be interesting to speculate on the psychology of shortness. Maybe it’s not pertinent here, but maybe it is. We know that physical characteristics often influence personality. I grew up with an old boy we called “Lard Belly”. Sometimes the nickname was altered slightly. Boy, could he get mad in a hurry when you called him by either one of his nicknames.

Whether it’s fair or not, the way we look affects the way others treat us--- the muscle man, the homely girl, the red-headed person. They say if you’re tall, you have a better chance of being promoted.

We don’t know enough about Zacchaeus to write a profile, of course, but it does make you wonder. PEOPLE WHO FEEL INADEQUATE ARE OFTEN DRIVEN TO COMPENSATE BY SEEKING SOME KIND OF ARTIFICIAL SUPPORT. It happens all the time...which may explain something else we know about Zacchaeus. He was a crook. He was dishonest. By his own admission, he had defrauded people.

Luke tells us he was a publican, which is not to be confused with Republican. I was slow to pick up on that distinction. My father was a Democrat. Shucks, everybody was a Democrat where I grew up. I think I was in college before I ever even saw a Republican.... I knew they existed, just as I knew bank robbers, and cattle rustlers existed, but in my mind it was all sort of the same thing. I didn’t know what one looked like.

I thought Zacchaeus was a Republican. All through Sunday School I thought he was wicked because of his politics.

A publican was a tax collector, who worked for the Romans, getting money from his own people to pay the foreign invader. It was a dirty job, profitable, but dirty. He was a leg man for the Roman IRS.

The Romans didn’t care how much money the tax gatherer gathered, as long as he turned over his quota. He had a license to gouge. He could collect all he could and keep the balance. That’s what publicans did.

Do you remember what John Wesley said about money? John Wesley was a contemporary of Adam Smith. Adam Smith advocated laissez-faire capitalism and wrote The Wealth of Nations to expound it. Wesley’s economic theory wasn’t that complex. Essentially it boiled down to three principles: Make all you can. Save all you can. Give all you can. Oversimplified, maybe, but all in all pretty sound. It certainly worked for him. One year, Mr. Wesley made 32 pounds. He lived on 28 pounds and gave the rest away. The next year he made 67 pounds. He still lived on 28 pounds and gave the rest away.

Well, the economic principle of the publicans also boiled down to three principles---Collect all you can. Keep all you can. Turn over as little as you can get away with.

NO WONDER PEOPLE HATED THEM. To Romans, they were mercenaries; to their own people, they were Quislings. To Romans, they were paid dogs; to their own people, they were traitors. They prospered, but at the price of public contempt.

Zacchaeus was a publican. When he oozed down the street, people scrammed out of the way.

And now here he is up in a tree in downtown Jericho, to see this Man he’s heard so much about. I suspect, to be honest, he climbed the tree not only for the view, but also for the protection. A lot of people would have loved nothing better than to lay violent hands on a runty, crooked shyster.

BUT FINALLY, JESUS PASSES BY, AND DOES AN ASTOUNDING THING. He stops, of all places, beneath that sycamore tree. He looks up into the branches, right into that unappetizing face.... fixes His gaze straight into the eyes of the that conniving schlemiel, and begins a conversation. CAN YOU PICTURE IT? What do you think crowd reaction was?

Don’t you know they must have tensed with anticipation? Don’t you know they must have crowded in closer? “Now he’s gonna get it.” They must have been thinking that. "Now he’s gonna get it. This is worth coming out to see.... Let him have it, Jesus, pour it to him, tell him what he is.... Give him hell.”

God is so funny in some ways. And the Son is a chip off the old block. What He says is so starling, so unexpected, so unconventional, they couldn’t believe their ears. “Zacchaeus, there you are. Come on down here. Let’s go over to your house and have a cup of coffee.”

Can you believe that? I wish the account had told us HOW Zacchaeus dismounted. I wish Luke had put that part in. He probably fell out of the tree he was so flabbergasted.

The crowd didn’t like it. The natives were restless. Doesn’t he know who this is, they murmured. Don’t you love that word “murmured”? It’s a great Biblical word. It pops up all the time in the Bible. It’s the word used to describe the Hebrews traveling through the Wilderness back in Exodus. They were always murmuring against conditions, against Moses, against God. You can see them clustered in little groups.... (murmur, murmur...)

Here, too, the murmuring registers a dissatisfaction with Christ’s apparent approval of palpable evil---it’s the old story of trying to make God’s acceptance match some standard of accomplishment. We still do it. How can God like him when I don’t like him....  He doesn’t fit the pattern; therefore, he must be bad.

He’s my enemy; why shouldn’t he be God’s enemy, too? It doesn’t work that way with Gospel accounting. It didn’t work that way here. Jesus threw out the book. He could do that because He wrote the book. The Author always has that privilege.

Magnanimously, uninhibitedly, buoyantly, Jesus went home with a crook, and a good time, just sitting around the table, was had by all. Isn’t that refreshing? Ahh, but notice now. Notice where it goes next. He jubilantly associated with a crook, but that doesn’t mean He was content to let Him remain a crook.

It doesn’t mean He just blessed the status quo. It doesn’t mean He just winked blandly at the iniquity of Zacchaeus and swept it under the rug. There’s more to the story.

Probably over the second cup of coffee, while they were sitting there, after chatting about the Stock Market and the Magic’s chances in the playoffs, I can imagine Jesus saying, “Zacchaeus, I like you, but you know”--- the Record just gives us a hint--- “Zacchaeus, listen, friend...you’re not living the best kind of life. You’re not the person you ought to be, the person you could be. You know it, don’t you? I have a new way to live. I dare you, I challenge you. TRY IT. Just try it and see what happens.”

COULD JESUS ACCURATELY SAY THAT TO YOU?

Zacchaeus gulped then, I think...I bet. Nobody had ever talked to him that way before, not with that kind of intensity, that kind of transparent sincerity.... Maybe he gulped twice. And I suspect he said to himself, “Why, this Man believes in me. He really thinks I might amount to something. I know I’m not happy now... I know I don’t want to keep on this way I’m living... Maybe I don’t have to stay in this hellish rut anymore.”

And right then he made a decision. I don’t think it was necessarily a dramatic thing. Maybe it was inside of him, but I doubt if anybody watching him could have seen lights flashing or heard sirens sailing.

BUT HE DECIDED. “All right, Lord”, he stammered. “I’ll...I’ll do it. I’ll try it. The half of my goods I’ll give to the poor....50%. And if I’ve defrauded anybody” --- apparently he had...if it’s not technically a confession, it’s pretty close---"if I’ve defrauded anybody, I’ll pay it back...double...no, triple...no, FOURFOLD.”

“Great,” said Jesus, slapping him on the back. “That’s terrific. Three cheers for the Irish! You’re on your way, Zacchaeus. Today salvation has come to this house.”

Isn’t it a great story? Doesn’t it do something to you? It’s a lot more than just a little children’s story. Its very simplicity covers volumes of profound insight.... It’s almost, in fact, a miniature of the whole redemptive panorama--- the unflagging lunacy of God...the unending seemliness of humankind… grace vs. greed, acceptance vs. acquisitiveness, love in contrast to unsatisfying selfishness.

Get them together, get them in juxtaposition, and something happens, something changes, something is totally transformed. One writer has called it “the Gospel in sycamore”. For Dante it was the Divine Comedy, the oldest and best joke in the world. God is so funny in some ways.

Now quick application. I’m not going to try to draw morals from the story. Preachers are always messing up perfectly magnificent Bible stories by trying to extract lessons and precepts from them when the story just by itself can do it better on its own. The Bible is its own best interpreter.

These are not morals to be imposed, just observations, comments, from an admiring devotee and beneficiary of a brilliantly told old story.

1. Comment Number ONE has to do with the sense of amazement I feel realizing that nobody is beyond the scope of God’s love and affection. Gosh! If Zacchaeus is in the ball park, ANYBODY CAN BE. You can’t be bad enough to be outside the reach of God’s caring.

I guess we’re all Zacchaeuses in a sense, aren’t we? I know I am....I’m kind of a runt...and in more than just a physical sense. I’m short in living up to some expectations. I’m short in accomplishing some things I’d like to do I’m short in being the person I know God wants me to be.... HOW ABOUT YOU?

What’s more, I know I’m a crook. I’ve never stolen money, but I know only too well that I’ve defrauded people at times, through callousness, or indifference, or poor planning, or laziness, or insensitivity to their needs or problems. I’ll have to confess that I’ve been a traitor, to my own best intentions, to my noblest impulses, to what I know is right.

I’m not proud of any of that. But any difference between me and Zacchaeus is not one of essence, but purely of degree. HOW ABOUT YOU? And yet, God loves me anyway. And GOD loves you anyway. That’s the Gospel. That’s the starting point for everything else.

No matter who you are, no matter what you’ve done, no matter how contemptible and disreputable your past record, you are not beyond the pale of God’s genuine affection. Think of it! THE SLEAZY ZACCHAEUS IN US ALL IS POTENTIAL FOR GLORIOUS TRANSFORMATION.

II. Comment Number TWO is related, I suppose. It has to do with grateful wonder over the sequence of the transformation we find in this story. I’m sure you noticed it. It’s ACCEPTANCE first, and then REHABILITATION.

That’s Gospel, too. The glory of it is that it undercuts the basic problem. You can say it in different language, of course. A more classical way of saying it, the way Luther and Calvin and Wesley used to say it is, GRACE IS PRIOR TO WORKS. Same thing.

Jesus didn’t say to Zacchaeus, Hey, clean up your act, brother. Do that first, and then we’ll talk. He could have said that. That’s what the crowd wanted Him to say. That’s what they expected Him to say, but Jesus reversed it.

Instead Jesus said, “Let me come to your house...” Let me know you. Let me be with you. THEN we’ll go on to what else needs to be done. HOW BEAUTIFUL THAT IS. And how respectful. The essence of Christianity is NOT “Do this, become this, work on this in preparation for something else.”

The essence of Christianity is more nearly, “Let me in, Permit Me to enter your life, Receive Me and allow Me to do with you and in you what I’d like to do, so you can really come alive.”

Zacchaeus could never have changed on his own. He was too tied to the past, too chained to an old pattern. BUT WHEN HE SAW SOMETHING THAT BROKE THAT PATTERN, WHEN he saw that the Stranger really believed in him, really liked him, really thought he could be O.K., then he began to believe in himself, and a whole legion of possibilities sprouted.

Lloyd C. Douglas, the author of The Robe, once wrote a little short story about Zacchaeus entitled “The Mirror”. At the conclusion of the story, after the transformation had begun to occur, there is this exchange: “Zacchaeus”, said the Carpenter gently, “What did you see that made you desire this new peace in your life?”

“Oh, good Master, I saw mirrored in your eyes the Zacchaeus I was meant to be. ”EXACTLY! Not effort...victory, struggle...triumph. TURN IT AROUND. It’s in the acceptance of HIS acceptance, unmerited and undeserved, that we are set free, to do what we ought to have done, but couldn’t, in the first place.

You see, both theologically and experientially, GRACE PRECEDES WORKS, ACCEPTANCE PRECEDES REHABILITATION, GRATITUDE PRECEDES GENEROSITY... and the foundation of every bit of it is His gift.

III. Now one more comment and we’re done. Almost through. Comment Number THREE has to do with the exciting realization that in the business of leading the Christian life, the important thing is to start.

When Jesus said to Zacchaeus, “Today salvation has come to this house,” He wasn’t implying that Zacchaeus had reached the end of the road. He wasn’t saying that what he did was all there was to Christianity. He wasn’t saying that he had arrived. OF COURSE HE HADN’T. Zacchaeus still had a long way to go.

BUT HE HAD STARTED. He had begun. He had made that critical first step. That’s what made Jesus exult.

If I read the Gospels correctly; and Paul; and John; and the rest of the  New Testament writers; where you are on the road is not nearly as important as which way you’re headed. It’s not your location God is looking at as much as your direction.

I used to worry a good bit about how God was going to deal with people of other cultures, other background, other religions than Christianity.... What about those people? Do we say they’re cut off from God’s love and blessing because they’re not Christian? I’ve heard some Christians say that.

Well, I don’t claim omniscience here. I don’t have a definitive answer. I’m glad that’s God’s decision not mine. I’m glad I’m just in sales, not management.

But for what it’s worth, I’ll tell you where I am not on that question. I’m convinced that we can trust God to handle it in a Christ-like manner, and I have a suspicion that even if the achievement of some of those outside the fold, as we call it, is not always up to our level, even if their understanding doesn’t always reach ours, IT MAY BE THAT THEY HAVE RESPONDED BETTER TO THE LIGHT THEY HAVE SEEN THAN WE HAVE TO THE LIGHT WE HAVE SEEN. It may be that a different measuring stick will be applied.

At least it’s enough to pull you up short. I know I’ve seen some people in Central America who are doing far more with their pitifully limited resources and facilities than I am with all my abundance.

I’m not sure I want to ask over which God rejoices more.

We’re not all alike in ability, we’re not all alike in opportunity, we’re not all alike in light.... BUT WE ARE ALL ALIKE IN THAT WE CAN BEGIN NOW WHERE WE ARE.... We can take the next step. And when we do, things happen.

That’s the story of Zacchaeus. What he was, is disaster. What he became, is unknown. But we see him at the hinge of his history, at the existential crossroad of his destiny, at the critical point where the old is collapsing and the new is just beginning to emerge.

Maybe some of the rest of us are in the same place.

The Christ has collared him, and captivated him, and challenged him. He’s shown him possibilities he’d never seen before.

Try it, Zacchaeus...or whatever your name is....Try it, put it into practice...give it a chance in your life...today...today...today.

--

[1] One of the earliest photographers in American history.

[2] “Short People” by Randy Newman; released 1977