© 2022 Evan D. Garner
Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video of the service can be seen here with the sermon beginning around 18:00.
Zacchaeus might have been short, but I think it was his shortcomings that sent him climbing up that sycamore tree. Luke tells us that “he was trying to see who Jesus was, but, on account of the crowd, he could not, because he was short in stature.” It was the crowd that stood between him and Jesus. If he had been taller, he could have seen over them, but no one was willing to let him stand up front. Think about the last time you were at a parade. Doesn’t the crowd usually make space up front for children or other people who either need to sit down just can’t see from the back? Don’t we know intuitively how to line up with the taller people in back and the shorter people up front so that everyone can get a peek?
No one was willing to make room for Zacchaeus, and he knew better than to ask. Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector—a title Luke may have made up to convey either that he was some sort of district leader among revenue officers or simply that he was exceptional at his job—particularly skilled at squeezing money out of his fellow Jews in order to fill the coffers of the Roman Empire. Regardless, Zacchaeus’s job had made him filthy rich, and that was a problem—a problem for Zacchaeus but also an interpretive problem for us as well.
Think about it. What sort of people did Jesus like to spend time with? And who were the ones Jesus was always after to change their ways in order to find their place in the kingdom of God? We know that Jesus loved surrounding himself with tax collectors and other notorious sinners—those people whom polite society refused to welcome—but he didn’t seem to care for rich people whose wealth created a chasm between themselves and the poor. So what was Zacchaeus supposed to do? He was a complicated example of someone whom society had rejected but whose wealth had made him powerful. Would he be welcomed by Jesus or brushed aside?
Zacchaeus had heard about Jesus, and he wanted to see who he was, but he couldn’t get too close, or else he might be further humiliated. He had heard that this rabbi believed that even tax collectors could be accepted at God’s table, but he was no ordinary tax collector, and he wasn’t sure whether that radical welcome would include the likes of him. So he climbed up into the boughs of a sycamore tree and hid among the leaves, hoping to see Jesus but also hoping to escape notice.
But Jesus noticed him. “Zacchaeus,” Jesus said to the little man hiding up in the tree. Does it surprise us that Jesus knew the man’s name? How shocking that must have been to everyone who heard it! “Hurry and come down,” Jesus continued, “for I must stay at your house today.” Notice the imperative behind Jesus’ words. “I must stay at your house today.” I must. Something compels me to be your guest today. The presence of God’s kingdom and the perfection of God’s promises require that Jesus come and lodge with Zacchaeus, the chief tax collector. His riches and way of life should have represented an obstacle to God’s reign becoming manifest in his life, yet this was the man whom Jesus sought out.
No sooner had Zacchaeus scrambled out of the tree to take Jesus into his home than the entire crowd began to grumble that Jesus had gone to be the guest of a sinner like that. Usually, when Jesus dined with tax collectors and sinners, it was the religious authorities who grumbled—the goodie-goodies who didn’t understand why a religious leader like Jesus would spend time with the riff-raff of their day. But this time, Luke tells us that “all who saw it”—all who beheld this radical gesture of reverse hospitality—began to complain about what it represented. None of them was comfortable with the thought of a faithful rabbi—even one known for keeping company with societal outcasts—entering the home of a traitor as notorious as this chief tax collector. This was a step too far, even for Jesus. Even the reign of God, which Jesus had come to make manifest among the lost sheep of Israel, had its limits.
But then something remarkable took place. We don’t know whether Zacchaeus heard the grumbling, though surely he knew what the crowd thought. Standing there, he said to Jesus, “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.” That represented a remarkable transformation—that the man whose work and whose wealth had cut him off from God’s people was now offering to give back so much of what he had—but the text leaves some important ambiguity about whose transformation we’re witnessing in this instant.
Although many English translations, like the one we use in church, render Zacchaeus’ words in the future tense—“I will give” and “I will pay back”—the biblical text actually uses verbs in the present tense—“Half of my possessions, Lord, I give to the poor; and, if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I pay back four times as much.” It could be that Zacchaeus was using the present tense to convey a future resolve, which would imply that this encounter with Jesus had changed his life so radically that from now on he would give all that money away. But it could just as easily be that Zacchaeus was describing the way he already lived, revealing a quiet generosity that no one in the crowd had ever known. That ambiguity has fueled debates among scholars and preachers for generations, but I don’t think it really matters because I don’t think Zacchaeus is the one whose conversion is the focus of this story.
“Today, salvation has come to this house,” Jesus declared, “because he, too, is a child of Abraham.” Could it be that those words become true not because Zacchaeus has undergone a moment of transformation but because all of us who look on now see this child of God in the light of God’s grace? Can it be that Jesus’ insistence that he dine in the home of the chief tax collector changes our understanding of who belongs in God’s reign? Maybe we are the ones whose conversion this story is about. Maybe we’re the ones who are supposed to be changed by this encounter.
We believe in a God whose love for the world is bigger than anything we can imagine. We believe that God’s grace is big enough for tax collectors and sinners. We believe that God’s welcome includes the poor, the widow, and the orphan. But do we believe that God’s love is big enough for us as well? Very few of us fit neatly into one of the biblical categories of people to whom God reaches out in love. Is there room for complicated sinners like us in the kingdom of God? Can we believe that God’s love is meant for us as well? Or are we so worried that we won’t be accepted that we scamper up into the branches of a sycamore tree in the hopes that we might get a look at Jesus from a safe-enough distance that he won’t bother to tell us what we are afraid he might otherwise say—that we don’t belong?
Zacchaeus went looking for Jesus, but Jesus went looking for Zacchaeus as well. “I must stay at your house today,” Jesus said, showing us that God’s kingdom cannot be complete until even the least likely among us finds their place at God’s table. None of us belongs at that table because we are good enough, holy enough, or generous enough. We belong because God’s goodness towards us is always enough. There can be no limit to God’s welcome because there can be no limit to God’s love. May we hear in Jesus’ words to Zacchaeus the same words that God speaks to each one of us—I must stay at your house today. May we see that God’s reign cannot be complete until all of us are there.
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