Zacchaeus
A rich, hated tax collector climbs a tree to see Jesus, and Jesus invites himself to dinner. The crowd hates it. Zacchaeus gives away half of everything.
The story
Jesus was passing through Jericho on his way to Jerusalem, and a crowd had turned out. Somewhere behind it was Zacchaeus: chief tax collector, rich, and short. Tax collectors bought the right to collect Rome's taxes and made their money by charging extra. A chief one ran the operation. He was, in his own town, the most disliked man on the street, and nobody in that crowd was going to let him through.
So he did something a grown man with his money and position would never normally do. He ran ahead and climbed a sycamore fig tree to get a view. The text says he was trying to see who Jesus was. Not to meet him. Just to see.
Jesus reached the tree, stopped, looked up, and called him by name. Zacchaeus, hurry up and come down, I need to stay at your house today. Not 'can I'. 'I must'. Zacchaeus scrambled down and welcomed him, Luke says, joyfully.
The crowd was not joyful. All of them muttered: he's gone to be a guest of a sinner. Of every house in Jericho, that one.
Then Zacchaeus stood up and said something to Jesus in front of everyone. Half of what I own goes to the poor. And anyone I've cheated, I pay back four times over. The law asked for the original plus a fifth for that kind of fraud. Fourfold was the rate for stolen sheep. He went to the thief's rate on his own account. The text doesn't record Jesus asking him for any of it.
Jesus's response is the line the story is built for: today salvation has come to this house, because this man too is a son of Abraham. The crowd had written him out of the family. Jesus wrote him back in. Then, the summary of the whole gospel in one sentence: the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.
The verse to keep
The Son of Man came to look for the people who are lost, and to save them.
Said at the dinner table of the most hated man in town. It's Luke's one-line summary of why Jesus came.
What it actually means
The first hearers would have felt the offense of that dinner. Eating with someone meant accepting them, and Zacchaeus was a collaborator who got rich off his neighbors. 'Son of Abraham' was a status the crowd thought he'd forfeited. Jesus gives it back before Zacchaeus has proved anything with his money. Luke puts this story just before the entry into Jerusalem, as a last picture of what Jesus came to do before the week that killed him.
Notice the order. Zacchaeus climbed a tree to look, and got looked at. Jesus invited himself in first. The money comes after the welcome, not as the price of it. People sometimes read this as 'clean up your act and then Jesus will come to your house'. In the text it's the other way round, and the cleaning up is what a welcomed person does, not what a suspect does to earn one.
What it doesn't mean: that following Jesus means giving away exactly half, or that rich people are the villains. One chapter earlier in Luke, a rich ruler walked away sad when Jesus told him to sell everything. Zacchaeus wasn't asked and offered anyway. Money in Luke is a heart test, not a math problem. And if you've been the one nobody lets through the crowd, the story says Jesus knows your name before you've done a thing.
Worth arguing about
- 1Zacchaeus only wanted to see. Jesus wanted dinner. Have you ever got more from God than you asked for? Was that comfortable?
- 2The crowd muttered. Whose house would people mutter about Jesus going into today?
- 3Nobody asked Zacchaeus for the money. Why do you think he offered it?
Read it yourself: Luke 19:1–10
World English Bible. 10 verses.
Whole book: Luke