Surprise Endings: The Lessons of Zacchaeus
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This week’s scripture and sermon begins in familiar territory for many of us. The song that has made Zacchaeus (19:1-10) famous (“Zacchaeus was a wee little man, and a wee little man was he…”) still echoes down the halls of many children’s Sunday School classes. Our task, though, is to strip away our childlike memories of a sweet song and story, and see the radical nature of what Luke lays before us.
Notice that this story occurs immediately following Jesus’ healing of an unnamed blind beggar (18:35-43). The beggar was poor and powerless. Zacchaeus was rich and powerful (“…he was a chief tax collector and was rich” [19:2]). Both receive salvation (“your faith has saved you” [18:42] and “Today salvation has come to this house…”[19:9]). Consistent with Luke’s picture of Jesus as touching lives and transforming households across the economic spectrum, we also have carefully woven into this story a vital message of penance and repentance concurrent with the joy of “salvation.” Luke points out importantly that rather than view salvation as strictly a “pie in the sky by and by” life after death scenario, instead, transformative joy and simultaneous reparations are in order here and now.
Leviticus 6:5 and Numbers 5:7 required what had been stolen be returned along with an additional 20% as a kind of penance (totaling 120%). Zacchaeus returns what he has stolen, and gives back an additional four times as much (400%), plus he gives half of his possessions to the poor (19:8)! This act is more than an act of penitential devotion. It is an outlandish, radical act of unencumbered joy. Salvation, then, changes the life and environment of individuals, our households (19:9), and all with whom we interact.
While we won’t be able to cover Luke’s next section in our current series, the scripture moves strategically: from Jericho, the scene gradually shifts to Jerusalem. “Some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones…”(21:5). Jesus breaks the understandable mood of pride in their temple’s monumental beauty by responding: “…the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down” (21:6). Jesus goes on to describe what appears to be a foretaste of “the end times” that will require “endurance” (21:19).
Jesus understands that his society is stumbling blindly and foolishly toward an encounter with Rome and with competing Jewish factions that will result in disaster. This actually happened in 70 A.D. After four years of rebellion against Rome and infighting among each other, horrific devastation took place in and around Jerusalem at the hands of Roman legions resulting in the complete destruction of the temple. Indeed, there was “not one stone left upon another (21:6).”
While Luke’s recording of these words provides a window into the historical tensions of that day, the passage also sheds light upon what Craddock calls “transformations cosmic in scope and nature” (Luke, Fred Craddock, p. 243). God is doing something new and amazing. And so it is still now, and with us…
Love,
David
David Jordan
Senior Pastor