Thoughts on Zacchaeus

If you know the story of Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1-10), you'll know he was a bad dude. He was a tax collector, a cheat, a swindler, and short. The story goes that when Jesus came to town, Zacchaeus wanted to see him so badly that he climbed a tree so he could see Jesus through the crowd. I imagine he climbed the tree not only because he was short, but to to avoid the crowds that despised him for cheating them out of their money.

When Jesus walked by, accompanied by the crowd - the city officials, religious figures, the "important" people - he stopped, looked up in the tree, and said, "Zacchaeus, I'm coming to your house for dinner tonight." Zacchaeus was so stunned he may have fallen out of the tree, and the crowd was so stunned they may have fallen over. And Zacchaeus was so transformed by that evening with Jesus that he paid back four times the amount he had cheated people and turned over a new leaf.

I think we all know someone who has hurt us deeply, someone we despise, someone we really have to work hard at forgiving, loving, extending grace. I was reading the story of Zacchaeus the other day, and suddenly I was the religious snob walking next to Jesus, and the person who has hurt me deeply was Zacchaeus, up in the tree.

I imagined we were on our way to my house for dinner. I had planned a special meal, cleaned the house, and gotten everything perfectly arranged for Jesus. As we walked by the tree, Jesus looked up, and told my enemy (for lack of a better term), "I'm coming to your house for dinner!" I protested, "But Lord, you don't know what this person has done! You don't know how this person harms others. This person doesn't love you! Besides, you'll like my dinner better." (How's that for a petty, last-ditch effort?) Jesus looked down at me with a tender pity that seemed to say, "Do you still not understand my grace?"

And the answer is, No. I do not. But I know that it extends to my most hated enemy as well as to my hero, to those I admire, those I detest, those I love and those whom I feel are sorely misguided.

And I begin to understand that I am all of those people - the admired one, the detested one, the enemy and the hero, the confused one and the confident one - and if God's grace extends to me, then it extends to everyone.

Zacchaeus may have been closer to God than the religious snob, because he knew his depravity. He knew he needed Jesus. The religious snob does not. And I realise that what I should have prepared more than a meal, more than my house, was my heart.