The news service Reuters carried a story sometime back about a man in Poland who was up a tree literally. He was trying to avoid paying a cab driver. The man jumped from the cab with driver in hot pursuit. He must have been amazingly athletic. After climbing a tall tree, he jumped from branch to branch and hurled bananas from a shopping bag at a crowd which had gathered at the scene.
More than a dozen firefighters were called in. They spread out an airbag under the tree as a police psychologist was sent up in a ladder‑bucket to negotiate with the man.
After a two‑hour stand‑off, he agreed to come down. However his attempt to evade paying the cab fare is likely to cost him far more than the fare itself. The fire brigade was planning to send him a $4,300 bill for the rescue operation.
It’s not often that you see a grown man up in a tree. It’s kind of a ridiculous position to be in. The most famous example of such is found in our lesson for today from Luke’s Gospel. It is, of course, the story of Zacchaeus.
The story is set in Jericho. Jesus is passing through the city when he spots Zacchaeus peering at him from the branches of a sycamore-fig tree. What makes this scene particularly fascinating is that Zacchaeus is the town’s chief tax collector.
This is the only time in scripture the title “chief” is used with the title “tax collector.” Its meaning is not known exactly. It probably refers to the head of the local tax office. If so, Zacchaeus was probably responsible to the Roman government for the management of the local tax-collectors and their monies. This means that Zacchaeus was without doubt a very wealthy man. Jericho was an important customs station and agricultural center. The position of chief tax collector would have provided exceptional opportunities for the accumulation of wealth.
Zacchaeus’ wealth is important for two reasons. First of all, Zacchaeus had all the pleasures and comforts of life which money could buy. As entertainer Sophie Tucker once said, “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor; rich is better.”
Nevertheless, Zacchaeus’ wealth did not satisfy his deepest needs. Despite his wealth and the pleasures and comfort he enjoyed, he was apparently empty and lonely within. Why else would he have climbed a tree to see an itinerant teacher and preacher named Jesus?
Luke tells us that Zacchaeus was a short man. That’s generally a disadvantage in our world. Studies show that even to this day, society rewards men according to their physical height. That’s absurd, of course, and there have been many great men who have been diminutive in stature, but regardless, it can sometimes be a disadvantage. It was certainly a disadvantage for Zacchaeus in his attempt to see Jesus over the crowd. When there was no other way for him to see the Master, this man of position and wealth humbled himself and climbed a tree. He was determined to see the Lord, and nothing was going to stop him.
More than likely, Zacchaeus was experiencing the beginning of faith stirring within his heart. So he wanted to know more about this man who was causing such a stir in his society. He had perhaps heard reports about Jesus being the Messiah. Maybe he heard about Jesus calling Matthew, another tax collector, to be one of his disciples. Zacchaeus may have begun to believe these reports and to hope that they were true. His efforts to see Jesus and his resulting response to Jesus are evidence that there was some strong impulse driving him toward spiritual growth.
So, as Jesus is proceeding through the city he looks up and spots Zacchaeus in this tree. We shouldn’t be surprised that Jesus noticed Zacchaeus. Jesus sees every person, no matter where he or she may be . . . but there is one person in particular whom Jesus sees. He sees the person who is seeking him. Jesus knows our need and reaches out to meet that need.
Zacchaeus was desperate to see Jesus, so he struggled against the odds and found a place where his view would be unimpeded. The place he chose meant humiliating himself in front of his neighbors, but he was willing to do whatever it took to get a look at the Savior. And, because Zacchaeus sought so diligently to see Jesus, Jesus saw him.
Even more wonderfully, Jesus knew and called him by name. “Zacchaeus,” Jesus called to him, “come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” This was bound to strike Zacchaeus quite dramatically. When anyone, especially a stranger, calls us by name, our ears perk up and our senses become more alert. Jesus knows every person’s name. He wants to address every one of us like he addressed Zacchaeus, but we must do as Zacchaeus did: seek to find a place where we can see Jesus; then Jesus will see us and call us by name.
“Zacchaeus,” Jesus called to him, “come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” Jesus asked to be received with haste. He was set for Jerusalem and must not delay too long. There was no time to waste. Jesus wanted to spend some time with Zacchaeus; but Zacchaeus had to act then and there. Jesus had only a couple of hours before he had to move on to fulfill his purpose. The moment of opportunity was then and there, that day. The next day the grand opportunity would be gone.
Luke tells us that Zacchaeus came down at once and welcomed Jesus gladly. It is a beautiful picture of a person seeking faith and that search being rewarded.
But Jesus and Zacchaeus are not the only two characters in our story. Also present were the other residents of Jericho and they were unhappy. Luke tells us that “all the people saw this and began to mutter, ‘He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.’”
It’s interesting that the stories of Jesus’ wondrous acts of grace are almost always accompanied by a chorus of the self-righteous decrying those very acts. That brilliant thinker C. S. Lewis once dealt with the tendency of people to be self-righteousness. In one of his books, he wrote that religious people are most scandalized by sins of the flesh. There are sins involving the body, such as adultery, assault, drunkenness, murder. “Jesus [however] was most scandalized by sins of the spirit. The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins,” said Lewis. “All the worst pleasures are purely spiritual: the pleasure of putting other people in the wrong, of bossing and patronizing . . . the pleasures of power, of hatred . . . That is why,” according to Lewis, “a cold, self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute.” (1) That states it pretty strongly, but it seems to accurately represent the attitude of Jesus toward people who are self-righteousness and judgmental.
This is not to say that Zacchaeus was without blame. As we noted Zacchaeus was a tax collector the chief tax collector. As you know, tax collectors were bitterly hated by the Jewish people. Tax collectors served the Roman conquerors. Most tax collectors were Jews, but in the people’s eyes they had denied their Jewish heritage and betrayed their country. They were thus ostracized, completely cut off from Jewish society and excommunicated from Jewish religion and privileges.
In addition, the tax collectors were usually cheats, dishonest and unjust men. The Roman government compensated tax collectors by allowing them to collect more than the percentage required for taxes. Tax collectors greedily abused their right, adding whatever percent they felt could be extorted. They took bribes from the wealthy who wished to avoid taxes. They fleeced the average citizen. They even swindled the government when they could. This is how most tax collectors became extremely wealthy.
It was an affront to the law abiding Jews of Jericho that Jesus would be visiting in the home of such a man. Eating supper with someone in biblical times meant you were willing to call that person your friend. So when Jesus said that he wanted to stay with Zacchaeus, and later ate with him, the religious people couldn’t believe it. Doesn’t Jesus know what this man did for a living?
If these self-righteous critics could only have known what was about to happen to Zacchaeus. When Jesus entered his home, Zacchaeus repented of his sins and changed his whole life. He said to Jesus, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”
Imagine that four times what he had taken. Restitution became a way of life for Zacchaeus after that. Think of the people he had cheated. Imagine how long it would take to track them down. This is an amazing act of contrition and conversion.
Some of you may remember the story of Mickey Cohen, a Los Angeles gangster in the late 1940s who supposedly became a Christian through Billy Graham’s ministry. There was just one problem. After his so-called conversion Mickey Cohen didn’t change his behavior or his mob connections. J. Edwin Orr, a revivalist and historian, was with Billy Graham when Cohen made his alleged conversion. When confronted about his lack of apparent repentance, Cohn responded, “You didn’t tell me I would have to give up my work!” He meant his rackets. “You didn’t tell me that I would have to give up my friends!” He meant his gangster associates.
Says Edwin Orr, “[Cohen] had heard that so‑and‑so was a Christian cowboy, so‑and‑so was a Christian actress, so‑and‑so was a Christian senator, and he really thought he could be a Christian gangster . . . .” (2)
To his credit Zacchaeus knew better than that and he was willing to do better than that. “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”
Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”
What a beautiful statement of hope for those who are broken of heart and of spirit. “The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” It makes no difference if your home is a mansion or a rescue mission if your skin is black, brown, yellow or white. It doesn’t even matter if you are a saint or a sinner, if your heart is empty, and you will let him, Jesus wants to come in and make his home there.
Years ago, a broken, unkempt homeless man found his way into one of our country’s greatest churches Marble Collegiate Church, Fifth Avenue at Twenty-ninth Street, New York City. This great church would later be made famous by the ministry of Dr. Norman Vincent Peale.
A Dr. Burrell was the pastor of Marble Collegiate Church at the time of our story. It was he who welcomed this homeless man, named Billy, into this great church.
A life of alcoholism had befuddled Billy, but one thing was clear in his hazy mind. He believed that Dr. Burrell could help him. He had known Dr. Burrell a third of a century before, in better days. Now the two men came together under far different circumstances the pastor of this great church and a broken man from the streets.
Dr. Burrell knew immediately, of course, that Billy needed help. He vowed to do what he could as he heard the story of Billy’s wrecked life. The next Sunday Billy sat in a far-away seat in the great sanctuary of this church. On later Sundays he came early to get a seat nearer to the pulpit. For six months, Billy sat with upraised face, listening to Dr. Burrell’s every word. At the end of that time, Billy came into Burrell’s study and said: “Dr. Burrell, I want to take communion and join your church.” And within a few weeks that once broken man took part in the communion service and stood before the congregation to be admitted to membership in that famous and rich old church.
But immediately afterward without warning Billy disappeared. Every pastor has seen this happen. People join the church and then kind of disappear until Christmas or Easter. But this time the story was a little different. Billy disappeared . . . never to be seen in that great church again.
Two years later Dr. Burrell received a telephone call. The call came from the Hadley Rescue Hall in the Bowery. “Dr. Burrell,” said John Callahan, the head of that mission, “can you come down here this evening and conduct a funeral? The man who is dead said he knew you very well.”
When Dr. Burrell entered the mission that evening its seats were filled. Before the platform stood a casket and as Dr. Burrell looked at the face, he knew at once that it was Billy. He turned to John Callahan and asked, “What’s he been up to, John? How did you find him? How did he come down here to the mission?”
“He came down here with his face shining,” answered Callahan. “We didn’t find him. He found us. Billy isn’t one of those we picked off the streets. The night after you took him into your church he came here, and he’s been here ever since. He patrolled the waterfront to find down-and-out men. And he found them. They’ll tell us about it themselves, this evening.”
The greater part of Billy’s funeral service consisted of the tributes of people whose paths had crossed his. He seemed to have left a blessing wherever he moved. The landlady in the waterfront boarding-house where Billy had lived stood up with her beaming face covered with tears. “He taught God to me and to every person in the house. My house became full of Christians after Billy came there.” That old boarding-house on the waterfront! It had become one of the happiest places in the big city. Billy had brought God to it, and out of it nightly went Billy, the landlady and the boarders to hunt for broken men and women and show them how they might become whole again. One after another, people arose in the audience and, with happy but tear-stained faces, they told what Billy, the longshoreman, had done for them. Billy had earned his daily bread beside them. And all around him, as he worked, there had been a circle of song and happiness and prayer; he had held up the cross of Jesus to all he met. (3)
Such is the kind of complete change that happened in Zacchaeus’ life. Paul Scherer, in describing this story, says that this meeting with Jesus “redeemed Zacchaeus’ past, it transformed his present, and it re-directed his future.”
We don’t know what happened to Zacchaeus. There is a legend, and it is only a legend, that Zacchaeus later became bishop at Caesarea. Whatever became of him, we know his life was transformed by this experience with the Master, just as your life and mine can be transformed if we open ourselves completely and let Christ do his life-changing work in us. Jesus came to seek and to save the lost. If you find yourself feeling lost this day, whatever that may mean to you, won’t you open yourself to his love?
1. C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
2. Edwin Orr, “Playing the Good News Off‑Key,” Christianity Today, January 1, 1982, 24‑25. Cited in Robert J. Morgan, Preacher’s Sourcebook Creative Sermon Illustrations (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2007), pp. 662-663.
3. William G: Shepherd, Great Preachers As Seen By a Journalist (Fleming H. Revell, 1924).