Zacchaeus Was a Wee Little Man. . .

Luke 19:1-9
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 being a short man he could not, because of 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.' "
But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, "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.

When was the last time you climbed a tree without promptly falling out of it? When was the last time you sprinted out ahead of a crowd to capture a glimpse of a celebrity? I can’t imagine (in any time or culture) a chief tax collector with an undersized body being especially skilled at either of these feats. Some kind of fire must have been burning in Zacchaeus to propel him out of his easy, rich life to perform these playground antics. We’re not told how that fire was set, but I think we know.

Enter the Son of Man: thronged with people yet taking notice of Zacchaeus, calling him by name and with pleasant authority inviting himself over for dinner - all to the indignity of some. Jesus was not deterred by the fact that tax collectors cheated by demanding payments above the Roman rate. Tax collectors were commonly thought of as traitors and selling-out their own people. In spite of the standing facts, Jesus wanted to engage with Zacchaeus. The Kingdom was more important than Occupied Israel or Rome.

Zacchaeus acted on an impulse to seek out Christ, responded to Christ’s requests and repented of wrongs with the intent to right them. Imagine all that culminating in hearing from the Lord’s own voice announcing that salvation had come to you. What a wonderful, encouraging little story, with Jesus defining his mission right there: “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.”

A first-century Christian writer tells us (in writings outside the New Testament) that Zacchaeus became a companion of Peter and together with the Apostles, preached in Rome. Even after all the grief of subjugation and temptation Zacchaeus had experienced under the Romans, he would deliver them not curses, but the good news, giving his very life for it. Little Zacchaeus apparently accepted a martyr’s death in Rome under the reign of Nero.

He may be more famous as a children’s Bible story character, but we can still see much of ourselves in Zacchaeus, weak beings with a little fire inside, getting encouragement from Christ to move forward.

Wayne Lindell