I can’t read or hear the story of Zacchaeus without seeing it in bright, vivid, picture book colors. A sunny day story, vibrant with life and joy and a goofy sense of humor.
Though, when we first meet Zacchaeus, he’s an ambiguous character. He’s a chief tax collector, and he’s rich. Which alert readers of Luke’s gospel will know makes him likely to be a bad guy, or at least a foil for Jesus, a ready object lesson.
As Luke tells the story, rich people do not generally come out well in encounters with Jesus. And Zacchaeus’ profession makes him suspect. Tax collecting was set up, in the Roman empire, to encourage – almost require – graft. Plus, it engaged you in the religiously messy business of handling money that declared the divinity of the emperor.
So Zacchaeus is an unlikely hero, to say the least.
But the minute he’s introduced, we see him bobbing along at the back of a crowd, unable to see over and through. He doesn’t look like a rich, important man. Instead, it’s a laughable image, even if you or I can sympathize with the frustrating experience of being blocked out; being cold-shouldered and unable to get through to what everyone else is part of.
So the normal move for a “rich man” – a person of privilege or power – should be to throw your weight around to get through. Or to demand a private meeting with the celebrity. Or just buy the whole crowd so you can run things your way.
Zacchaeus solves it differently. Abandoning dignity and social conventions, he dashes ahead of the crowd and climbs a tree.
It’s a kid solution, not a rich man response.
And yes, you should assume he looks fairly goofy in his tree perch, when Jesus arrives, looks up at him, and says, “Okay, Zacchaeus, come down now. I’m staying at your place tonight.”
There’s no particular evidence for or against this particular idea in the text: but I hear some friendly, sympathetic laughter under Jesus’ tone as he says this, looking up at Zacchaeus perched in his tree, impetuous and undignified and eager.
Zacchaeus certainly responds with enthusiasm – Luke reports his speed and his delight in scrambling out of the tree and welcoming Jesus.
Zacchaeus doesn’t seem troubled by my own mid-life anxiety about whether the house is (or I am) ready for uninvited guests. Instead I get a feeling of an awkward kid being unexpectedly picked by the most popular kid to play on their team.
In front of all the other kids who suddenly resent it.
And who complain. Loudly so that no one can miss it.
He’ll ruin the team, they say.
Doesn’t Jesus know he’s a sinner? A liability, who will mess up Jesus’ mission, who makes us all look bad.
The righteous reader could have some sympathy with the crowd – it is a bit suspect for Jesus – the man teaching radical faithfulness – to invite himself to the home of a man who is kind of automatically unfaithful because he works for the infidel government.
So when Zacchaeus responds to the complaining crowd, it could be in a defensive, protesting tone: Okay. Fine. If I’ve hurt anyone I’ll pay it back – excessively! So much that you can’t complain!
Or a tone of grief and conviction, however unusual crowd-shamed repentance may actually be: I’m sorry! I’ll never do it again! I’ll give the ill-gotten gains away!
But I hear another possible tone.
Some commentators think the Greek text shows that Zacchaeus is not making a promise to do something new, but actually revealing what he already makes a habit of doing. He’s certainly talking about a continuous practice, a habit and way of being, whether future, past, or present.
And I hear in his words a sort of… enthusiasm. “Lord, I give half of my wealth away. And I make it right – more than right! – if I ever hurt anyone.” A tone that matches the impetuousness of scrambling up a tree – and then back down to welcome an unplanned guest with delighted surprise.
It’s a surprise to the neighbors, certainly. No one expects this from short, rich, government-collaborating Zacchaeus, who’s never quite belonged, or been integrated in local community.
But he is a son of Abraham, too – Jesus says so. A person who does belong, has always belonged, even if we didn’t see it.
I could be wrong, but I get a sense that what Jesus’ visit does is not so much change Zacchaeus as reveal him. Reveal him to his neighbors – and perhaps to himself – as a person of eager delight, enthusiastic generosity, and just enough non-conformity to be uncomfortable.
I wonder if, perhaps, Jesus’ visit simply sets free Zacchaeus’ ability to be himself. If his eagerness to see Jesus just pulled away the usual habits formed by society’s expectations, and his neighbors – and you and I – get to see Zacchaeus’ uninhibited heart.
And – uninhibited and freed – it’s a heart eager to share.
The kid inside who wants everyone to come to their birthday party, because everyone should enjoy their happiness as much as they do. Innocent of any sense of scarcity, and full of that conviction children sometimes seem to display that if I am happy to have cookies, you need a cookie, too.
That’s the heart Jesus invites himself into in all of us.
That heart that’s like an eager, delighted child within us. That heart that hasn’t been muted or shaped or shamed into conventionality by what the world tells us about protecting ourselves from foolishness or loss.
An enthusiastic heart, not burdened by that sense of scarcity so many of us have been taught by the news stories, social expectations, and economic standards we live and breathe among – the heavy conviction that money and time and resources we spend or share are lost to us forever.
That open, unburdened heart is what Jesus spots inside us, maybe when you or I long to feel that freedom, maybe when we don’t even know that eager delight is within us. Jesus sees it and invites himself to move right in.
Because God always sees in us our truest, most open, loving, whole-hearted selves, even when we can’t see ourselves that way.
And God always calls us to be our freest selves - the selves we may have almost lost in the expectations of the world - our most generous and eager and joyous selves, free to spend and share and rejoice in the impulses of delight and love and gratitude that the world tells us we can’t afford.
What is it like to find that free delight in your own heart, your self?
Jesus seeks out in us those selves that we think lost to us, but not are not lost to God. Selves unembarrassed to climb a tree in eager hope, unembarrassed to scramble down in eager, joyful welcome of the unexpected. Unembarrassed to proclaim and practice extravagant generosity, rooted in joy. And probably laughter.
We can try that on for ourselves, any time. Try climbing trees, chasing inspiration, sharing cookies, extravagantly giving what we have.
We may find that those truest selves don’t fit comfortably into the expectations and assumptions of our neighbors. But we’ll fit into those free and joyful selves better than we might expect, when Jesus invites himself in. When Jesus reveals our generous, eager, hopeful selves to us and to our neighbors: our freest selves, delighted to share love and abundance – and maybe laughter – with nothing standing between us and God’s own loving, eager, delight in us.
