A Letter to Zacchaeus
A Sermon about Sticking Out Like a Sore Thumb
Dear Zacchaeus,
You and I have opposite problems.
At 6’2 and well over 200 pounds, I’ve always been a Big Guy. When I go to the doctor’s office, the doctor gestures to the examining table and says, “Hop on up here, Big Guy.” When I go to my favorite coffee shop, the person at the cash register asks, “What can I do for you, Big Guy?”
When I’m on an airplane or sitting in a crowded restaurant, I stoop my shoulders and try my best to shrink and take up as little space as possible, trying to escape notice, hoping that I don’t accidentally intimidate someone or block their view or stand in their way. Because the last thing this world needs is one more Big Guy drawing too much attention to himself, taking up too much room and lacking basic self-awareness.
Our mutual friend Luke remembers you, on the other hand, for being “small in maturity” (ἡλικίᾳ μικρὸς, Luke 19:3). But scholars today are divided about whether he meant that you weren’t very tall, or that you were just very young to have acquired such wealth and power.[1] Maybe you were both.
But although your height (or your youth) might have been a joke to some folks in Jericho, the real problem your community had with you was your job. Everyone knew that as a toll collector, you were one of the Roman emperor’s lackeys, a bully with the power to shake down your fellow Judeans and send their money to help fund Caesar’s conquests. There were even whispers and rumors about how you used your favored position with the Romans to line your own pockets with money you stole from neighbors and friends. They called you a liar and a thief behind your back, and sometimes to your face. They said you should be ashamed to be seen in public.
That day, as Jesus passed through Jericho on his way to Jerusalem, the people around you definitely knew that you wanted to “see who Jesus was”. So deep was their suspicion of you, so sharp was their hate that they squeezed themselves tightly together, shoulder to shoulder, and refused to let you pass. Looking for a way through the crowd, you were greeted by everyone’s backsides.
And that’s when you did something really remarkable.
What an odd thing, for a man of wealth and influence to be seen hiking up his tunic and scrambling up a tree to catch sight of a wandering preacher and teacher. Surely anyone in the crowd that day who might have had even an ounce of remaining respect for you covered their eyes and shook their heads in shame.
I envy your enthusiasm, Zacchaeus. Those of us who follow Jesus today often suppress our eagerness to serve him because we are worried that we might look foolish, or maybe we are afraid that we might be breaking some obscure or arcane rule we didn’t know existed. Afraid that our holy curiosity will be rewarded with a disciplinary hand-slap.
Like I said before, you and I have opposite problems. I’m not small, I’m not a tax collector, and I’ve never been much of a tree climber. But I do know what it’s like to be made to feel small by the people around you. To be made to feel like you don’t belong. And I know what it’s like to feel alienated from your family and even your own community.
I know what it’s like to be caught in the middle of family members who don’t speak to each other anymore because the contempt they kept secret from one another suddenly burst out into the open.
And I know what it’s like to feel the tug on your heart of an indescribable curiosity that draws you to Jesus, only for his followers to brush you away and make you an outsider.
Like you, I know the deep joy of hospitality and community, the longing to share that joy with others, only to be met with the grumbles of people who think they’re protecting God from my bad influence. But, my dear Zacchaeus, you and I both know the truth: God doesn’t need protecting, and it’s people like us that Jesus came to seek out.
I don’t know if you were actually guilty of those things of which you were accused (let’s face it, the truth is hard to discern these days), but what I do know is that your encounter with Jesus transformed you on a deeply personal level. Sort of like how Jacob walked with a limp for the rest of his life after that night of wrestling with the angel of the Lord. But unlike Jacob, whose hip was thrown out of joint, your experience made you whole. The warmth you shared with a charismatic stranger that day over some bread and wine meant that there was no going back to the way things were. To experience real love and acceptance often does that to a person.
The truth is that this Jesus who you came to see, he was actually seeking you the whole time. Your fractured, fragmented relationships began the hard work of healing and reconciliation the minute that stranger walked through your door: “For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.” By restoring you to your community, by insisting that you also were a child of Abraham, he was making your community whole again, too.
Jesus said that it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for someone who is rich to enter the Kingdom. But he also said that what is impossible for humans becomes a sign of God’s mighty deeds of salvation working among us right here and now. The upshot of all this, Zacchaeus, is that you too belong among God’s people, against all appearances. You too were counted as lost by those who passed you on the street, sat next to you in your synagogue. Jesus insists that you are just the sort of person that God is looking for. And no offense intended, of course, but if God can make a righteous child of Abraham out of you, I’m holding onto hope that there’s a place for me, too.
Your brother in Christ,
Joshua
[1] Joel B. Green, The Gospel of Luke, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 669–70.