Jesus Meets Zacchaeus
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Jesus Meets Zacchaeus
June 26, 2011
by Ken Owen
Good Morning Faith Presbyterian. It is good to be here again.
This morning I would like to talk to you from a passage of Scripture found in Luke, Chapter 19. The children sang a song about Zacchaeus “who climbed a sycamore tree for the Lord he wanted to see.” He said, “Zacchaeus, you come down! For I am coming to your house (we used to sing it this way) for tea.” It rhymes, and I spent the first eight years of my life in Great Britain and it was apropos. I want to talk to you today about Zacchaeus and see what we can glean. Now there are a number of things that we can mention here. As I went through this text, I came up with about a twenty-three point sermon. I have reduced it to four, especially for you two guys in the front row, right here. They did talk to me and they did say that hooks would come down if I exceeded twenty minutes.
But the teacher, as he was called many times, Jesus, meets the tax man. I don’t know if tax men in any culture are beloved, but this tax man was not a typical IRS man. IRS men simply do their job. I think we all have complaints about taxes, mainly, how they are spent, perhaps abuses, misuses, where they are allocated from time to time; but basically every thinking person knows that a civilization and a society cannot function without a tax structure—for defense, for public roads, for education, for all kinds of services, government buildings, policemen, firemen, etc. etc. etc.
But, in this particular culture a tax man was an outcast, a social pariah. You see, the way the tax structure worked at this time, the Roman government who occupied Israel and a number of other countries around the Mediterranean, they imposed a tax structure on income, 1%; a tax structure on goods that were gleaned from the fields, up to 10%. They imposed a tax structure on imports and exports and just about anything else that they felt like taxing. They were not unlike the American government. But in this particular society, if you were a tax collector, if you were a part of the Publicani, you were a Roman entrepreneur that bought the title of tax collector. Then you sublet it out to others, who sublet it to others in a great pyramid tiered structure; until finally when it hit home from Rome and was disseminated to all the countries that you occupied, there were local and indigenous people that were tax collectors. They bought the position also and they were looking for a return on investments. So a tax collector had to keep a ledger, especially if he was dealing with imports and exports; and all the major road systems were taxed. Jericho was one of those main import export locations centered really in three continents: Africa, Europe and Asia. People from all of those areas would come through Jericho as one of the means of reaching Palestine and reaching the coast, so they could put their goods on ships and send them all around the Mediterranean.
Well, when you provided the Roman authorities with your ledger, there was a particular see by each item, its weight, the amounts of goods that you taxed. The Romans would add it up and if it made sense, they would accept the money that came in along with the ledger and everything was fine. But the tax collector was allowed to put on a commission and that is how he made his money. Now you can see since the commission was arbitrary how this leaves a lot of latitude for extortion, abuse, and misuse and many of the tax collectors did this.
We read here in Chapter 19 (Luke 19:1-10)
Then Jesus entered and passed through Jericho. Now behold there was a certain man named Zacchaeus, who was a chief tax collector (He had tax collectors under him from whom he collected commissions, besides from collecting taxes and commissions himself. And the Scripture says) he was rich. And he sought to see who Jesus was, but he could not because of the crowd for he was short of stature. (You know, I hate to really inject images into your imagination, but every time I read this story, I think of Danny Devito. (laughter) Do you remember Danny Devito in “Taxi”? Zacchaeus!) So he ran on ahead and climbed into a sycamore tree to see Jesus, for Jesus was going to pass that way. And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and he saw and said to him, “Zacchaeus, make haste, come down, for this day I must stay at your house.” So he made haste and came down and received him joyfully. But when they (that is the crowd) saw it, they all murmured, saying, “He has gone to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.” And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord, I give half of my goods to the poor. And if I have taken anything from anyone by false accusation (which tax collectors were prone to do), I restore it fourfold.” And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”
This man, this social pariah, was a traitor in the eyes of the Jews. He was one of them but he belonged to the Romans. He paid allegiance to the Romans. He turned on his own people to collect taxes and then extorted more money out of them for his own commission. A traitor. He was a blasphemer. He had to acknowledge Caesar above God if he was part of the Roman system. So he was a sinner, again, in their eyes. A tax collector could not serve as a judge in a Jewish court of law. He could not even testify. His testimony was not accepted. His tithe was not accepted in the temple because it was viewed as ill-gotten gain and theft. So he was despised.
He was also an avaricious and greedy man and for that he was also despised. When you take an occupation that you know will secure your isolation, when you will be shunned by society, your wife won’t be able to join the local bridge club…. You cannot join the local country club…. You don’t get invited on fishing trips… You are isolated. Nobody loves you. Everybody hates you. Everybody murmurs against you. And you have deliberately chosen that life. Your kids are shunned at school. Why would you do that? You would have to love money an awful lot to exchange the basic societal relationships just for money. He did that.
But, I see here, this man who is despised and viewed as a triple X sinner (a trader, a blasphemer and an extortioner), he wanted to see Jesus. The one thing I think about when I read that passage is that I should never, and we should never underestimate the capability of any man or woman, no matter who they are, to respond to Jesus, to respond to the Light, to the Truth, to the Source of all beauty, to the Way. You see, everyone is prewired for the kingdom. That is what Jesus partially meant when talking about the kingdom, which he did more than any other thing – he mentions the kingdom more than anything. He looked at sinners who were opposed to him and he said, “Look, the kingdom of God is not external. The kingdom of God is within you.” Did he really mean that it was within most people at that time? Not really. They didn’t know God and they didn’t acknowledge God. They were lost. They rejected Christ. But Jesus knew that we are all wired. They were wired for the kingdom, were made for God. Jesus knew that. The basic problem with people isn’t that they are wired for God; it is just that they are not plugged into the power source; there is nothing flowing through them. They are not working right because they are not plugged in—but they are wired for the kingdom. God’s made them.
One thing I have learned working at Midwest Challenge, and one of the reasons I work there, is because you can never judge a book by its cover and you never know when the seed you planted begins to germinate; but it will germinate. So you keep on keeping on, doing what we do, what we have been called to do –to preach the gospel. We don’t always look for results although results sometimes, as in this story, are forthcoming rather quickly, and that is nice to see. We don’t always have all the answers. We just keep doing what we have been asked and commanded to do.
I was at the Minnesota Prayer Breakfast—I believe some of you were there. I recognize some of the faces—a few months ago, Ward Brehm, a local business man here, was talking about his friend, Mike Sime. He said, “Mike, what do you do when people ask the tough questions about what happens to people who have never heard the name of Christ? I mean, do they go to hell for real? What do you tell him?” Then he asked another question; and another question. Mike finally said to him (I can picture Mike saying this. I have served on a few boards with Mike and I know Mike. I can just picture Mike saying this.) “Hey,” he said, “Come on man, that is a Management decision. I am just in Sales.” (laughter) In one way, that is kind of a copout because I think some of those questions can be answered. But in another way, all mysteries can’t be solved, but we are told to preach the gospel. Let God give the increase. Let the Holy Spirit do what the Holy Spirit does. Let him do that.
Don’t ever under estimate the capability of any person, I don’t care how bad a sinner you think they are, how unreachable they are. There is something in every person that desires the things of God. They were made for God.
Why did Zacchaeus want to see Jesus? Well, human longing? Eternity is in his heart like anyone else. When he laid his head on the pillow, perhaps he began to think about the deeper things in life, about what counts and what doesn’t count. Maybe he was just tired of making money and realized that this was not really as fulfilling as he had previously thought. Maybe he heard the local buzz because the reputation of Jesus had preceded him. You know, I can’t help thinking though that since tax collectors didn’t associate with a lot of other people except other tax collectors, he may have known someone who knew Jesus rather well. You will remember that when Jesus chose his apostles he chose Matthew, also named Levi, who was a tax collector. Now there were some honest ones. I wonder if Zacchaeus knew Matthew, after all, he was the chief tax collector. Matthew may have worked in his employ from time to time. Matthew may have witnessed to him about what he had heard, about what he had seen, about how Jesus fulfilled all the prophetic statements about the coming Messiah, about how he healed people, etc., etc., etc. So Zacchaeus was curious. He wanted to see Jesus.
But there is a problem. This encounter with the outcast is also an encounter that has obstacles. Zacchaeus is a short man. He cannot see over the crowd that is thronging around Jesus, thousands of people, as he is walking on the Jericho road. I ask myself the question, whenever I want to see Jesus more clearly, whenever I want a deeper knowledge of him, whenever I want to walk in more power, whenever I want to hear his voice, whenever I want to be more conformed to his image, there always seems to be an obstacle or two or three or four. Have you ever noticed that? Do you want to see Jesus more clearly, not just the flannelgraph Jesus, but the real Jesus? I think there was a book out in the last few years called The Jesus I Never Knew. I think Yancy wrote it, I am not sure. The Jesus I Never Knew. We don’t take the time to see who he really was. It is no wonder we don’t know him, we don’t walk in his power. We live with regrets because we are never where we ought to be.
Do you want to see Jesus? Do you want to dine with him? What are the obstacles in your way to make that happen? What prevents that, from seeing him clearly? What prevents further inquiry and a deeper fellowship with him in your life? Is it just our fallen nature in which the new nature now lives if we are Christians and we have the Spirit of God in us? Is it work? Is it inappropriate ambition? Is it wanting to get ahead to the point where we have no time for Jesus? Is it defect of a materialistic culture? Is it recreation? Entertainment? When I have added up the hours that I have watched sports, it is scary. And I like watching boxing and UFC—so you know that runs late at night; but I have to get up at five o’clock, five-thirty. Man I just wish they ran that around six or seven or eight o’clock, or something like that, you know. So when I add up the hours that I have watched sports some weeks, I embarrass myself.
You know, when Dave Wilkerson, the founder of Teen Challenge— not Midwest Challenge, we work with Teen Challenge, we take a number of their people into our transition program— but when Dave Wilkerson was a young pastor in western Pennsylvania, (I happened to know him, I was a young boy at the time), when he arrived home on Sunday evening, he used to just flop in his chair and watch Johnny Carson for an hour or two. I mean, after all, he preached Sunday morning, preached Sunday evening, so he was just relaxing. He saw something that really grabbed his attention in “Life Magazine” about some punks in New York, some gang members, who were on trial. It began to bother him. As he sat there he really believes he heard in his own mind and heart the Spirit of God speaking to him, saying, “What are you doing wasting your time watching T.V. every Sunday night, every Wednesday night? Why don’t you seek me and see if you can solve this problem that “Life Magazine” was talking about—the gangs, the drugs in New York?” And that is what he did. He obeyed that Spirit, that lowly Spirit, that still small voice; and it lead to Teen Challenge, a world wide organization that has benefited thousands upon thousands, tens of thousands of people, all because he just rearranged his priorities and put aside the things that kept him from seeing Jesus. What stops us from seeing Jesus, clearly? Is it habits in our thinking? Just basic neurophysiology? False concepts about Jesus, about God? Misinformation? Inadequate information?
We don’t understand God. We hear all kinds of nonsense out there affiliated with God, associated with God. Is it our corrupted notion of Christ due to association? I hear more people tell me when they went to certain parochial schools and got they knuckles rapped and their hair pulled by the nuns, it was always associated with religion and Jesus. Whack! And Jesus. Ow! My hair gets yanked. And Jesus. Whack, right across the back of the head again. Is that the association? Is it the corrupted image that we have of fathers? I mean if your dad wasn’t there, as is the case of most of my guys, they never had a dad—never supported them. If he was there, he abused them. So when we recite the Lord’s Prayer, “Our Father, who art in heaven,” they don’t have a good picture in their head at all. A father is just someone who shows up to get something from mom if he feels like it; slaps her around and leaves and never gives you a dime, never gives you any advice, never plans for your future, never gives you any love, never gives you any proper discipline. That is who “father” is.
People have a messed up idea about God because they have messed up fathers, abusive fathers. Is it your world view? Do you get your world view from the news?…from secular humanistic writings and philosophies, series of human development, human purpose? Are you lazy, just lazy? There is one of a hundred reasons why all of us do not see Jesus clearly and don’t make the time. There is this obstacle in the way; but I notice here that Zacchaeus is a man who will not be denied. He makes a plan. Alright, we have a predicament. What is the prescription here? How do I get out of this? He runs ahead, he sees a sycamore tree. In that part of the world the branches are very low. You can climb a sycamore tree very easily. So up he goes and plants himself and waits for Jesus to come. He made a plan. He followed through with the plan and once implemented, he takes his position and now he waits for God, for Jesus.
You got a plan? I talk to my guys a lot about “Where are we going? I mean, you relapse X amount of times. You’re 28 or you are 33. What’s your plan?” Initially when they come in they will always tell me things like, “Well, I want to get my own business, man, and then I am going to do this and I am going to do that.” “Well, wait. You are going to get your own business?” (Now I have been in business for 40 years before I sold it. You don’t just get your own business.) “How are you going to do that?” “Well, you know…” “No, I don’t know. How are you going to get a business? How are you going to go from A to Z? What’s the plan? Let’s make a plan.” “Ahh, man, a plan?” “Yeah, wake up and smell the coffee. You need a plan. It is not just going to happen.” You know, if we want to see Jesus and walk in power and receive the joy of the Spirit and understand what God is saying, if we want to be conformed to his image, we need a plan to see Jesus as he is. Make a plan. May I suggest that to you. “Seek” the Scripture says, “and you will find. Knock and the door will be open. Ask you will receive.” “Behold” Jesus says (Revelation 3:20) “I stand at the door and knock.” He’s knocking right now. “If anyone (anyone here?) hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and I will dine with him and he with me.” That is what happened here in the case of Zacchaeus. And Jesus says to him when he came by and he saw him—there was Zacchaeus looking into the eyes of the one for whom the cosmos was made, the word of God made flesh. There he was standing. The truth, the author of life, the way, right there on the Jericho road and Jesus looked at him. Jesus is looking at you; every one of you. He is always looking at us—and he called him by name. “Zacchaeus,” he says, “come on down and make haste. Don’t delay.” May I simply say this that when you feel the tug of the Holy Spirit calling you to something, when Jesus is looking at you or you believe that God has prompted you to do something, make haste. Make time, make a plan, proceed with it. Ask God for help. Don’t delay. We have a number of sayings in our culture. They are little wisdom sayings: “Make hay while the sun is shining.” “Strike while the iron is hot.” “It’s malleable.” “On the Plains of Hesitation bleach the bones of countless millions, who, at the Dawn of Victory, sat down to wait, and waiting–died!”
When Cassius is speaking with Brutus, Chapter 4 of Julius Caesar, he is talking about an upcoming battle and he is saying, “We have to take advantage of this opportunity.” And he says, “There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, the entire voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in misery. We must take the current as it is served, or loose our ventures.” The picture he paints is of a ship between the shoals and the shoreline. They are trapped in the shallows and in misery looking at the ocean on which they would like to travel with all of its possibilities, but they can’t get out. There is not enough draft…too much on the boat…. So, the tide rises and he says, “When the tide rises and it is at the flood, we have to set sail now. Take advantage of it now! Move out into the deep, otherwise we are trapped in the shallows and the miseries for the rest of our life.” When God speaks to you and says make haste, when he says that, make haste. Do what he tells you to do. Act on his prompting.
“Today,” the Scripture says, “is the day of salvation.” Today. It is always today.
Zacchaeus obeys and comes down and there is quite a bit of murmuring. Actually there is stifled outrage that Jesus would actually go with this sinner, traitor, blasphemer, extortioner. You know, whenever you make a radical commitment to Jesus, whenever you want to do anything profound and significant for God at the prompting of the Holy Spirit, there will always be murmuring and outrage. I know people who have almost been committed to an asylum because they joined the church and began to give ten percent of their income. They tithe. And their relatives thought, “Oh my God, this guy has joined a cult. He has lost his mind.” I know guys that give ninety percent of their income to the work of the kingdom. And there are some people who really think that they have lost their mind. If you decide to be a missionary, people will think you have lost your mind…people who don’t know Christ. “What? You are throwing your life away.” Not really…they are actually finding it. We cannot always be worried about family, friends, the neighborhood, the community. Jesus didn’t seem to mind the outrage and neither did Zacchaeus.
Well, what happened during this encounter? Here we are now. Jesus is going to Zacchaeus’ house. You know what is rather intriguing to me? “He is gone to be a guest with a man who is a sinner,” says the crowd. “Then Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, ‘Look,’” Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Wait a second. We don’t hear about anything that took place in that encounter. Jesus went to his house; he dined with him. Was he there an hour, two hours, four hours? What happens between verses 7 and 8? He is going to Zacchaeus’ house and all of a sudden we see a change in Zacchaeus. What happened? There is no mention of it, but something profound happened in Zacchaeus. I almost like the fact that nothing is said there because when a person engages and is apprehended by God, something mysterious takes place. Oh, we can say “He is born again” or “The Holy Spirit comes into his life.” “He has a new way of thinking” “His mind is now on the process of renewal.” “He is a new creation in Christ.” We have all those terms and they are all useful, but what really happens to a person when they engage Jesus, the real Jesus? You know, there is something mysterious that takes place there, just between you and God. Nothing is said. All we know is that because he encountered Jesus, he is a changed person. We see this encounter had an outcome. “And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord, I give half of my goods to the poor. (I am getting rid of 50% of it Lord. And if I have taken anything I will pay them back 400%), I will restore it fourfold.”
This is a man who was in the grip of money and materialism; and we see now that his great weakness, the love of money, becomes his great strength; and the miser becomes a man with great magnanimity of heart. He is changed. Something happened to him. You cannot encounter Christ, you cannot be a Christian without a change in your life. Any encounter with the Lord will result in a change sooner or later. There will be fruit. It is not a matter of just reciting a four line prayer or believing in four spiritual laws with nothing changing in your life. When the Holy Spirit comes into your life, when you encounter Jesus and see him who he is, you will be changed as Zacchaeus was. He had met the transforming Christ and we see this tremendous transformation; and that is what Jesus will do with all of us, no matter where you are because he is a transforming deity. He transforms darkness to light, we see that from the beginning. Into the void he speaks and he fills it and he creates in it purposeful and meaningful substance. He transforms hopelessness into new vision and revitalizes the vision. The broken hearted when they were encountered by Jesus were healed. The deaf when they met him left hearing again. The blind received their sight when they encountered Jesus. The lame met him and they went away leaping, walking. The oppressed were delivered from demonic spirits, the Scripture says. The captives were set free. The lepers were cleansed and made whole. Everybody was transformed when they met Jesus. Cowards became courageous men and women when the Holy Spirit was given to them. Sinners became saints. The dead were brought back to life. Death itself was no match for him. And his atoning death on the cross and the grave that awaited him were only stepping stones and layovers on the way to the Resurrection. He transforms everything and, because he lives and we are in him, we also shall live. So until the final culmination, or as Peter says in Acts, Chapter 3, “the restoration of all things which is what God is working towards,” until that happens, let us renew, refresh our relationship with him. Let us desire to see Jesus. Let us decide to see him in a new light and allow him to transform us as he transformed Zacchaeus, as he takes us from where we are at to where we ought to be and who we are to who we ought to be, as he is formed in us through the work of the Holy Spirit.
So I ask you today to make plans as Zacchaeus did, definite plans, overcome obstacles to see Jesus; for today, Jesus, I believe, is passing this way.
Would you bow your head with me just for a moment?
Heavenly Father, we thank you that you sent your Son who is interested in us, who is looking at us, who calls us by name. Lord, I pray that you would give us a sense of urgency when you speak to act with alacrity, with a quick response. Don’t let the light fade away until we have acted Lord. Help us to walk in that light you give us, as you are in the light, and show us more light. Lead us into the paths that you would have us to walk, accomplish with us what you would have us accomplish in the power of your might. Help us to speak and to walk in victory and in power exemplifying the life in Christ, the abundant life. Help us to be as attractive to sinners as you were, for you were a friend of sinners. Help us Lord to be effective working with those that don’t know you or who are stumbling. Work through us, change us, transform us, Lord, we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.