Changed Lives: Zacchaeus
Changed Lives: Zacchaeus
Luke 19:1-10
In our text for this morning, Jesus arrives at Jericho which probably means next to nothing for most of us. Maybe, you remember the song from Sunday School? (“Joshua fought the battle of Jericho…and the walls came a tumbling down.”) In the story, the walls do “come a tumbling down,” but there is more to the story. Let’s review…
When our ancestors in faith are liberated from slavery in Egypt, Moses leads them into the wilderness where they wander for decades. God feeds them manna. God leads them with a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. God’s presence is concretely marked by the presence of the Ark of the Covenant which is always in front of them, just as God is always leading them. Every day that the people survive, they get a little tougher and the memory of being slaves recedes a little further.
Even though the people have been promised that one day they will have their own land, it turns out that they will have to fight for it. Moses doesn’t get to go there because he’s broken a rule by keeping something that wasn’t his to keep. So, the people are led into the fight for the promised land by Joshua.
Now, let’s pause for moment. I bet only a handful of people realize this: the name, “Jesus” was the Greek version of the Hebrew name, “Joshua.” Honest! Jesus, who would have spent a lot of time speaking Hebrew, would have answered to the name, Joshua. This would not have been lost on anyone in Jesus’ day. Joshua led the people into the promised land. By implication, Jesus is leading the people into a new “promised land,” a promised land that he called the kingdom of God—a world where things would work the way that God intends for them to work.
We can go a step further. What would it have meant to people that Jesus had twelve disciples? Anyone steeped in the Hebrew Scriptures would have immediately thought of the twelve tribes of Israel. Those “tribes” wandered through the wilderness. Jesus wanders the wilderness with these twelve men. Though they are not eating manna, these men and Jesus are fed. These twelve men struggle on their journey just like our ancestors in their wilderness days. They get frustrated and angry. The don’t understand. You might even make the case that Jesus, himself, is like the Ark, reminding the disciples that wherever they go, God goes with them.
If you’ve ever read a great novel or just listened to a master storyteller, you’ve probably had that moment where it dawns on you that everything is coming together. You see the connections between the characters. You see that all those plot twists and turns are not just a big, giant knot. “Hold it…” you think to yourself, “What’s happening here?” There’s a pattern.
This is what the original audience would have been thinking when they heard our text: a guy who seem a lot like Joshua is learning his totally human followers into Jericho. “Hold it…” they would be thinking, “We’ve seen this before!”
What they also would have known is that the battle at Jericho was a complete bloodbath. Jericho is a heavily fortified Canaanite city. Joshua sends out two spies into the city. When the king of Jericho finds out that there are spies in their midst, he works to hunt them down. A local prostitute, Rahab, hides the spies under the thatch on her roof. As a reward, the spies promise Rahab that no harm will come to her or her family after the invasion. Joshua receives orders from God which he follows to the “t.” For six days, the Israelites march around the walls of the city—one lap a day. On the seventh day, they do seven laps. Then, they blow their horns and the walls of the city collapse.
What follows is actually a war crime. The Israelites kill every man, woman and child in the city…because…according to the Book of Joshua…this is what God told them to do. The only people who are spared are Rahab and her loved ones: “Either you are for us or we will destroy you!” This is the vengeful, jealous God who slays our enemies but demands absolute obedience. A lot of people still love that God today. Some of the greatest crimes against humanity have been committed in the name of that God.
The emphasis at the original Jericho was obedience. All of the people did exactly what God demanded: the exact number of laps, the merciless killing. The other demand was that no one would keep anything from Jericho—which was hard because everyone knew that war was a “winner take all” proposition, right? Still, no one kept anything except one guy. His name was Achan. He kept a really nice robe that he couldn’t resist and some gold and silver bling. He thought he could get away with hiding those things in his tent. Instead, God found out and Achan and pretty much everyone who had ever loved him were wiped out on the spot.
Now…here’s what I want you to know. There is absolutely no historical evidence that this battle or the ensuing slaughter ever took place. This is far more folklore than history. However, as folklore, values are embedded in this story: God is a vengeful, jealous, demanding God; if that God’s on your side, then the “walls”—the things that block you—will come tumbling down; if you keep something that isn’t yours to keep, God is going to get you, too. Honestly the story, even as folklore, is super problematic.
Of course, this just might be why the story is being invoked and then transformed by the new “Joshua”—Jesus of Nazareth. The Jericho that Jesus is approaching is known as the “oasis city.” Herod the Great had his winter palace there because it was warm and had fresh water springs. Jericho was also known as “The City of Palm Trees.” Jericho was a place where the rich and the powerful hung out. Because of this, Jericho also was often ringed by homeless and poor people. This battle will be between the rich upper crust and the outcasts and the poor.
So, here is Jericho. Centuries earlier, legend has it that the city was so heavily fortified that the king could literally lock the cities walls and be impenetrable. Now, as Jesus approaches, the city is surrounded by walls of poor people. This is the familiar story of every gated community, every exclusive gathering of the rich and the famous, every moment when the goal is to keep the riffraff out.
Of course, when it comes to the kingdom of God, Jesus keeps telling us that everyone is in, that he who is first will be last, that the poor and the sick and the grieving are in fact blessed. Jesus is working hard to move us from “us and them” to a “we’re all children of God” way of being in this world. Jesus is telling us that God is not vengeful and jealous and demanding but is, in fact, merciful and forgiving and loving. God is gracious. What God really wants is for us to be gracious and loving, too.
It is grace that Jesus embodies in Jericho. We’re told that Jesus just makes his way through town. He didn’t do any laps or blow any horns. Still, you can envision how the wall of poor people opened for Jesus. You can see the parade of those folks following him. As Jesus makes his way through city, the crowd swells, a crowd of the rich and the poor, the “in” and the “out.”
All indications are that Jesus is being welcomed with open arms. I would imagine that this was not the case for our man, Zacchaeus. (If you knew the Jericho song from Sunday School, chances are you also know the Zacchaeus song: “Zacchaeus was a wee little man, a wee little man was he.”) Crowds are an uncomfortable experience for just about everyone at some point. For Zacchaeus, the crowd was a real problem. He was short so he couldn’t see a thing and he desperately wanted to see this Jesus he had heard about. More immediately, he was hated because he was a chief tax collector. So, plenty of folks would have seized the opportunity to hip check him or trip him or just land a sharp elbow across his nose. He would have been taking a beating.
Desperate to see Jesus and probably desperate to stop the beating, too, Zacchaeus shimmies up a nearby sycamore tree. I’m sure someone would have ridiculed him as the weirdest piece of hanging fruit that they had ever seen. In that moment, if Jesus had wanted to just “own” the crowd, all he would have had to do was have a little fun at Zacchaeus’ expense. A lot of leaders lead by hating the person everyone else hates. A lot of leaders lead by appealing to people’s basest instincts. Who wouldn’t love a God who hates the people we hate and punishes the people we’re sure deserve to be punished?
That, of course, is not what happens. Jesus looks up into the tree, and makes eye contact with Zacchaeus. Jesus doesn’t call him a mean name. He literally calls him by name: “Zacchaeus, get down from there. Today is the day that I’m coming to your house for dinner!” Zacchaeus is ecstatic! The crowd is furious: “What business does he have getting cozy with this crook?”
Think about it…Zacchaeus is…Rahab, the prostitute in the original Jericho folktale. Rehab and Zacchaeus were the kind of people everyone loved to hate. Zacchaeus made his living by collecting taxes that went to Rome, the hated occupiers. The tax collectors gouged people into paying even more that what was owed to Rome. They kept the difference. Zacchaeus, as a chief tax collector, sat atop a pyramid scheme, skimming from everyone who collected below him. Just the sight of Zacchaeus made people’s blood boil. And yet, God can work through anyone, whether we like the person or not. In Jesus’ terms, everyone is our neighbor. Everyone is a child of God.
The whole world hates Zacchaeus except Jesus. Jesus calls him by his name and tells him that he wants to go to Zacchaeus’ house for dinner. How long had it been since anyone had been kind and gracious and loving to Zacchaeus? What does Zacchaeus do? A whole lot of sermons suggest that Zaccchaeus then promised to be a better guy. That’s not what the text says. Zacchaeus says that he’s always been a generous guy, that if he was ever caught cheating he paid people back, big times. In other words, he tries to make the love that he receives as an act of grace into something he deserves. This makes him Achan, keeping God’s love that was freely given to him as if it was something he deserved the whole time. Jesus loves us, whether anyone thinks we deserve that love or not. That’s not always easy to accept.
Think of it this way. Joshua, in the original story of Jericho, is relentlessly vengeful, mowing people down, no matter who they are. Jesus, the new Joshua, is relentlessly loving, no matter who they are. We love some people right away. We click. However, if the original Jericho folktale was the story of a war crime, this new Jericho story is a “love crime.” In a world where we’re convinced that people should get what they deserve, especially the people we don’t love, the people we don’t like, the people we hate, Jesus leads with love. With every enemy that we hate or attack or kill, we create ten new enemies. With every difficult person we learn to love, we move a step closer to living in the land that Jesus promised.