Before the Empire Falls!

“When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, ‘Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.’” (Luke 19:5)

I first met Zacchaeus in Sunday School. We sang about him – “Zacchaeus was a very little man” – and I imagined a comical figure, picked on for his height, rescued by Jesus’ kindness. I see him differently now, and I don’t like him.

If you don’t know the story, let me set the scene:

• Jesus is entering Jericho – his last stop on his fateful journey to Jerusalem
• The wealthy chief tax collector for the area, Zacchaeus, wants to see Jesus but can’t because he’s too short, so he climbs a tree to get a better view.
• Jesus stops at the tree, calls the man down, and invites himself to Zacchaeus’ place for a meal!

Zacchaeus may have been short, but he was not a victim. Zacchaeus was a collaborator. He worked for the Roman occupying forces, collecting Roman taxes from his own people. He’s not a quaint character. He was a man whose hands were greased with the machinery of empire and stained with blood.

Zacchaeus, we’re told, “was the chief tax collector” in Jericho, “and he was rich.”  (Luke 19:2)

The two go together. In Roman-occupied Judea, tax collection was a lucrative business – an auctioned privilege. Rome sold the rights to extract taxes from cities like Jericho to the highest bidder. The winner paid Rome a large, fixed sum and then squeezed the people for profit. The tax rate might have been 5%, but the tax collector added whatever commission he thought was appropriate, and if anyone resisted, he had the Roman military as his enforcers.

In the division between ‘us’ and ‘them’, Zacchaeus was archetypally one of THEM. He was a Jew who had chosen to profit from the oppression of his own people. He was a willing agent of imperial subjugation. No wonder he was hated. He wasn’t just collecting taxes — he was collecting resentment, betrayal, and fear.

And yet, Jesus stops beneath Zacchaeus’ tree!

Zacchaeus had climbed up to see Jesus, perhaps hoping to remain unnoticed, but Jesus looks up and calls him down – not to shame him, but to dine with him!

“I must stay at your house today” (Luke 19:5). That’s not hospitality. That’s a scandal. Jesus becomes the willing guest of a traitor!

In Gaza recently, after Israel temporarily withdrew some of their forces, we witnessed the execution of alleged collaborators – Palestinians accused of working for the occupying forces. They received no mercy, just as they had shown no mercy.

If Rome had pulled out of Jericho, Zacchaeus would have almost certainly met exactly the same fate. The people hated the Romans, but they hated people like Zacchaeus even more – Jews who fully understood the misery of their own people and chose to profit from it!

So, the scene of Jesus enjoying the hospitality of Zacchaeus is not an easy one to come to terms with, but the best (and the worst) is yet to come:

“Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I pay them back four times as much.” (Luke 19:8)

Some scholars, such as the Jesuit professor Joseph Fitzmyer , have noted that the Greek in that verse is in the present tense – “half my possession I give…” – suggesting that Zacchaeus may be defending what he is already doing rather than announcing a new way of life. Perhaps he was already trying to live generously? Perhaps he was misunderstood? I cannot accept that reading.

I mean no disrespect to the late Dr Fitzmyer (who no doubt forgot more about Luke’s gospel than I will ever know), but he lived as a professor on American University campuses. I suspect that if he’d lived in Gaza, he would have known that you don’t find caring and generous people working as agents of the occupation.

Yes, it’s possible that Zacchaeus was some sort of Oskar Schindler – appearing to serve the Nazis while quietly undermining the Reich and saving Jewish lives. That’s not impossible, but you wouldn’t join the Nazi party in the first place if you seriously opposed them. No. Zacchaeus was a very little man – not so much in stature but in spirit, or at least he was until he met Jesus

Zacchaeus becomes a new man, it seems – sharing his wealth and making reparations against those he’s wronged – yet I still find Jesus’ final words jarring:

“Today salvation has come to this house, for this man too is a son of Abraham.” (Luke 19:9)

Really? Now he’s one of us? Despite everything he has done. I mean … I’m glad he’s had a change of heart, but do I really now have to call him ‘brother’?

Apparently so! That’s the scandal of grace. In the strange kingdom of Jesus, the traitor becomes my host, my enemy becomes my guest, and the empire’s agent becomes my brother – a fellow child and inheritor of God’s good promises!

This is the Kingdom of Jesus – a world without Us and Them – and no, I’m not entirely comfortable in it. Even so, this is the kingdom we pray for, where mercy outruns judgement, where repentance changes everything, and where salvation comes not to the righteous but to repentant collaborators who dare to climb down.

Hear the Gospel of the Lord!
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ!