Zacchaeus, He Too is a Son of God Up In A Tree

You are probably familiar with the story of Zacchaeus. You know him to be a wee little man and a wee little man was he. You heard about how he climbed up in a sycamore tree and Jesus passed that way, he looked up in that tree and said, “Zacchaeus, you come down! I’m going to your house today. I’m going to your house to stay.” But did you know he was the district director of the Revenue Service (tax collector) and he was quite well off. He was a rich man, perhaps the richest man in town, and he made his fortune by exploiting others.

Everyone in the town of Jericho knew how Zacchaeus made his fortune. He was a cheating tax collector, and we know how well folks at the IRS are liked. They wouldn’t touch this man with a ten foot pole, and because of the crowd and his short stature, Zach had to shimmy up the sycamore tree so that he could see Jesus. Zacchaeus wanted to see Jesus, and as Jesus is passing that way, shaking hands, kissing babies, and blessing the little children, Zacchaeus shimmies up the tree. We know Zacchaeus wanted to see Jesus, we’re not sure if he wanted Jesus to see him but if you’re up in a tree while everyone else is on the ground, Jesus is going to spot you.

And he does.

Amidst the hugs, kisses, blessings, and healings, Jesus looks up at the little man in the tree and hollers, “Zacchaeus! Come down from that tree! I’m going to have dinner at your house.” They grumble among themselves like good church folk, “He’s going home to dinner with a man who doesn’t even belong to the local Baptist church. That boy is a sinner.” Zacchaeus is so honored and taken back by Jesus, he ignores their mumbling and immediately says, “Look, Jesus, half of what I own, sir, I’m giving to the poor, and if I have…er…cheated anyone…er…anyone that is.  I’ll pay back four times the amount.”

The crowd hears this and I doubt they believe it. They hear Zacchaeus’ repentance and change of heart and think, though they don’t say it out loud, but we know they are thinking it because we are thinking, “He’s just saying what he thinks Jesus wants to hear. I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Jesus, on the other hand is excited to hear Zacchaeus’ declaration and says to the crowd, “Today new life has arrived at this house! Because after all, he, too, is a son of Abraham, and the son of man came to search out and rescue anyone who is lost.”

“He too is a son of Abraham.” Jesus says. He too, just like you and me, is one of the multiple children of Abraham. The cheating, exploitive, filthy rich runt of a man, Zacchaeus is a son of Abraham. And since rescuing the lost was Jesus’ specialty, we have to believe he is right when he tells the crowd, “This man, too, is a child of God.”

Hosea writes, “For I (the Lord) desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” God desires nothing more from us than to return to him, not through our tithes or our perfect church attendance, but simply through our steadfast love and knowledge of him. God desires for us to know him intimately and we must admit that what we know of God barely scraps the tip of the iceberg of who God really is. One is never done getting to know God, even when we are face to face with him, we will still go further up and further in, getting to know him better; for God is too grand to be conveyed in simple literary terms or in sixty-six books. Thus, when Jesus tells us, the crowd, that Zacchaeus, he too, is a child of God, we are taken back.

Surely he must be wrong. Only the good church loving folks are the ones who are children of God. Only those who have entered the waters of baptism and prayed their sinner prayer is a child of God. “No,” God says through Jesus, “no. All the earth is mine and all that dwells therein.” Through Jesus, God reminds us that justice is not something that only belongs to the oppressed outsider but to the depressed insider. He reminds us that he has come not just to set the slave free but the slaveholder as well. He reminds us, he is here to save not just the victim but the perpetrator also. He reminds us that God’s justice is a refiner’s fire that transforms us before we are able to climb down our sycamore tree. It burns away our old self and we awake with new eyes and come to biblical, gospel, realization that the same spirit God breathed into you and I, is the same spirit he breathed into the cheating, exploiting, hateful, spiteful, sorry runt down the road. And the son of man has come to search out and rescue anybody who gets off track.

The story of Zacchaeus rings in our ears because he reminds of all the others throughout the scriptures: “There's Aaron whooping it up with the Golden Calf the moment his brother's back is turned, and there's Jacob conning everybody including his own father. There's Jael driving a tent-peg through the head of an overnight guest, and Rahab, the first of the red-hot mamas. There's Nebuchadnezzar with his taste for roasting the opposition and Paul holding the lynch mob's coats as they go to work on Stephen. There's Saul the paranoid, and David the stud, and those mealy-mouthed friends of Job's who would probably have succeeded in boring him to death if Yahweh hadn't stepped in just in the nick of time. And then there are the ones who betrayed the people who loved them best such as Absalom and poor old Peter, such as Judas even.

Like Zaccheus, they're all of them peculiar as a platypus, to put it quite literally, and yet you can't help feeling that, like Zaccheus, they're all of them somehow treasured too. Why are they treasured? Who knows? But maybe you can say at least this about it-that they're treasured less for who they are and for what the world has made them than for what they have it in them at their best to be because ultimately, of course; it's not the world that made them at all” (Buechner, Frederick. Peculiar Treasures: A Biblical Who’s Who. Pg. 204-205).

While the world may have made Zacchaeus a cheating tax collector, who took advantage of others in order to gain wealth, it is not the world that has made Zacchaeus. It is not the world that breathed life into him, but God, and God’s spirit lives within him. What makes Zacchaeus treasured is not who he is or what he has done or will do; but the fact that he is a child of God. He is equally treasured as you and I are. He is equally treasured as the faithful beloved disciple. He is equally treasured as the great reformer Martin Luther, the great prophet Martin Luther King, Jr., as the great evangelist Billy Graham, and yes, he is even treasured as equally as the great apostle Paul. And this is the moral theological problem for all Christians: If someone like Zacchaeus is a treasured child of God, then are not our enemies equally treasured children of God?

What makes someone a treasured child of God? Is it their baptism, the profession of faith, their faithful tithing, their perfect Sunday school award, their political party, their race, their gender, their culture, their religion, their sexuality, their wealth or the poverty? Is that what makes someone a treasured child of God? Or is what makes someone a treasured child of God the fact they simply are? Is what makes someone treasured is the fact they are a child of God?

I know us, good church folks, want to believe we are something special. After all, Peter says we are a chosen people, a special people, but there is nothing special of the preacher, the deacon, the choir member, the Sunday school teacher, the faithful giver, that is not equally special of the lost sheep in the eyes of God. Our only difference is that we have been found and Jesus is out searching for any who lose their way.

I must admit that this is hard for me to preach. It is hard for me to believe that, just as I am a child of God, so is the vilest person in our world. It is hard to hear Jesus say that Zacchaeus is a son of God, just as I am, because it means the murderer, the terrorist, the addict, the drunk, the abuser, the manipulator, the exploiter, the corrupt, the bomber, the rapist, the offender, they too are a treasured child of God, who have been lost in the world.

Over the past few weeks, we have heard Jesus tell stories of lost sheep, returning sons, persistent widows, dishonest managers, rich men in big homes, poor men at the city gates; we have heard the stories of the ten lepers and how one came back, and we relate to them because we can identify with them. This is hard though, to hear that someone like Zacchaeus is a child of God just like you and I are. It’s hard because we say our prayers and take our vitamins so we should be treasured children of God; yet the one who has swindled us, the one who has harmed us, they too are treasured children of God, and that is hard to hear.

In the fifth grade, we moved out our duplex and into a house at 111 Suzanne St. It was a small three bedroom house in blue collar neighborhood. Across the street lived a kid named Randy. Randy was a couple of years older than me but he been held back a year in school for behavioral issues; and he was the neighborhood bully. He tormented everyone, especially my brother and I. He and his friends used to chase me home from school with sticks and the occasional stones. He once stole my brother’s bike so that he could pee on it. He was also from a rough family who constantly put him down, ignored him, and continually called him a “good for nothing.” Randy was the meanest kid I had ever met.

We lived at the house for a couple of years until we moved into a nicer house in a nicer neighborhood about 10 miles from Suzanne St. A few years passed and when I was in the tenth grade, one day, our church hosted a traveling evangelist and our youth minister decided we would have a contest. All the youth were divided up into groups and sent out to kidnap their friends and bring them to church. The object was to return with a van so full of kids, it was illegal for you to be driving. Somehow my group ended up near my old house and I said to our driver, “Turn here. I know a kid.” We made the left hand turn onto Suzanne St, he parked the car, and I got out and knocked on the door. Randy answered it with a surprised look and I invited him to church. He left his dinner on the TV tray, climbed in and we went to church together.

It was a hard ride to church because Randy lacked any social decorum and he was still as mean as he was when we were younger. I could tell though he was trying to change but, as they say about leopards and such. We sat together as the service began and the evangelist started testifying and the time came for the invitation. “Just as I am” started playing, the evangelist started praying and asking, “If you’d like to come to Jesus tonight, just raise your hand. Yes, I see that hand. Welcome, brother. Yes, I see that hand, welcome, sister.” I opened my eyes to see who was raising their hands and to my surprise, Randy had his hand raised. The evangelist invited people to come down and talk with a deacon, and Randy about ran me over getting to the door.

One of the deacons took us to a side room and Randy started sharing his story. As he shared I had the sudden realization, “Crap. My bully, the person I have hated since fifth grade is a treasured child of God. And now, he’s my brother in Christ. Crap.” In that moment I realized the kid who peed on my brother’s bike, beat me with a stick, and stole my knife, he too had always been a treasured child of God and one day, when we part this earth, I will see him again before Jesus and I will hear Jesus say to my bully, “You are a treasured child of God.”

Sometimes I think the Christian life would be easier if Jesus had just ignored Zacchaeus up in that tree. Then I realize that while I’m staring at my bully before Jesus, another kid is going to be staring at me thinking, “Crap. My bully is a beloved child of God, too.”

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, indeed, for a shepherd who said, “Zacchaeus, come down from that tree!”