Text: Luke 19:1-10

“Zacchaeus was a wee little man and a wee little man was he…” so sings the old Sunday School song as it rattles around in the recesses of memory. The tale of the tax collector perched up high in the sycamore tree is among the most familiar and beloved in the New Testament. As children we were charmed by its seemingly simple reversal of fortune and its emphasis on someone small as we.

There are interpretive possibilities to make this text more complicated, but for today let’s take it at face value, from a traditional perspective. Jericho was an important city, a kind of gateway to Jerusalem. It was famous for its location on trade routes and for the goods it produced. We know Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem and that for him, the road went right through Jericho. We also know why Jesus was going to Jerusalem and the fate that awaited him there. This tale is one of the last passages in Luke’s gospel before the Passion narrative begins.

The text says Jesus is passing though Jericho. There is no initial indication that he intended to stop there. We do know that wherever he went on this journey, people followed, crowds gathered and the religious authorities were all too eager to engage him in dispute. Andrew Marr speculates that Jesus is tired, tired of pressing crowds and especially tired of explaining himself to unhearing and hostile audiences. In fact he wonders if Jesus doesn’t actually engage Zacchaeus as way of avoiding one more frustrating encounter with those who will not see and hear (Andrew Marr, “The Town of Jericho and Zacchaeus,” quoted in Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary, Proper 26, by Paul Nuechterlein & Friends.)

Zacchaeus gets a stronger characterization than many of those who inhabit Luke’s stories. The writer gives us his name, his status and his stature. It is enough to draw a portrait of this fascinating figure. First we see that he is a tax collector. Last week we met another unnamed tax collector and we observed how this group would have been disdained, even hated by everyone. Traitors, collaborators with the enemy, cheaters, thieves, they were the lowest of the low. Even other outcasts like prostitutes and lepers and the demon-possessed would have held themselves superior to tax collectors. They would have joined lustily with the jeering crowd if such a one showed his face at any public gathering outside his toll booth.

But Zacchaeus is a special case. He was a chief tax collector in an important city. He supervised the common toll takers and customs collectors. They would have been indebted to him for their positions and would have been expected to pay him off with a share of what they skimmed off the taxes and tolls they collected from the general population. By whatever means available, Zacchaeus had worked his way to the top of the pile. He was a chief tax collector and, to restate the obvious, he was rich.

His wealth, however, had no affect on his stature. He was still short. He was born short and would die short. I wonder if part of what drove him was the ridicule he received for being a little guy. Was he a victim of the first century equivalent of Randy Newman’s “Short People”? As someone small and minimalized, even marginalized, was tax collecting a profession that was available to him when others weren’t? In angry defiance, had he sold himself out to the Romans as means of getting even with all those good citizens who had made fun of him all his life? We also know that Zacchaeus was a Jew because his very Jewish name, ironically, came from the Hebrew word for “pure” or "righteous,” hardly an accurate description of whom Zacchaeus had become.

Now, we don’t know for certain why Zacchaeus ventured out on this day. Presumably he was as curious as the next person about this itinerant rabbi who was coming to town, who had been preaching and teaching, healing and casting out demons, feeding multitudes and challenging the religious establishment. Or maybe, sitting in his toll booth he had seen or heard the commotion and come out to see what was going on. He loved a parade as much as the next one. But he was short and he was despised, not a combination designed to get him a prime position for viewing. The crowd would have instantly recognized him, so he would surely have been the subject of verbal and physical abuse as he tried to satisfy his curiosity. Perhaps, this is exactly what happened to him before he climbed that sycamore tree.

Anyway, there he was in the fine garb of a wealthy man, perched on the overhanging branch of a tree, hoping to get a glimpse of the passing celebrity. The text does not tell us that his agenda was anymore than celebrity watching. But something very strange happens to him sitting in that tree. Jesus spots him. Whether this was somehow foreordained and Jesus was looking for him, or whether it was a fortuitous moment when Jesus spotted the oddity of a man of obvious wealth clinging to a tree branch above the crowd, he stopped right in front of him, speaking directly to him. Calling him by name, which in itself is a gift from God, he says, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.” The “must” in this sentence does seem to indicate that Jesus might indeed have been looking for the tax collector and already knew how this story would play out.

In any case, it does not take Zacchaeus long to respond. Is there something in the words, in the tone of voice, in the clear gaze fixed on him that touches something deep in the soul of Zacchaeus? When Jesus speaks his name do qualities of purity and righteous come pouring forth in a way that both convict Zacchaeus and help him see whom he was born to be? Perhaps it is simply the act of being seen and named and spoken to as a person of worth that transforms Zacchaeus’s attitude. The text doesn’t say, but he moves swiftly from being a celebrity watcher on the sideline to being fully engaged with the one who has called him by name.

As Jesus goes off once more to dine with a tax collector, the stunned crowd begins to mumble and grumble. “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.” Now I know we would never be guilty of looking down our noses at another and labeling him or her a sinner, but this crowd wasn’t as enlightened as we. They were appalled and disappointed and perhaps a little jealous and they let it be known, though there’s no evidence that Zacchaeus, in his ecstasy, was even aware of their displeasure. He had turned his eyes upon Jesus and, looking full in that wonderful face, the things of earth had grown strangely dim in the light of God’s glory and grace.

It is this experience of grace that is transforming for Zacchaeus. His extravagant repentance is not the condition for receiving God’s grace. It is because he has already received it in the gracious gestures of Jesus toward him that he responds with a total transformation of his own life. Jesus makes no demands on him before he pronounces that salvation has come to the house of Zacchaeus. He simply announces for all what is obvious, that one who was lost is found, that one who was wounded has been healed, that one who was outcast has been embraced and found wholeness.

It is interesting that this tale of generosity is situated in close proximity to two others that treat questions of wealth and how to handle it. The first is the poignant account of the rich young ruler, who, when challenged by Jesus to live up to his full potentiality by selling all he has, giving it to the poor and following, turns away sorrowing, unable to part with his wealth. We, of course, know no one so attached to wealth, status, power, or privilege as to interfere with their discipleship. The other is Luke’s version of the parable of the talents that comes immediately on the heels of Zacchaeus’s story. You remember that two of the three servants entrusted with a portion of the master’s wealth, invest it wisely, making the most of the opportunity and generating a good return, thereby winning the master’s favor. The third buries that with which he has been entrusted, fearing the wrath of the harsh master. He hides his gift and loses the opportunity to live into the master’s favor. In each case, the challenge is to recognize that, ultimately, all that any of us has is gift from God. Wealth will not buy us security. It is of little use to us in the realm of God. Living fully and richly is to recognize our need to share our gifts, to spend them wisely and carefully in service of the Giver, to make sure that our sisters and brothers everywhere are as well cared for as we ourselves.

For Zacchaeus, the most obvious manifestation of his new life in Jesus is that he has a new relationship to wealth. His repentance, that is, his extravagant change of heart, his radical change of life is seen most clearly in his willingness to let go of all that he has accumulated, thinking it might buy him happiness. Half to the poor and restitution far beyond what is legally required of him will certainly not leave him rich. Or will it?

For what does it really mean to be rich? There is joy in the heart of the extravagantly repentant tax collector that is the sure showing that salvation has come to him and his house. How can one ever be richer than that? Michael Pasquerello says that ‘Few stories in the Gospels show us a more thorough and life-changing conversion that goes “all the way down.” Few demonstrate a spirit as generous as this wealthy tax collector when he is surprised by joy. He scrambles down from his vantage point to join Jesus, joyfully invites him into his home, happily confesses his less-than-stellar business practices, pledges a full half of his earnings to the poor and promises to repay—fourfold—damages to those he has cheated” (Blogging toward Sunday, Michael Pasquarello III, Theolog: The Blog of The Christian Century, 2007.)
I am reminded of another such transformation in the heart and life of one, Ebenezer Scrooge. Wounded like Zacchaeus, the old miser has taken refuge in the accumulation of wealth at the expense of his family, his neighbors, the weak, the vulnerable, and his own shriveled soul. When he is confronted with the spirits of Christmas, with the very incarnation of love, he, too, is transformed. “He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them, for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter at the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed; and that was quite enough for him” (Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, p. 69.)

Oh, this was supposed to be the “stewardship sermon.” Well, the church truly does need our financial support, but perhaps more than that, the church needs transformation in the attitude each of us holds toward wealth, privilege, status, and power, transformation that will allow us to give with the genuine joy of those who have known grace, who have found the true spirit of Christmas, who have experienced salvation, health, wholeness in his or her own life. Heather Entrekin reminds us that “We strive to grow in generosity because we understand this quality to be at the heart of God and fully expressed in the life of Jesus.” I think this is what Zacchaeus discovered in his encounter with Christ. She goes on, “Part of the purpose of the church is to form ourselves more fully in the way of Christ and so we practice generosity. Generosity is a matter of spirit that is in dangerously short supply in our day and in our culture, but when it occurs, in a person or in a church, it is as if God breaks through. Greed, apathy and opposition cannot stand against the grace of it” (Heather Entrekin, The Prairie Breeze, October 2007.) As we move toward the season of giving thanks and giving gifts, may we also be moved to give generously toward the work of the church, the outreach and ministry of the body of Christ, in the heart felt, joyful spirit of Zacchaeus, the righteous one. Amen.