The short man in the sycamore tree

A lonely sinner awaits an encounter with the glorious savior

Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way. When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly. All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner” (Luke 19:1-7).

Zacchaeus the tax collector suffers from a physical challenge that the gospel writer needs to be very candid about: he is short. And we get the impression that he is not just a little short, but that he is perhaps even very short. The text doesn’t make very much sense unless you understand that Zacchaeus is a very short man. The people of the hot, palm-lined desert city of Jericho line the street awaiting Jesus’ arrival. It’s a familiar enough scene. Jesus goes from city to city preaching, healing, loving. The people—often sick, disabled, or just flat-out desperate to receive some kind of spark that enables them to really begin to live—clamor for the opportunity to speak to Jesus or even just lay a hand on his clothing, hoping that a single word or touch would be enough to set them free from the torment of sin, sickness, and even death. The text does not tell us what Zacchaeus was seeking, although it does emphasize that “he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy.” Perhaps that is explanation enough—Zacchaeus was a collaborator, a traitor, a thief, and therefore he was also an outcast among his people.

Roman tax collection relied on a peculiar and obviously corrupt business model that allowed private individuals to purchase the right to collect taxes. These private collectors routinely practiced a form of larceny in which they would overtax ordinary people, give the proper amount to the Roman authorities, and keep the overcharge for themselves. This system made tax collectors, who were probably wealthy to begin with, even wealthier. But it’s easy to imagine the cost to those who benefited from this system. Deception and abuse of power always shatters the social fabric, creates a rift between rulers and their people, and generally disrupts social harmony. We know this from our own experience. We see the news. And there was also a real cost for the tax collectors themselves—men like Zacchaeus became marginalized by the people they cheated, left to rot alone atop the mountain of riches they’d collected off the backs of the working people they scammed. Zacchaeus chose riches over friendship, affluence over love. We can easily surmise that Zacchaeus was lonely.

As Jesus approached the people of Jericho, Zacchaeus was likely looking for friendship, healing, hope, and all of the things that the many sad, lonely people today look for. But as he approaches the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd, he realizes that he’ll never be seen by the passing redeemer. He’s too short. Perhaps Zacchaeus even leaps into the air like a child for a peak over the sea of shoulders and heads blocking his view. It’s quite an image, isn’t it? Certainly there is no chance of asking those in front of him to move aside or to hoist him up on their shoulders—Zacchaeus has burdened the people of Jericho long enough. Zacchaeus, however, does not give up. Already accustomed to shrugging off social conventions and concern about what others might think about his behavior, Zacchaeus does the only thing that he possibly can: he runs towards his savior. Racing behind the crowd towards a point that Jesus was headed, Zacchaeus jumps onto a tree and begins to climb it.

The text does not tell us what exactly Zacchaeus did, if anything, to attract Jesus’ attention. It’s easy to imagine him waving his arms, shouting “Jesus! Jesus!” The man who is already among the most despised members of Jewish society has nothing to lose and everything to gain. I don’t think the short, rich, obnoxious man cared very much at that point about what anyone thought. He was there for Jesus alone and, as it turns out, it was Jesus who had the eyes to really see him. Jesus sees Zacchaeus, calls him by name, and commands, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” Jesus does not wait for Zacchaeus’ invitation. There is no place for formalities when it comes to the desperation of a broken man encountering his savior. With a single look Jesus understands all that there is to know. Without feigning a kind of resigned politesse he simply announces, “I must stay at your house today.”

Zacchaeus does not mind Jesus’ lack of gentility here. The text says he came down at once and welcomed [Jesus] gladly.” I wonder whether we are not a little too much like the crowd rather than Zacchaeus. Notice that it is not the pious souls in the crowd who will welcome Jesus at home that day. It was the pitiful and lonely outcast. It was that man. What was it, other than God’s good and holy will, that brought Jesus and Zacchaeus together that day? There was, first of all, a complete lack of pretension between the sick man and the Nazarene king. Zacchaeus runs to Jesus and climbs trees like it’s the only thing that matters. In the presence of Christ Zacchaeus is moved by wild, searing faith. The tax collector’s faith is totally unconcerned by what other people are doing, thinking, and saying. If he is going to look like a fool, at least he will be a fool for Christ. And Jesus, for his part, is eager to get the heart of the matter without much fussiness about social norms—he is ready to get to the heart of Zacchaeus and doesn’t wait for the sinner to invite him for a meal. He invites himself. We like to pretend that we somehow have control over Jesus Christ and his indomitable love. We welcome Jesus on our own terms, but we bristle when he intrudes, imposes, and refuses to await our own invitation.

This is not how God works. Jesus crashes into our lives, often upending the comfort and self-assured routine that we have created for ourselves. My wife became pregnant with our third child just a few months after our second child was born. We had just moved cities, our hands were full and our pockets were empty, and we were grappling with a newborn baby—yet another baby felt like an impossible challenge. As it happened, the pregnancy was difficult, the delivery was even more difficult, and that baby suffered from collapsed lungs at birth and the associated problems that made his survival seem increasingly less likely—he was even moved to a specialized unit at a regional children’s hospital to give him a greater shot at life. Eventually his lungs healed and he is completely fine today, but that experience was far more difficult than we felt prepared for. Jesus invited himself into our lives in a stark and imposing way—forcing us to encounter and rely on him with more vigor and vitality than before. Every single person in our family emerged from our baby’s crisis with more expansive and capacious hearts. Jesus does things his way, which is the way of love.

In Luke’s text the people watching the interaction between Jesus and Zacchaeus are shocked. “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner,” they spit with disgust. But Zacchaeus is not merely a sinner. That would make him no different than anyone else in the crowd. Zacchaeus was not just a sinner, but a desperate one with a heart wide open to Jesus’ powerful grace. Overcome in that moment he announces that he’ll give away half of his wealth and pay back four-fold those whom he had cheated. Jesus’ uninhibited love almost instantaneously changes Zacchaeus. Justice, because love. The experience of being seen, named, and loved by the magnificent messiah-king is overwhelming. The man whose reckless dishonesty had left him at the margins of society, was now the center of the incarnate Lord’s attention. This is the heart of conversion: we see who we are and who God is--and that it is God’s love in our hearts, homes, lives, and indeed entire world that bridges the gap between those two things.