Coming Up Short
Luke 19:1-10
November 10, 2019
Emmanuel Baptist Church, Rev. Kathy Donley
You never know what a pastor’s kid will hear and remember. Both of my children have strong connections to the story of Zacchaeus. Erin remembers that she loved to sing the song about Zacchaeus, the wee little man. Every once in a while, she’ll ask me when I’m preaching about Zacchaeus again. Molly remembers a detail from a sermon I preached at least 15 years ago. That detail is found is verse 3 which says, “He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature.” The word “he” appears three times in that sentence. The last “he” refers to the short person, but there is nothing to tell us whether it means Zacchaeus or Jesus. You see, the rest of the story works equally well regardless of who is short. If Zacchaeus is short, he can’t see Jesus because of the crowd. But if Jesus is short, he can’t be seen because of the crowd around him. It works either way. Molly heard that throw-away detail in a sermon once and for some reason, it delighted her and continues to do so.
The question of who was shorter – Jesus or Zacchaeus – doesn’t seem very important. It’s not. But I bring it up to point out how very well we think we know this story. What if we have it all wrong and we should be singing about the wee little man Jesus? I wonder if there might be other things in the story, more important things, that we also have understood incorrectly.
By way of introduction, Luke tells us Zacchaeus’ name, his occupation and that he is rich. His name means “clean” or “innocent”. Perhaps we could pause to wonder whether his name is accurate or ironic, but the next two descriptors “rich” and “tax collector” quickly consume our attention.
Jesus passing through Jericho, on the last trip he will ever make to Jerusalem. Zacchaeus is the last individual with whom he will have a one-on-one encounter before Jerusalem. The rich have not been presented favorably in Luke’s account of Jesus’ ministry. “Jesus pronounced woes on the rich [in the Sermon on the Plain]. God called a rich famer a fool and required his soul of him. The rich man went to Hades while Lazarus [the beggar] went to the bosom of Abraham and Jesus observed how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God.” [1] There is no reason to suspect that Zacchaeus will fare any better than the rich people who came before him.
On the other hand, he is a tax collector. We have heard about Jesus and tax collectors before. We know that Jesus was unpopular with the clergy of his day because he associated with them. Levi, the former tax collector, was among his twelve disciples.
So, Zacchaeus is rich and a tax collector which makes it harder for us to predict which way the action will go. How will Jesus respond to him?
The common stereotype about rich tax collectors is that they are greedy and dishonest and you can’t believe anything
they say. Walter Brueggemann describes tax collectors as revenue men for the Roman Empire. He says, “The purpose of that empire, like every empire, whether Babylon among the Jews, Rome in the time of Jesus, or the US empire . . .is to coercively extract wealth for the sake of the center. Zacchaeus served such a regime. . . Zacchaeus was an agent of the violence of the empire.” [2]
When we think of tax collectors today, we might picture an IRS agent, someone wearing business clothes and good with a calculator. If that person is auditing us, we might be nervous around them, but we probably would not immediately jump to the conclusion that they are corrupt and greedy and not to be trusted. As long as we think of Zacchaeus like an IRS agent, we will have a hard time understanding the intensity of this story.
We probably need to look elsewhere for a contemporary parallel. If, as Brueggemann says, Zacchaeus was an agent of the violence of the empire, then who embodies that role today? Is there a category, an occupation that we associate with corruption and dishonesty and greed, persons who carry out the violence of the empire? I thought about this for a while. I came up with two possibilities. By now, you know my biases, so it might not surprise you to hear that I thought of Border Patrol agents and the owners of private prisons. You might have other ideas. You can feel free to tell me why I’m wrong later. For now, let’s hold onto the image of Zacchaeus as a Border Patrol agent. BP agents are generally unpopular in our culture right now. Jim and I toured part of the San Diego/Tijuana border with BP Agents who told us how hard it is to identify their occupation to strangers. One of them said, “We are not the monsters people think we are.” The suicide rate among BP agents is higher than other branches of law enforcement which is higher than the general population. Family members of BP agents report very high levels of stress in working for an agency which overlooks the humanity of the agents.[3] That sounds to me suspiciously like empire looking out for itself.
So, if you would humor me for the moment, imagine Zacchaeus in a Border Patrol uniform. Imagine that the crowd in Jericho includes citizens and descendants of immigrants and perhaps even some undocumented folks who are following Jesus. Everything is going fine until Jesus stops and looks up into that sycamore tree. Down comes Zacchaeus and Jesus invites himself to his house. Jesus will bring honor to whatever house he enters. By inviting himself to Zacchaeus’ home, he gives him an opportunity to be recognized prominently before the whole community. The implication of table fellowship is that Jesus accepts him as someone who shares his values.
And now we understand why the crowd grumbles. What are they supposed to do? They want to be with Jesus, sure, but they can’t pretend the Border Patrol agent shares their values. To go to his house is to imply that they are like him, corrupt, greedy, exploitative, violent. Someone like him is not supposed to respond to Jesus, anyway, not genuinely. Surely, this is just another PR stunt. Why doesn’t Jesus see that?
Maybe some people are secretly hoping that Jesus does see that. Maybe they think that Jesus is going to publicly put him in his place – wouldn’t that be delicious?
If so, they are even more dismayed at what comes next. Zacchaeus acts as though he belongs with Jesus. Of course, Jesus would choose to go to his house. Zach is aware of what the people think of him, of course, so he takes the opportunity to tell them about himself. He says it to Jesus, but everyone can hear. In verse 8, he says “Behold, Lord, half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.” The verbs in that sentence are in present tense. He is describing what he already does, not something he is going to start doing from this point on.
But that’s not how we usually hear the story. Just as we usually assume that Zacchaeus is the short one, we usually assume that this is a story about his repentance, that as a result of this encounter with Jesus, he is going to start making restitution. That’s the traditional interpretation. It’s influence is so strong that most translations make the verbs future tense “half of my goods I will give to the poor; I will pay back four times.” Translators call this a future present tense. This is the only place in all of scripture where they claim to find this verb tense.[4] I suspect that their interpretation of the story is influencing their translation, instead of the other way around.
If we can allow ourselves to challenge the traditional interpretation, then maybe we can take Zacchaeus at his word, which Jesus seems to do. And then we can recognize that this is not a conversion story, but a healing story.
I say this is a healing story because of what happens next. After Zach describes his customary practice, Jesus says, “Today salvation has come to this house.” And he calls Zacchaeus a “son of Abraham”. Earlier, Jesus had healed a woman in the synagogue, a woman who had been bent over for 18 years. When he did that, he called her a “daughter of Abraham.” Her illness had kept her isolated from her people, her community. Her healing restored her to that community, the sons and daughters of Abraham.
Similarly, Jesus is restoring Zacchaeus to the community which has rejected him. They have accepted all the stereotypes about him without question. They think they know who he is. “Rich tax collector” tells them everything they need to know until Jesus replaces that with “Son of Abraham.” Which means “one of you”. Someone just like you, who shares your values, who is generous and cares for the poor. If I am still imagining Zacchaeus as the BP agent, then instead of “Son of Abraham” I might hear Jesus say “Child of God.”
Jesus’s announced mission is to seek and to save the lost. He has told stories about the lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost sons. Zacchaeus is lost to his own people until Jesus calls him down out of the tree.
Who comes up short in this story? Not Zacchaeus. Not Jesus. If anyone comes up short, it’s the townspeople whose ability to love is stunted by their prejudice and preconceptions about who Zacchaeus is and who they will allow him to be.
This is a story about opportunities for salvation and healing, for Zacchaeus and also for the people of Jericho. That is the intensity of this story which still resonates, in a time when we are so polarized, so quick to judge each other, so quick to assume we know all about someone because of their occupation or political affiliation or a comment on social media or which church they do or don’t attend. Maybe we can see that one way that Jesus goes about saving us, restoring us, healing us, is by seeking to destroy all of our stereotypes, all of our carefully set up and well-crafted assumptions about “those people” too.[5]
What did the people of Jericho do? Did they welcome Zacchaeus into their midst or did they cling to their resentments of the past? The Bible doesn’t tell us. It leaves it open, asking the same question of us – will salvation and healing come to our house as it has come to the house of Zacchaeus? Or will we stop short of the fullness of love Jesus intends?
[1] Alan Culpepper, The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. IX, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), p. 357
[2] Walter Brueggemann, “Vision that Trumps Violence” in The Collected Sermons of Walter Brueggemann, Vol 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2015), p. 235.
[3] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/border-patrol-suicide-rate-spikes/
[4] https://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=1556
[5] Shannon Kershner in her sermon “Jesus Makes Things Complicated” http://www.fourthchurch.org/sermons/2016/031316.html