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LITTLE MAN, BIG STORY (PART 2)

Kathleen Healy’s day began uneventfully. She needed a pair of jeans. So she went to Marshall Fields, her favorite department store in Minneapolis, knowing she’d find what she wanted. When she arrived in the jeans area, she picked up a couple of options and headed for the fitting room.

There she noticed a clip snagged on the pair of jeans in her hands. When she looked again, she found a very large sum of money attached. But that didn’t phase her. She’d just take it to the person at the cash register. A few minutes later, decision made about the jeans, she went to the cash register, and casually remarked that she’d found a large sum of money on a pair of jeans and handed it to the assistant.

The woman at the register let out a shriek, “Oh, a customer’s been looking all over for this!” Kathleen lightheartedly refused a reward, but the clerk kept insisting. Finally, they reached a compromise, and Kathleen took home a one-pound box of Marshall Field’s signature candy, Frango mints, along with her new jeans.

That evening, Kathleen opened the box, and noticed a folded piece of paper inside. It looked like a letter. She’d never seen anything like that in a box of Frango mints before. When she opened the note, in amazement she read that she’d won $10,000! Which she claimed and received.

Kathleen received a handsome reward for her honesty. Of course life doesn’t always work out just so . . . neat and tidy. We don’t always see immediate rewards when we do right. But in the Bible story we’re looking at today, it does.

The story begins with the words, “Jesus entered Jericho, and was passing through” (19:1).

I imagine the epic of Zacchaeus may have begun three-and-a-half years earlier when John the Baptist reached the peak of his popularity. I imagine Zacchaeus joined the crowds that came to the Jordan river close to his home in Jericho. The strangely dressed, fiery preacher had become a sensation.

If Zaccaehus heard John’s speech, it may have put his life into a tailspin. In Luke 3 we read the outline of the sermon John preached day after day. “You are a generation of snakes,” he would shout. “You must flee from the coming wrath of God. Don’t claim safety because you’re part of Abraham’s line. That won’t protect you. Your life must show fruit, good fruit. If not, you’ll be cast into the flames. So repent!”

That message sent goose bumps up and down the spines of the listening tax collectors. Luke records, “Then came also tax collectors to be baptized in the Jordan, and they asked, ‘Master, what shall we do?’” And He told them to take a fair and honest tax and no more (3:12). Many of the friends of Zacchaeus repented and were baptized. These people all worked on the same street in Jericho. They probably drank tea together every day. Zacchaeus may well have wondered what they would talk about next time they met, for he was not among the baptized! He still cheated everyone he could.

The teachings of John made a difference to the baptized. It made honest men of dishonest tax collectors. But all Zaccheaus got was a guilty conscience. Thoughts of what he could do, might do, should do, kept smoldering in his mind like the remnants of a fire late in the night. The idea that he should restrict himself to an honest tax, and nothing more, as the Baptist put it, drove him crazy. And so it went on for three and a half years.

Until the day some news blew through town like a wild spring storm, that Jesus, the One John had introduced, the One whose way he had come to prepare, was approaching Jericho on His way to Jerusalem. The news stirred the town. Great crowds poured onto the streets. The sick took up positions where they’d be noticed, where they could beg for healing.

And to the crowd that day came Zacchaeus. How humiliating for such an affluent crook to have to fight for a place among all these goat herders and water carriers. But he had such an intense desire to catch a glimpse of Jesus that he held in check his contempt of ordinary people, and ventured onto the street.

And immediately he ran into the old problem. He stood out from the crowd in his expensive clothes (maybe “sartorial splendor” would be a better description). But he had a permanent paranoia: he hated crowds for an obvious reason. Being so short he could never see anything.

But the importance of the occasion made him as creative as the tax collection methods he practiced. He ran ahead of the crowd to a point just past the center of town where a grand old fig tree grew, its lower branches drooped and touched the ground, its noble upper branches arched across the street. With no trouble he climbed into the tree, and positioned himself on a bough just above the street and waited.

He could hear the crowd in the distance. Then the parade turned the corner onto Main Street, and he saw a tall figure making His way slowly between the crowds on both sides of the street. The procession stopped often. There were moments of silence, he guessed people were begging for healing, then a roar of delight from the crowd, and he assumed someone had been healed. And as he waited, his desire to see this man, quickened; and his desire to get his conscience cleared, intensified.

A short time later Jesus came into full view, an unrestricted view! And just a glimpse of that face began to transform a nagging thought about change and repentance into a full-bodied desire for a new life.
Then came the transforming moment of his life. Jesus stopped. And the crowd stopped with Him. Jesus looked up. And the crowd followed His gaze. Jesus spoke. And the crowd listened. And they heard Him say these words:

“Zacchaeus, come down immediately, I must stay at your house today” (Luke 19:5 NIV).

I imagine it took a moment or two for the words to sink in. I imagine he wrinkled his brow and shook his head, as the whole open-air stage waited. But when he finally acted, he moved like lightning. He half climbed, half fell, out of the tree, and a moment later stood in front of Jesus, and like the fancy-dressed Master of Ceremonies in a parade, Zacchaeus led Jesus and His disciples down the road, around the corner, and into his mansion that stood tall above a handful of other tax collectors’ homes in this elite area.

While they waited outside, the crowd reacted. It took a little time for them to process what had happened. Jesus had been just “passing through” on his way to Jerusalem, as we read from the Bible, but the call of the cross had been put on hold, briefly, while Jesus came to bring healing to a dealer’s crooked conscience.

And the muttering of the crowd as they stood outside had a common theme:

“He has gone to be the guest of a sinner” (Luke 19:7 NIV).

Little did they understand the grand truth of the gospel they had unwittingly uttered. Yes, this man loves sinners! He loves to be with sinners, loves to bear the burdens of sinners.

How long Jesus spent in the home of Zacchaeus, we are left to wonder. I’m sure it caused no small grief to the taxman’s wife. Without warning, she had to provide hospitality in her living room to a crowd of more than dozen hungry men.

Matthew sat among them, quietly reflecting on his former life as a taxman, and he must have felt a glow of appreciation for the decision he had made to follow Jesus. But he also must have wondered what might be the response in the case of Zacchaeus. The conversation that ensued between the host and his guest is not disclosed. But in the end, Zacchaeus experienced a true conversion. How can we be sure? The secret affairs of the heart are revealed in the “new” Zacchaeus compared with the “old.”

As Jesus stood up to leave, Zacchaeus made a public statement in front of everyone. The little cheat made a clean breast of all the dishonesty in his life. He said,

"Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount" (Luke 19:8).

This most successful taxman had cheated people and amassed a fortune. But now he makes a clean breast of it all. He pledges to make restitution—but four times the amount he’d taken dishonestly.

I imagine that right there the disciples saw the usually serious face of Jesus wreathed in a smile, as he replied:

"Today salvation has come to this house” (Luke 19: 9NIV).

Which reminds us of the place where we began, the experience of Kathleen Healy. What a treasure followed in the train of the simple act of honesty giving back the money that didn’t belong to her. And it’s the same for you and me. Jesus invites us to be honest in all our dealings. And he offers forgiveness for all our wrongs, takes away our guilt, and carries that burden on Himself as our Substitute. Praise God for Jesus, our daily Burden-bearer.