In
Sunday School we used to sing the song, “Zacchaeus was
a wee little man a wee little man was he; He climbed up in a
sycamore tree; For the Lord he wanted to see…” And
it was true, Zacchaeus was a wee little man. Physically, Luke
describes Zacchaeus in verse 3 with the word “Mikros”
which is where we get the term Micro. He was micro in stature
and he was also a small man, a wee man, with regard to integrity.
We spoke last Sunday about the social status of tax collectors
in 1st century Judea; uniformly wealthy, universally despised.
They collaborated with the Romans by collecting taxes from their
own people for the Roman Empire. The Romans authorized them
to make their living by taxing more than the law required but
since they didn’t specify how much more, most tax collectors
made themselves rich on the backs of their countrymen. That’s
why they were hated.
But Zacchaeus was not your average tax collector. He was, as
we’re told in verse 2, “chief” tax collector
which probably means that he was in charge of all the tax collectors
in the his region and that he would get a sizeable chunk off
the top of the collections of each collector under his authority.
Jericho, which is where this account took place, was not the
same Jericho destroyed by Joshua and his army when they blew
their trumpets and the walls fell. This was a new Jericho, built
by Herod, much closer to Jerusalem, and it was, at this point
in time, enjoying a period of great prosperity which would mean
that Zacchaeus, as chief tax collector of the “region,”
was probably not just rich, but filthy rich. He was the sort
of guy who lives in those exclusive neighborhoods that you pass
through in your car and gape.
He was, truly, a wee little man; a micro-man, a small man, who
lived luxuriously on the sweat and toil of his own people.
But notice something about Zacchaeus. Luke tells us in verse
three that he “wanted to see who Jesus was”. It’s
an interesting phrase. It doesn’t just express common
curiosity. Zacchaeus didn’t merely want to see Jesus pass
by like you might go out to see a parade or a carnival or something
new and different that comes to town. His wasn’t a detached
sort of curiosity. Zacchaeus wanted to “know who Jesus
was.” There’s a personal quality to this. We can
be sure that news of Jesus’ powers and claim to be the
messiah had preceded his arrival; that’s why the crowd
is there. But there’s something different about Zacchaeus.
He didn’t want to see a miracle or a magic trick, he didn’t
want to get free bread, he wanted to know who Jesus was personally.
A good question to ask yourself when you get up on Sunday morning
or when you go to bible study or when you pray or do any of
the things we do as Christians is: “Am I doing this thing
because I want to know who Jesus is?” Even the answer
is “no”, do it anyway, but the question serves to
point you in the right direction because when you come to church
and when you open your bible and when you pray and when you’re
in the fellowship of other believers, the goal, the focus, the
aim, should not be self-oriented, but Christ oriented. You can
come to all of these things as consumers waiting to be satisfied
or entertained rather than a servant seeking to know the master,
a son or daughter looking to the father, sheep looking to the
Good Shepherd. Do I want to know who Jesus is?
Please don’t misunderstand the question. I’m not
asking you to take your emotional temperature. I am not asking
you whether you feel like knowing who Jesus is. We don’t
always feel the way we ought to feel. Some mornings I wake up
and would rather do anything else but open my bible or pray.
Some Sunday mornings as much as I love you, I’d rather
be anywhere else. You may feel the same. That’s why I’m
not asking you about your feelings. I’m asking about your
will.
Your
will is the thing inside of you that determines what you actually
do. Your will is that thing that, in a marriage, when, periodically,
the feeling is gone and the passion is gone, says, I made a
promise to this man or to this woman and I’m going to
keep it. When the bible talks about loving Jesus or wanting
to know Jesus; when the bible speaks of loving other people;
it’s speaking about your will not your feelings. It does
not compute, from a biblical standpoint to say I want to know
Jesus and then to let your emotions determine your time with
him in prayer or your worship or your study or your fellowship.
The attitude of the heart that says “I’ll pray when
I feel like it or read the bible when I have time or go to bible
study if I have time after I’m finished doing everything
else that I like better, or I’ll go to church when the
music is more to my liking or the sermons are better or we’re
studying a better book” points to a heart that is centered
on the self and pleasing the self, rather than on knowing Christ.
To “love” and to “want” as these words
are used in the bible are not feeling words but action words.
To want to know who Jesus is, biblically speaking, is necessarily
to employ the means he’s given us, bible, prayer, church,
fellowship, for the purpose of drawing close to him whether
your feelings are there or not; whether the passion is there
or not. You make the decision, daily, to see who Jesus is and
nothing gets in your way.
Zacchaeus had that. He wanted to know Jesus. But Luke tells
us, “being a short man he could not, because of the crowd.”
So Zacchaeus got offended and went home. So Zacchaeus saw how
difficult it is to know Jesus so, having better things to do,
he gave up. Zacchaeus was relentless. He didn’t say, “I
want to see Jesus but I can’t because it would mean going
out of my way.” He didn’t say, “I want to
know Jesus but the people around Jesus are not very nice.”
He didn’t say, “I tried to get to know Jesus but
the people at that church didn’t welcome me. They were
mean to my kids.” He didn’t say, “I want to
know Jesus but I don’t have the right stature. I’m
not good enough. I’m a small person.” These are
the rationales people give for not drawing close to Christ.
Zacchaeus belies all of them. Nothing gets in his way. And,
likewise, I don’t care who you are or what you’ve
done or how busy you are with work or kids or school, If you
truly want to see who Jesus is, nothing will get in your way,
not inconvenience, not the un-Christlike behavior of Christians,
not your own unworthiness—and we are all wee little men
and women like Zacchaeus—nothing will stop you. You will
overcome every obstacle and throw off everything that hinders
and run to him. Do you want to see who Jesus is?
Luke tells us that Zacchaeus, seeing that he could not get through
the crowd and knowing himself to be too short “ran ahead”
of the procession that had just passed. Jewish men of importance
and prestige did not run. Other people ran. Your kids ran, your
dogs ran, you’re wife may even on occasion run, you did
not run. You walked with dignity. You held yourself together
in all circumstances. To do otherwise would be to lose face.
If you remember the parable of the prodigal son, one of the
more shocking things to a Jewish reader about that parable is
that when the father sees his son in the far distance coming
back from the pigsty, he hikes up his robes and runs to embrace
him. And here, in a similar act, but in real life, Zacchaeus
this very powerful man hikes up his rich robes and literally
runs, not to meet a repenting prodigal, but as a repenting prodigal
to know Jesus. Zacchaeus to do lost his dignity and respect
and face. But he was willing to do it. I imagine, and this is
speculation; that he’d tasted all the pleasures money
could buy and found that they were empty. He may haven woken
up that morning and realized that while surrounded by opulence,
he really had nothing. He’d rejected his faith, he was
hated by his own people, he was rich, successful, powerful,
but utterly alone.
You’ve got to wonder about the crowd at this point. No
one makes room. Zacchaeus responsible for the impoverishment
of widows and the destitution orphans. He was hard and cruel
and selfish. If I were in that crowd, I can imagine thinking
to myself. “Let the little man run.” It would’ve
been kind of funny; there’s some humor in the way this
is written. The tables are turned. The little rich man used
to getting his way is shut out by the people he’s impoverished
and he loses it. That’s funny, says the crowd, that’s
what he gets. He should have to run around back there, the despicable
little man. He should have thought about this before taxing
me out of my home. There’s no way I’m letting him
through.
And so here is this man, a sinner who wants to know Jesus who
finds his way blocked, not by the law not by his hard
heart, but by the people around Jesus who will not let him in.
I hope that we at Good Shepherd are not like this crowd. Before
assuming that we are not let me say that I’ve heard directly
from some recently who’ve come here wanting to know Jesus
who’ve not felt welcome. They initially did, because we’re
good at the initial stuff. We give our guest bags and smile
and talk and introduce. But make the wrong move in the kitchen
or in the parish hall or in the nursery; volunteer to help in
the wrong ministry, someone’s pet ministry, step on the
wrong toes and, at least for these people, the smiles disappeared.
I wonder if we haven’t become so set in our patterns that
our patterns have become a barrier to some people getting to
know Jesus here? I didn’t mean to bring this up in a sermon
but there it is. We need to be very careful not to hinder access
to Christ. “This is our Jesus. This is my Jesus. This
is our church, this is my church.” That cannot be our
attitude. And this is true not only in our common life, but
in our home life and work life and personal life. Our words
and our actions should be like windows through which the world
has access to God in Jesus Christ so that when someone wants
to know Jesus they can come here or speak to you and find the
One who says, despite their sins, despite our sins, come down,
I’m staying with you today.
