The most schooled and elegant of the gospel writers, Luke characterizes Zacchaeus with two telling details. The chief tax collector is rich and short. A simple desire motivates Zacchaeus and creates the action in Luke’s story. Zacchaeus wants to see Jesus. He is a seeker.
Zacchaeus is too short to catch a glimpse of Jesus in the crowd, and perhaps too rich with ill-gotten money for the crowd to treat him sympathetically and let him through. Zacchaeus runs ahead of the crowd and climbs the sycamore tree.
The name Zacchaeus means clean. In the eyes of the people Zacchaeus is far from clean. As the chief tax collector for the Romans, his own people reject him, push him to the margins, and judge him outside their circle of law-keeping townspeople.
We readers don’t learn why Zacchaeus wants to see Jesus—perhaps curiosity. Or, perhaps they have met before. Maybe they have an unfinished conversation. Possibly Jesus’ teaching enthralls Zacchaeus, and he wants to see him and hear him in person. The simplicity of the story invites us to supply motives and, in doing so, reveal what might motivate us.
When Jesus enters the scene and notices Zacchaeus in the tree, he immediately invites himself into this outsider’s life. Jesus calls Zacchaeus by name, which suggests a prior meeting. Perhaps like everyone else, Jesus knows the chief tax collector from having to deal with him and pay the taxes he exacts for the Romans.
By climbing the tree, Zacchaeus has opened himself to meeting Jesus. Jesus responds with urgency, “Zacchaeus, hurry down.”
In one extraordinary moment Jesus sees and connects with Zacchaeus. All of us who have looked into the face of unconditional love—faces absent of criticism, judgment, or blame—know in our deepest selves what happens to Zacchaeus in this encounter.
- Who has brought you into a community of acceptance and love?
- Who called you by name to discover who Jesus is?
- What stimulates your desire to know Jesus more fully?
Jesus reverses roles with Zacchaeus, who as the homeowner ought to invite Jesus, the itinerant preacher, to his house. Instead, Jesus invites himself as a guest into Zacchaeus’s life, demonstrating his mission to reach out to all and enter our lives.
In this act Jesus reaches out to befriend an outsider and a sinner. Zacchaeus has made himself a sinner among his own Jewish people by collecting Roman tolls and taxes and collaborating with Rome’s imperial bureaucracy.
Jewish law regards Zacchaeus as ritually unclean and unworthy to come before God in the temple. Because Zacchaeus is culticly unclean, any Jew who eats with him becomes unclean and requires purification before temple worship.
Zacchaeus welcomes Jesus to his house with delight. But the crowd reacts with murmuring. They know that according to Jewish law, Zacchaeus is a sinner. If Jesus associates with a man everyone knows is a sinner and a cheat, then who is Jesus and why are they following him?
Zacchaeus is the CEO that backdates earnings to get bigger stock options, hides losses off the books in nonexistent businesses, or overlooks flaws in the product on the assembly line. Reaching out to a sinner contradicts the crowd’s understanding of upright action. Jesus scandalizes and upsets them, just as the father’s feast for the prodigal son upsets his older brother in Luke 15.11-32.
- How do you see yourself, asan outsider or insider?
- What benefit do youexperience in reaching out topeople others marginalize?
Jesus’ final statement in the gospel makes his mission clear: he comes to seek out and save the lost. Jesus draws the marginalized tax collector into the mystery of God’s unconditional love.
In response Zacchaeus pledges the almsgiving that marks a true Jew, a son of Abraham. He pledges half his possessions to people who are poor. He promises to repay anyone he has defrauded fourfold. Neither the law nor his greed isolate Zacchaeus any longer.
Zacchaeus shares the love he has received, moving toward his neighbors, putting his wealth to work for the common good, acting for the well-being of the whole rather than his own. His actions show respect for the dignity of the poor and their rights to food, shelter, work. For Luke, his actions demonstrate how Christians should use their wealth.
In the gospels that end the Church year Luke invites us to evaluate with Jesus our place in the whole, to invest our gifts and wealth in the common good, and extend hospitality outside our usual circles. At every eucharist Jesus comes to our house. His gift of himself gathers us into a holy communion that we daily live out.
- When have you felt lost? Who found you?
- What groups do you stand with and identify with?
- Whose struggles do our own public servants need to visit and include in work for the common good?
- How has participating in eucharist changed you overtime?