Let's Climb a Tree

Zacchaeus was a tax collector for the Roman Empire in his little town in Israel. Rome had taken power in Israel , as they had most everywhere else, and they levied large taxes on the conquered people, not for infrastructure or social services, but for the wealth and power of Rome . To collect the taxes, they found a local who was willing to work for them and supplied him with armed soldiers to get the money. That was Zacchaeus. He knocked on his neighbors doors on behalf of the empire, and he made his own salary by collecting more than Rome had demanded and pocketing the difference. He was sort of like the mafia collecting “protection money.”

What he was doing was w ron g, but it was working for him. I wonder if his old friends and neighbors ever tried to talk him out of it? Did they argue with him, pointing out his faults? And, if so, did Zacchaeus get defensive and argue back, adopting the Roman talking points about “Pax Romana,” the peace of the empire?

But argument is a poor way to change someone’s mind. It was Paul Tournier who said “I remember changing my mind during a heated argument only once in a long life.”

When Jesus finally met Zacchaeus and changed his life, he did it without argument. Jesus didn’t even mention the tax business or Zacchaeus’ corrupt wealth. All Jesus did was to look up in the tree that Zacchaeus had climbed in order to get a look (the townspeople, out of spite, had blocked him out at the roadside). Jesus looked up and told Zacchaeus that he wanted to share a meal with him.

I agree with Tournier. I don’t become a better person because someone argues with me. I become a better person by the power of God’s grace, shown to me in people who say to me by their actions, “I value you. You are a person of great worth.”

When life is going well for us we don’t look for changes. When we are comfortable, we don’t look for anything to upset our comfort. We don’t ask hard questions. Zacchaeus was living comfortably. He was wealthy, and he had power in his position. Why did he climb the tree? What was it in him that wanted to see Jesus? What was it that wanted to climb a tree and look at a different way of life? I wonder what trees we might need to climb?

And I wonder about us not just as individuals, but together as a people. We live in the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth, and that’s what Zacchaeus was in his town. I wonder what a conversion for our nation would look like. Can we, together, climb a tree, hoping to see this son of God who can show us a better way?