The Little Man Up the Tree

Not long after Jesus told his story about the tax collector who beat his chest at the back of the temple, he came through the city of Jericho on his way to Jerusalem. Jericho had a tax collector of its own, and he was the chief of them all.

His name was Zacchaeus. (Being chief meant the other tax collectors in Jericho worked for him, and a share of everything they squeezed out of people went into his pocket.) Zacchaeus had charged a great deal extra. He had a fine house and fine robes, and everyone in Jericho knew whose money had paid for them.

That day the whole city squeezed into the street to see Jesus. Zacchaeus wanted to see him too. He wanted to know who this man was. But Zacchaeus was short, the crowd was tall, and not one person in Jericho was going to make room for the tax man. He bounced on his toes. All he could see was the back of somebody's neck.

So Zacchaeus ran ahead down the road. (Important men did not run in the street in those days, and they certainly did not climb trees.) Zacchaeus did both. Beside the road stood a sycamore-fig tree with a fat trunk and low, wide branches. He grabbed a branch, hauled himself up, and settled among the leaves. Now he could see over every head in Jericho.

Here came Jesus, the crowd pressing around him. Closer he came, and closer, and right under that tree he stopped. He looked up into the branches.

"Zacchaeus!" he said. "Hurry and come down. I must stay at your house today."

(The crowd had other names for the tax man. Jesus used his real one.)

Zacchaeus came down that tree faster than he went up. He was so glad he could hardly stand still, and he took Jesus home.

The crowd began to grumble.

"Him? Of all the houses in Jericho?"

"He has gone to be the guest of a sinner!"

Inside the house, Zacchaeus stood up and spoke to Jesus. "Look, Lord! Half of everything I own, I am giving to the poor. And if I have cheated anyone out of anything, I will pay them back four times over."

(That means one stolen coin came back as four. Zacchaeus's money bags were about to get much lighter.)

Jesus had not said a single word about money. He had looked up into a tree and called a cheat by his name, and the cheat had come down a different man.

"Today rescue has come to this house," Jesus said, "because this man is a son of Abraham too." Abraham was the father of God's people, and Jericho had stopped counting Zacchaeus as part of that family. Jesus counted him back in. Then he said, "The Son of Man came to look for the lost and to save them." Son of Man was a name Jesus used for himself.

Zacchaeus had climbed the tree to get a look at Jesus. Up in the leaves, he found out that Jesus had come to Jericho looking for him.

Before Jesus was born, an angel told Joseph what to name the baby. The name Jesus means "the LORD saves." So when Jesus said rescue had come to that house, he was talking about himself. The grumblers in the street thought a teacher had gone in to visit a cheat, when God's own rescue had walked through the cheat's front door and sat down at his table.

From Jericho, Jesus took the steep road up to Jerusalem, where looking for the lost would cost him his life. He is still looking for them. He is the one who stops under the branches, looks up, and calls a name.