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I’m going to start at the end. There are several stories in our Bibles that, if you tell them just right, they become excellent children’s stories. Noah’s ark is an excellent children’s story because of the animals and the boat and the rain as long as you don’t talk about all of the people dying.
Moses parting the waters is a wonderful visual of people walking across it on dry land, as long as you don’t think about the army that drowned when the water came crashing back down.
David and Goliath is a fun story of a little boy fighting a giant, which we can say doesn’t exist, so it’s all pretend as long as you ignore the fact that there was a war going on for probably a century or two.
We have a lot of stories in our Bible that we try to make into kids’ stories but, if we’re really honest, they are not.
We get to the story of Zacchaeus. And in case you didn’t know, 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. It’s a song that we teach our kids. It is catchy. You might be singing it right now, too. But it is not a story written for children, so there must be a reason it’s included.
Here’s what we know about Zacchaeus. He was a tax collector and Luke describes him as short and that he had to scurry up the tree. It kind of seems like our author is trying to make Zacchaeus look as ridiculous as possible.
Tax collectors throughout this gospel are always grouped with sinners: tax collectors and sinners. Tax collectors were not like our modern IRS, they were more like toll workers. Rome, when they conquered an area, they made advancements that included paving roads. Everyone liked the roads. No one wanted to pay for them. Locals would be contracted by Rome to collect an amount of money that would get shipped back to the Rome. If Rome thought this stretch of road should collect $10,000 over the course of a year, perhaps a local toll/tax collector would charge $10 every time someone crossed it. When they hit that $10,000 in the first few months, they did not stop collecting money because 1: they had to eat and feed their families. And 2: why would you stop and let people get used to not paying? Of course, if you had to leave the city to work and had to pay on your way in and your way out, such taxes hit you pretty hard and if you were part of the elite and didn’t have to work, you didn’t pay as much.
There were, of course, two problems. 1: Tax collectors were making themselves rich on the backs of their own people, particularly poor by, swindling them out of money that the tax collector didn’t need for Rome and more than they needed to survive. And 2: Tax collectors were in collusion with Rome–the empire that is currently occupying the nation and people. And Zacchaeus was so good at his job that he had become the director of operations of all tax collecting workers in his region. And that is why he is hated.
Or as scholar Michael Card wrote, “Zacchaeus is not misunderstood. He is not a victim of circumstance. He has chosen to work for the Romans to bilk his own people. So successful is he at his job that he has risen in the ranks to become the chief tax collector. The people don’t despise him because they are close-minded and judgmental; they despise him because he is a slimy, good-for-nothing thief. And he knows it.” I bet he did know they hated him.
And the story we’re told is that something about the story of Jesus compelled him so much that he needed to see Jesus, he would not be deterred, he would not be shut out, he would not miss the chance! so he climbed a tree and Jesus saw him there and Jesus invited himself to dinner, and the crowd grumbled. Jesus and Zacchaeus talk, and Zacchaeus decides he will become a righteous man who gives away half of his money and If he cheated anyone he will pay back four times what he took. That’s a story of redemption. That’s the story we read today. Abridged.
That is not the story our author wrote.
Novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie did a TED Talk which was 15 years ago now, on the problem of the single narrative. When Adichi started reading, all her books had white children playing in the snow. She thought that was what books were about. So when she was young, writing in crayon, it was about white children, playing in the snow. She was growing up in Nigeria. Her college roommate and professors didn’t understand why she wasn’t a starving poor child because they, we, me, had been spoon-fed sad stories of African children, so you have to finish your supper. She admitted she had made the same mistake, seeing only the US side of Mexico and the immigration fight, only to be surprised and then felt ashamed that she was surprised that the people living in Guadalajara were just people living their lives. She concluded that the single story robs people of dignity. Makes recognition of our equal humanity difficult, and emphasizes how we are different, rather than how we are similar.
I think the bible always surprises me a little when i realize how complex some of the characters are, even when we just get to meet them for moments.
Now, people much smarter than me in biblical languages translate the Greek into English, and I can’t do that, so I have to trust them. Scholars looked at the Greek words on the page and decided translate what made the most sense. There is a future-present tense “I will pay” which exists in English. But there are no examples future-present tense in the gospel. And my very thorough single-page research I did online, suggests that there might not be a future-present tense in ancient Greek. Other very smart scholars of biblical languages say that what’s written in the oldest manuscripts is “Look Lord, I give half of my possessions to the poor and if I have cheated anyone I repay them four times as much.” So when salvation comes to this house, maybe it looked a little different than we thought.
Here’s the thing: I have books with scholars who are deeply committed to one or the other interpretation. The NRSV has “I will pay,” and the Common English Bible says, “I pay,” and neither comment in the footnotes that they might be wrong. History tells us Zacchaeus was a terrible person and so most of the scholarship has followed that lead. People who grumbled when Jesus invited himself over to Zacchaeus’ because he was a tax collector, a terrible sinner, absolutely unredeemable, they saw just one thing. What if this is one of Jesus’ last lived-parable? A lived example of turning the world upside down? Jesus looks up in a tree and sees Zacchaeus, really sees him, understands Zacchaeus, and decides he’s going to show everyone else who is really is, too. Jesus is teaching us to avoid the single narrative.
And I think it’s similar for a blind man. He sat behind the crowd in darkness but he saw Jesus. And when he cried out, “Son of David! Have pity. He was the first to use “Son of David” to publicly name Jesus as Messiah. He would not be silenced. He would not be deterred. He would not be shut out. He would not miss his chance to meet Jesus. In Jesus. Heard him above everything else. Everyone else really heard him. And maybe he knew Zacchaeus, maybe he had received kindness from Zacchaeus and told Jesus about him! Maybe that’s why Jesus knew Zacchaeus’ name.
And sometimes we’re the ones in need of healing. Sometimes we’re the ones who are on the outside of a community, even when we’re in a crowd. Maybe we’re screaming to be heard, seen, recognized.
But I think most of the time we’re like the disciples who can see and hear and they could touch Jesus and have no idea what he’s doing. And we’re like the crowds, so certain we know the answer, we know the truth, we know the way it’s supposed to go; so we grumble or we shush the people based on all that we are certain we know about them. And sometimes we’re like the scholars, we want to make the story of Jesus fit the story we want to tell. We see it in those who tell the story of Christian Nationalist, body-builder Jesus. But I think we do it too when we just want Jesus to be nice, not upset anyone, not ask of us or expect anything of us but a couple hours a week.
My friends who are preaching about Zacchaeus are saying he’s a rich villain who we have to love anyway. And he is redeemed by the love of Jesus. That is a really easy sermon, with really hard implications if you attach modern names of wealthy people to take advantage of others for their wealth. They are preaching when salvation came to this house, it was to save Zacchaeus from his own evil. But what if it was really about reconciling the community back to Zacchaeus, that he no longer stood on the outside, no longer was shunned for the assumptions that they were making because they weren’t curious or asking questions?
And Zacchaeus is still problematic, he is complicit in the workings of the empire. But, there have been calls to boycott stores, Target, for example, because they decided to end their DEI work. But there are good people for whom Target is how they put food on their table, care for their families, and live in this world. Sometimes there aren’t easy answers. And if it weren’t Zacchaeus, it might be someone who doesn’t give half of their money to the poor and repay if they cheated someone.
So, I wonder if that’s a way to look at this story, a grown-up story about a complicated man living on the edge of society because they thought they knew him. A cog in the machine of the empire, but doing his best to be subversive and care for those in need with the power the empire gave him.
So today, let us beware of the single narrative and all the assumptions they lead us to. Be curious and ask questions because more truths are waiting to be shared.
Like Jesus, we can look, see, hear, listen to those who are on the edges, who are being silenced, who are desperate for community.
Because that is what it is about: that are all part and invited into this family of faith, this community of covenant and ancestors and love.