We are told that being tall gives you an advantage in our culture, particularly if you are a male. For example, taller men earn more money on average than their shorter counterparts. If you’re six-feet-two or taller, you’re likely to start a new job at a salary 12.4 percent higher than someone under six feet. It doesn’t make sense and it’s not fair, but that is the way it is. Each extra inch of height is worth an extra $600 a year on average.
In 1987 they did a survey of 1,200 MBAs. Average salary of those surveyed: $43,000. Six-footers typically earned $4,200 more than men who were five-foot-five in comparable jobs. There is one caveat: if the six-footer was also overweight, the figures cancelled out. This is, of course, another area of discrimination. A man who was at least 20 percent overweight earned $4,000 less than a thin man in a similar job. (1)
Here is an example of the advantages of height. Eighteen Presidents of the United States have been six feet tall or higher. This is extraordinary given that average heights were significantly lower in the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries. Height also seems to correspond with success in office. Abraham Lincoln was the tallest President. He was a little over 6’ 4”. Thomas Jefferson was nearly 6’ 3” when he became President in 1801 which was really quite remarkable when the average height for men was only 5’4”. (2)
Again, this discrepancy doesn’t really make any sense. What possible advantage could being taller give you, unless you play in the NBA? A taller person has an advantage changing light bulbs, perhaps. But that’s why ladders were invented.
Even in the NBA, height doesn’t have to be the absolute measure of a person’s potential. Remember Spud Webb? Spud is only 5 feet, 5 inches tall. And yet he once won the NBA’s slam dunk contest against behemoths much, much taller.
Spud was a great high school star, but because of his height no college would take a chance on him, so he went to a small community college and made a name for himself. Then North Carolina State took a chance on him and he led them to the Sweet Sixteen. Then Spud graduated and again no one drafted him. Finally the Atlanta Hawks gave him a shot. He played for them for four years, and under his leadership the Hawks made the playoffs each time. He got traded the team wanted to make room for a new full‑sized college star and the team went years before making the playoffs again.
Spud said, “I used to pray that the Lord would make me taller when I was in junior high and high school, but every time I went to measure myself, or stand in front of a mirror, I’d always be the same size. And then one day I got the message, so I said to the Lord, ‘If you won’t make me bigger on the outside, will you make me bigger on the inside?’ And the Lord liked that prayer and that’s what helped me become successful.” (3) What a great attitude. The final measure of a man, or a woman, is not how big they are on the outside, but how big they are on the inside.
Which, of course, brings us to our lesson for the day about Zacchaeus. Our boys and girls sing about him,
Zacchaeus was a wee little man, and a wee little man was he,
He climbed up in a sycamore tree, for the Lord he wanted to see.
And as the Savior passed that way, He looked up in that tree,
And He said “Zacchaeus, you come down! For I’m going to your house today!”
Zacchaeus is one of the most famous short men in all of history. Why? Because one day Jesus was passing through Jericho, Zacchaeus’ home town. Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector in Jericho and was quite wealthy. In spite of his wealth he wanted to see Jesus as he passed through town. Being a short man, however, he could not because of the crowd. So he ran ahead of the crowd and climbed a sycamore tree so he could get a better view of this man he had heard so much about.
I understand there is an ancient sycamore tree still standing in Jericho surrounded by a fence and reputed to be the very tree from which Jesus called Zacchaeus. Tour buses stop there for people to be photographed beneath it.
When Jesus reached the sycamore tree, he looked up and said, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.”
Zacchaeus came down at once and welcomed Jesus into his home gladly.
The people in the crowd saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a ‘sinner.’”
They were right. Zacchaeus was a sinner of the worst kind. As we noted, he was the chief tax collector for the Roman government in the prospering city of Jericho. It was a coveted position. Says one commentator, “He probably had a staff of collectors, and he was, very possibly, the most hated man in Jericho. He worked for the occupying forces, and he was regarded as a traitor to his own people. He and his cohorts could stop a person in Jericho and assess duties on nearly everything in his or her possession. A cart, for instance, could be taxed for each wheel, for the animal that pulled it, and for the merchandise that it carried. [Zacchaeus] would send in a portion of his collections, and anything over that amount he was free to keep. The system was ripe for abuse, and this passage tersely states: ‘he was wealthy’ in v. 2, as if that were some kind of indictment . . . and it was. He had accumulated his wealth in service to the invaders and at the expense of his countrymen, and he was regarded as human filth. Zacchaeus, whose name meant ‘the pure one’ and ‘the righteous,’ had turned his name into a sneer on the lips of his fellow Jews. He was a standing joke. The mention of his name evoked not a grin but disgust.” (4)
This was the kind of man Jesus went home with. It’s almost as if Jesus liked stirring up the crowd. He was dining with the most hated man in town a man who was vile and corrupt and regarded as an enemy agent.
Can you see why Jesus was so controversial? Understand this: grace is always controversial when it is lived out. We sing with great gusto, “Amazing grace how sweet the sound . . . ,” but we’re ready to join the lynch party if grace is extended to the people of whom we don’t approve. The crowd muttered when Jesus went home with Zacchaeus.
Meanwhile, at the meal, something extraordinary was happening. Zacchaeus climbed to his feet to make an astounding announcement. 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.” Amazing!
This encounter with Jesus had given this small man a big heart. Zacchaeus went far beyond what the Law demanded. The Old Testament law is clear. If you are repaying stolen property, you pay what you stole plus twenty percent. This was considered adequate restitution by the Law. Only in violent and destructive acts of robbery was a four-fold restitution necessary. (Ex. 22:1) And then for Zacchaeus to give one-half of everything he had to the poor was icing on the cake. This was a dramatic act of repentance.
Jesus said to Zacchaeus, “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 what was lost.”
This is what grace looks like. There is no clearer picture of grace at work than the story of Zacchaeus. I like the way The Rev. Angela Askew puts it: “What Jesus showed to a chief tax collector in Jericho is that God accepts and transforms the unacceptable, loves the un-loveable, forgives the un-forgivable. In Jesus’ death, God will voluntarily take on all the squalor and damage of sin, so that we can all respond to his love freely, and abundantly . . . Zacchaeus was saved by grace and invited to faith and so are we all.” (5)
“God accepts and transforms the unacceptable, loves the un-loveable, forgives the un-forgivable.” That’s grace.
In a scene from the movie Ironweed, the characters played by Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep stumble across an old Eskimo woman lying in the snow, probably drunk. Inebriated themselves, the two debate what they should do about her.
“Is she drunk?” asks Nicholson’s character.
“Just a bum. Been one all her life,” says Streep.
“And before that?” Nicholson asks.
“She was a whore in Alaska,” says Streep.
“She hasn’t been a whore all her life,” says Nicholson. “Before that?”
“I dunno,” Streep replies. “Just a little kid, I guess.”
“Well a little kid’s something. It’s not a bum and it’s not a whore. It’s something. Let’s take her in.”
Comments writer Philip Yancy: “The two vagrants were seeing the Eskimo woman through the lens of grace. Where society saw only a bum and a whore, grace saw ‘a little kid,’ a person made in the image of God no matter how defaced that image had become. That’s what grace looks like.” (6)
Lloyd C. Douglas in his classic work, “The Mirror,” imagines an exchange that took place between Jesus and Zacchaeus after Zacchaeus’ conversion.
“Zacchaeus,” said the carpenter gently, “What did you see that made you desire this peace?”
“Good master,” replies Zacchaeus, “I saw mirrored in your eyes the face of the Zacchaeus I was meant to be.” (7) That, my friends, is grace.
Here’s something else we need to see. All of us can be recipients of God’s grace.
Now there are some of you that I am not even going to try to convince you that you need God’s grace. You’ve convinced yourself that you’re good enough as you are. There are others of you who have so surrounded yourself with toys house and cars and boats and the latest technological devices that you’re sure you don’t need anything spiritual. There’s no use wasting my breath on you.
However, there are others of you who are hurting. You know you do need God’s grace. You have come to realize that toys cannot fill the deep hole in your life. Like Zacchaeus, you know you haven’t lived up to the best of which you are able. You feel unworthy and inadequate. You need to know that God really does love you and accepts you just as you are and that God’s grace is sufficient to fill your life to overflowing. The story of Zacchaeus is good news for you.
It’s like a story that Pastor Ray Stedman once told about a service at a rescue mission in a city in the Midwest many years ago. It was a service for children, in which children put on the program. One little boy, about six years old, gave a recitation in the program. The boy had a birth defect which caused his back to be misshapen so that he was humpbacked. As he walked across the stage to give his recitation, he was shy and nervous. Not only was he self-conscious because of his physical condition, but it was the first time he had ever attempted a public performance. Doing the recitation was a great struggle for him.
There were two older boys in the back of the room who were chronic troublemakers. Just as the little boy was walking across the stage to begin his recitation, the two older boys in back called out, “Hey, kid! Where are you going with that pack on your back?”
The little boy stopped in his tracks and started to cry.
A man got up from the audience and walked up onto the stage. He knelt beside the little boy and put his arm around him. Then he said to the audience, “It must take a very cruel person to say such a thing. This boy has a condition that is not his fault. And he loves Jesus and he wanted to come out here and recite something for you all to show you what Jesus means to him. And I want you to know that I’m proud of this boy, because he is my own son. I love him just the way he is, and he belongs to me.”
And the man hugged his son and led him off the platform. (8)
That is what God says to us. It makes no difference who we are or what we’ve done. It makes no difference what we look like tall, short, slender or heavyset. All that matters is the Christ gave himself in our behalf.
This is to say that, because of Jesus, there is hope for us all. Clement of Alexandria once wrote that Zacchaeus left being a tax collector and later became bishop of Caesarea. That’s an ancient legend. We’re not certain it is true. But it very easily could be. We know that something dramatic happened in Zacchaeus’ life. This man who had lived only for himself and what he could acquire reached out in restitution to those he had cheated and he shared half of everything he had left with the poor. If it could happen to a man as sleezy as Zacchaeus, it could happen to you and me.
Nancy Leigh DeMoss once put it like this: “When you first look at all the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, it’s hard to believe there’s actually a picture in there. But there’s an important key to working a puzzle. You need to keep referring to the picture on the box. That’s what helps you know what the finished product is supposed to look like.
“Do you ever look at the jumbled pieces of your life, wondering how they could ever fit together? God has given us a picture of what we’ll look like when He’s finished with us. The book of Hebrews tells us that Jesus is ‘the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature.’
“Jesus is our picture of holiness. As we give all the pieces of our lives to God, He’ll help us grow into the image of His Son. Are you growing in holiness? There’s one way to know. Study what God’s Word says about Jesus, and then ask whether you’re becoming more like Him.” (9)
A small man named Zacchaeus was given a big heart. What is God seeking to give you?
1. Bernard Asbell with Karen Wynn, What They Know About You (New York: Random House, 1991), p. 47.
2. Gregory Baer, Life: The Odds (New York: Gotham Books, 2003)
3. Rev. James Brassard, http://www.ccpc.bowiemd.org/sermons/nov072004.doc.
4. The Rev. William G. Wilson, http://day1.org/813-changed_from_a_taker_to_a_giver.
5. “Sermons That Work,” year C. Cited by The Rev. Canon Joan Butler Ford, http://www.stpaulcathedral.org/pages/archives/2004/sermon10‑31‑04ford.htm.
6. What’s So Amazing About Grace. Cited by Priest Robert Thomas, http://ruminations.ratsco.com/.
7. John Jewell, http://www.lectionarysermons.com/nov98-1.html.
8. http://www.raystedman.org/leviticus/leviticus.html.
9. From the Internet. Source unknown.