We owe Luke a great debt. For in his Gospel alone is told a dramatic story that capsulizes for us what the mission of Jesus was all about, and in turn what the mission of the church is all about. The event happened while Jesus was passing through Jericho, the city of palms. Writes Luke: "And there was a man named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector, and he was rich." In one sentence we are told the story of a human life.

Here's the background. Nothing in first century Judea was quite so hated and despised as was the Roman tax. It not only reminded the Jews that they were a subjugated people, it also represented a theological affront. To the Jew there was only one King, and that was God, not Caesar. Paying tribute to an earthly non-Jewish monarch was something that the Hebrews had opposed throughout their long history.

But there was more. The dirty work of collecting the tax was done not by the Romans, but by collaborating Jews. Much of the money that they collected off the backs of their fellow countrymen stuck to their own fingers. We are told that Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector. That is the only time in the New Testament that that term is used. It meant that he was over an entire district. Zacchaeus may have been short in stature, but he had wealth and wealth means power, so, in a manner of speaking, people looked up to him. Zacchaeus was the little man with the big reputation. He was not just very well to do. According to Luke, he was a rich man.

Of course, one might take issue with Luke in that descriptive term rich. For in many ways Zacchaeus was as poor as any man in Jericho. For all of his money he was a lonely man, he was an empty man. In the world of the flesh he had everything; in the world of the spirit he had nothing. The people, of course, looked upon him with complete contempt. He was a dog. He was cut off from communion with the community of God. There is symbolism in his title chief tax collector. That is another way of saying that he was not only a sinner, but a chief among sinners. Therefore, he was prevented from seeing Jesus that day, not only by the press of the crowd, but also due to social and religious ostracism.

This is not only a story of Zacchaeus, but it is also the story of what it means to be a lost person. What do we means when we say that a person is lost? Well, we can perhaps oversimplify and say that their soul is lost, but it can be much more tragically real than that?

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