His name, Zacchaeus, is related to a Hebrew word meaning pure, which makes the crowd's label sound like a joke. Jesus is passing through Jericho (verse 1), on his way to the cross, and he stops for one man. Zacchaeus is drawn in three strokes: 2"chief tax collector and was rich," and small in stature (verse 3). The first two together would have made him among the most resented men in Jericho, a Jew who had grown rich in the service of Rome. His height becomes the practical obstacle. He wants to see Jesus, but 3"on account of the crowd he could not." A man too disliked to be given room at the front solves it the only way left, running ahead and climbing a sycamore, undignified for a man of his position and apparently no longer something he cared to protect.
Jesus' own initiative changes everything. He looks up and says 5"Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today." He knows the name before anyone introduces them, and he invites himself, urgently, into the house of the one man the crowd would have avoided. Zacchaeus receives him joyfully, and the crowd grumbles: 7"He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner." No one disputes that the label fits. The complaint is about Jesus' choice of company.
What Zacchaeus says next is the turning point. 8"the half of my goods I give to the poor," he says, and if he has defrauded anyone, 8"I restore it fourfold." The law required restitution plus a fifth (Leviticus 6:5). Zacchaeus pledges four times the principal, on top of giving away half of everything outright. His whole relationship to money has been upended in one meal. A chapter earlier a rich ruler was asked to sell everything and walked away sad (Luke 18:18-23). Zacchaeus gives away half, unasked, and is welcomed without hesitation. The difference was a changed heart, and Jesus names no fixed percentage.
Jesus declares 9"Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham." Earlier he called a woman bent double for eighteen years a daughter of Abraham (Luke 13:16), insisting that her covenant dignity outweighed a Sabbath objection. Now the same title goes to a man the crowd considered a traitor to his own people. Zacchaeus belongs inside Abraham's family, and the faith his costly generosity has just shown real is the evidence.
Jesus names his whole mission aloud, and Zacchaeus is the demonstration of how it works. Jesus does the seeking. He initiates the encounter before Zacchaeus has done anything to deserve it, looking up into a tree for a man who thought he was watching from a safe distance. Salvation reached the house because Jesus went looking for him there.
Where have you been watching Jesus from a safe distance, up a tree of your own? Come down when he calls your name, and let him stay.
Prayer
Father, thank you for a Son who looks up into the very trees where we have hidden ourselves, seeking us before we have done anything to earn the search. Give us Zacchaeus's joy at being found, and his costly generosity once we are found. Whatever crowd grumbles at whoever you seek next, let us be glad, as Zacchaeus was, that you came looking for the lost at all. In Jesus' name, amen.