A Hidden Saint
“Zacchaeus was a wee little man,
And a wee little man was he.
He climbed up in a sycamore tree
For the Lord he wanted to see.
And as the Savior passed that way
He looked up in the tree and he said,
‘Zacchaeus you come down,
For I’m going to your house today!’
For I’m going to your house today!”
We’ve all heard that Zacchaeus was a wee little man, haven’t we? He had a reputation as a rich, tax collector in Jericho who forced the people of the town to pay more than their fair share of taxes in order to line his own pockets. He was thought to be selfish, dishonest, and probably lonely. The song says he was a small man, but I’m not sure if his “smallness” was based on his physical height, though. He was considered a small man, weak in character and small in morals. He surely isn’t the right type of example for us on this All Saints Sunday, is he? Once again, the gospel writer, Luke, might be turning this story on its head, trying to show us that Jesus has something different to say about who is a sinner and a saint.
But, as we’ve seen over the past several months, Jesus had turned his face toward Jerusalem. He was on his way to his abrupt arrest and painful execution. He was solely focused on the road ahead of him and the text says that he wanted to do nothing more than travel through Jericho, pass through, to not stop on his mission to the cross. Jesus was determined to fulfill the will of God and to reveal divine love through brutal crucifixion. Jesus was determined to keep going. Jesus was determined… but so was Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus was determined to see Jesus and he wouldn’t let anything stop him. Jesus was all Zacchaeus had.
You see, Zacchaeus, as a tax collector, was lumped in with all of the other tax collectors and was hated and despised by the people in Jericho. It is assumed that the rich Zacchaeus took advantage of those living in Jericho, one of the wealthiest cities in the Near Eastern region. (We probably remember Jericho from another song that depicts Joshua and the Battle of Jericho, but I’ll spare you and won’t sing that one this morning). According to scholars, Jericho was a rich, important, and prosperous city. It was a frequently traveled town in the Jordan Valley and gave access not only to the Jordan River and lands east of the Jordan, but it was the biggest city on route to Jerusalem. Jericho had a great palm forest and world-famous balsam groves which perfumed the air for miles. It was known as the “City of Palms.” Josephus, early Jewish historian, called it “a divine region and the fattest in Palestine.”
And the Romans got wealthy by collecting taxes from this prosperous city. This highly traveled and trafficked city of Jericho was bustling with activity and commerce, which meant it was one of the most taxed cities in Palestine. And so, a tax collector in Jericho stood to make a large sum of money at the hands of the unsuspecting citizens. Zacchaeus, one of the best tax collectors in the business, the chief tax collector, was probably the most hated man in town. He was known near and far, that wee little man with a way big ego and even bigger and greedy aspirations. According to Luke, he was known for his wealth. So, the city folks probably hated him for his acts of extortion and embezzlement. The crowds believed he took advantage of the elderly, exploited the working poor, and took care of his own selfish desires and his own friends. According to everyone he was a sinner and a thief and conman. Everyone knew it, why didn’t Zacchaeus?
But, as I was studying this text, I found something interesting. The name Zacchaeus in Hebrew means pure, clean, and righteous. Yet, we don’t see that in the text. Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector which meant that he was a Jew who collected taxes for the Roman oppressors. If anyone was going to be a saint in Jericho, if anyone was going to welcome Jesus, meet with Jesus, dine with Jesus, it wasn’t going to be Zacchaeus. It is believed that he had hurt too many people, had hurt too many families, had hurt the poor, had hurt his own friends. He was hurting on the inside. He was not happy. He had chosen a life that would leave him an outcast and alone.
And we know from all four of the gospels that tax collectors were lumped into the same category as sinners. Everywhere in the New Testament we hear about the tax collectors and sinners who ate with Jesus, who listened to Jesus, who were not welcomed at the synagogue to pray. They were the worst of the worst as they were given their own despised category and were spoken about alongside the general grouping of sinners.
And Zacchaeus was the chief of all sinners. The crowds were determined to hate him just as Jesus was determined to pass through Jericho to get to Jerusalem. Jesus had no plans to stop in the city. The text says he was passing through. But Zacchaeus was just as determined… just as determined to see Jesus, to get to the only one who would see him for who he truly was: not defined by his profession or what others thought about him. He had heard of Jesus and risked the crowds who wouldn’t have minded giving him a nudge, or a kick, or a push. He had heard of Jesus and risked the bruises and the insults to find his way to him. He had heard of Jesus and risked climbing a sycamore fig tree with its short trunk and wide branches forking out in all directions. He had heard of Jesus and risked everything to catch a glimpse of the Savior.
He had heard about this Jesus… this Jesus who welcomed sinners and tax collectors and prostitutes and the lame and the poor and the blind, this Jesus who welcomed all people to the table, even a hated wretch like him. Zacchaeus needed the love of God. Zacchaeus was reaching out for the love of God just as the tree reached out above the dusty roads crowded with people. Zacchaeus knew that his life needed to take a turn and that somewhere deep down inside of him was a saint, a saint that could be the man that Jesus knew he could be, a saint that was hidden but needed the outstretched love of God to pull his saintly heart into the light. Inside of Zacchaeus was a hidden saint.
Zacchaeus not only wanted to see Jesus, but he wanted Jesus to see him, to see who he really was, the saint who was constantly hidden by the perceptions and prejudices of the people of Jericho. Maybe there was more to Zacchaeus than the townsfolk could see. Maybe there is another way to read this story in which Zacchaeus isn’t a sinner who repents and converts, but a saint who surprises. Maybe Zacchaeus surprised the crowds by revealing his true nature as a saint rather than the crowd’s perception that he was sinner. Maybe there is another way for us to read this story.
You see, all the translations of this text, and I’m sure it is in line with how you learned about Zacchaeus in Sunday School, shows that Zacchaeus said, “I will give half of my possessions and I will pay back four times as much as I have frauded anyone.” Isn’t that what we remember? We praise God that this horrible and corrupt man was curious enough about Jesus that he climbed to new heights and that Jesus’ presence transformed him? But what if that’s not what the text really says?
The verbs, in Greek, are not pointing the reader to the future acts of Zacchaeus. The Greek is present tense. “I give half of my possessions and I pay back four times as much when I see someone frauded.” And so, according to the Greek, Zacchaeus wasn’t a sinner who converted but a saint who surprised. The original translation of the text leads us to believe that he didn’t make promises of retribution in the future due to his newly transformed life, but, rather, he was defending himself and his actions against the false accusations and assumptions of the crowd.
And so, Jesuit Priest, Father Joseph Fitzmyer, as well as other commentators and scholars, render the verbs as present tense which reveals a very different Zacchaeus, a Zacchaeus defending himself and acknowledging the hidden saint within him. If we read it in Greek, Zacchaeus claimed his true character, “Lord, I always give half of my wealth to the poor, and whenever I discover any fraud or discrepancy I always make a fourfold restitution.”
The crowd had demonized Zacchaeus while Jesus truly saw this hidden saint, calling him “a son of Abraham.” And I love this reading. According to scholars, “it fits with the many times that Jesus called out good people who did bad and commended bad people who did good. Luke had already mentioned several unlikely heroes – the faith of a Roman soldier, a ‘good’ Samaritan, a shrewd manager who was commended for his dishonesty, a Samaritan leper who was the only person to give thanks for his healing, and a tax collector who was commended as more righteous than a sanctimonious Pharisee.”
So, maybe the story is not about a sinner who shocks us by repenting, but about the crowd that demonizes a person it doesn’t like with all sorts of false assumptions. Episcopal priest, Dr. Elizabeth Kaeton notes the reversal of Zacchaeus’s identity. The despicable Zacchaeus is actually the generous one. The traditional interpretation that Zacchaeus is a sinner who is converted “tricks us into committing the very sin that the story condemns. It presents Zacchaeus not as a righteous and generous man who is wrongly scorned by his prejudiced neighbors, but as the story of a penitent sinner.”
Kaeton goes on. She says, “Turns out, Zacchaeus does live up to his name. He is, in fact, ‘the righteous one.’ Turns out, Jesus knew that all along!” Kaeton thus concludes with a nod to Halloween: “Jesus is once again turning our world upside down, confronting us with our assumptions about who is good and who is evil and demonstrating for us the tricks we play in our minds before we treat one another – one way or another. Like the crowd murmuring about Zacchaeus, it is easy to be blinded by our prejudice of ‘those people’ and find ourselves accusing the very person or people we should be emulating.”
The story of Zacchaeus ends with the words, “the Son of Man came to seek and save that which was lost.” Scottish preacher and professor, William Barclay, contends, “we must always be careful how we take the meaning of this word lost. In the New Testament it does not mean damned or doomed. It simply means in the wrong place. A thing is lost when it has got out of its own place into the wrong place; and when we find such a thing, we return it to the place it ought to occupy.” Zacchaeus’s saintliness was lost. His worth was lost to his community, to the crowds of Jericho. He had been the “other” so long that he was lost to the people in the city and lost to himself. He climbed above the crowds to not only find Jesus, but to be found.
A person is lost when she or he has wandered away from their better selves, from the things that are important and life-giving. Zacchaeus felt that his saintly self was lost. But maybe it wasn’t lost. Maybe it was simply hidden, concealed by his profession, his possessions, his power. Maybe he was a hidden saint and needed Jesus to see that part of him that he could not see on his own. All he needed was someone to call his name, “Zacchaeus;” someone to tell him to stop spectating his own life, stop climbing trees to see what he might be missing; someone to call his saintly side out and invite the goodness and grace of Zacchaeus’s hidden nature to stay with Jesus, to make a home with God.
On this All Saints Sunday, we need to remember that the saints aren’t only those who have gone on to glory before. The saints are sitting in this room. The saints are sitting next to you. The saint is within you even though that saintliness feels hidden. So, hear Jesus calling our names, notice salvation coming into the dwellings and houses of our lives, reassuring us that we are daughters and sons of Abraham, calling each and every one of us saints.
Amen.