Luke 19:1-10

People like to categorize people, to file them away in the neatly labeled file folders of their minds. Conservatives or liberals, welfare moms or soccer moms, hunters or tree huggers, addicts, vegetarians, intellectuals, foreigners, gun owners, patriots, and so on. It makes things simpler, doesn’t it? Once you’ve labeled someone, you know what to expect. Again this week Jesus challenges our categories, our stereotypes, and our self-satisfied attachment to them.

We don’t know much about Zacchaeus. We’re not even 100% sure he was short. As disturbing as this might be to those of us who grew up singing about Zacchaeus as a “wee little man,” in the Greek, you can’t tell for certain whether Zacchaeus had to climb a tree to see Jesus because Zacchaeus was short, or because Jesus was short. A short Jesus challenges our categories, so we assume Zacchaeus was the short one.

All we know for certain is that Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector, and he was rich. “Tax collector” and “rich” go together in the New Testament world. Collecting taxes in Jesus’ time meant collecting taxes for the Romans, who by this time had conquered most of the Mediterranean world, including the region known as Judea. Zacchaeus made his living by profiting from his people’s oppression. He wasn’t paid a salary. A tax collector made his money by over-taxing the people, and then pocketing the excess. Zacchaeus pocketed plenty of excess. As chief tax collector, he collected a percentage from all the other tax collectors that worked under him, as well. Everyone in Jericho knew and despised him. We, the readers, are prepared to encounter a villain in need of conversion.

Jesus is passing through Jericho. Maybe Zacchaeus has heard the rumors that Jesus is a friend of tax collectors and sinners. Whatever the reason, Zacchaeus scampers up a sycamore tree to get a good look. Jesus spots him and calls him by name, which tells you something about the notoriety of tax collectors. But Jesus refuses to be bound by labels. He invites himself over to Zacchaeus’ house for dinner, even at the risk of crossing a barrier of ritual purity. A tax collector was considered unclean because of the goods he inspected and the homes he entered. By inviting himself to Zacchaeus’ home for dinner, Jesus brings surprising, and from the perspective of the crowd, undeserved honor on Zacchaeus, the rich crook. Their jaws must have hit the ground.

In the New Revised Standard Version translation, Zacchaeus’ response sounds like a miraculous conversion. But contrary to most contemporary translations, in the Greek, Zacchaeus isn’t promising to give half of his possessions to the poor in the future. He’s saying he already does, now, as a matter of practice. The future tense might make people more comfortable because just as we like our predictable labels for people, we cling to our presumption that in the presence of Jesus, Zacchaeus, the sinner, repented, and his promises are proof. But current scholarship points out that Zacchaeus neither confesses his sin nor repents, nor does Jesus congratulate Zacchaeus for his penitence, his faith, or his change of heart. Jesus merely pronounces his blessing, not because of anything Zacchaeus has done or promised but simply because he, like those grumbling around him, is a son of Abraham. Shannon Kershner writes, “What if Zacchaeus lived in a way that was generous and kind and faithful, then all of their stereotypes, their carefully set up and well-crafted assumptions about ‘those people,’ would be blown up, destroyed, revealed as empty. As David Lose writes, if Zacchaeus’s story is not a conversion story, then it does not fit our formula.”

Our formula impacts how we hear the word “lost” when Jesus says, “For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10). Perhaps Zacchaeus isn’t lost because he’s an unclean sinner, but because his community has ostracized him; he is lost to them. Perhaps it isn’t Zacchaeus who is in need of repentance, but rather, the community that despises him. Or perhaps it is we, the readers who are so quick to decide Zacchaeus needs conversion, while we smugly assume we don’t.

We don’t know whether Zacchaeus was giving half his possessions to the poor. What we know is that Jesus didn’t demand this before seeking Zacchaeus out from the crowd and honoring him. The crowd had written Zacchaeus off as despicable, corrupt, greedy. Jesus did not.

Jesus does not.

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Eric Barreto, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-31-3/commentary-on-luke-191-10-6
John Ortberg, Love Beyond Reason (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing, 1998).
David Lose, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-31-3/commentary-on-luke-191-10-2
Shannon Kershner, “Jesus Makes Things Complicated,” March 13, 2016, https://fourthchurch.org/sermons/2016/031316.html