The Seeking Shepherd

Many years ago at a church kids’ event, I got to play Zaccheus in someone’s presentation of the story - I just stood and moved where I was told, but afterwards I was given a little illustrated book of the story as a thank you.

I suppose it’s partly because of that experience that I’ve always had a bit of a fondness for the story of Zaccheus.

It’s one which, in the UK at least, most kids who’d attended sunday school or church events could tell you about. Lessons often told the story directly, or a modernised version. Often we’d sing about how “Zaccheus was a wee wee man, and a wee wee man was he.”

But perhaps in emphasising his stature we can downplay just who Zaccheus was.

Zacchaeus Was a Wee Wee Man

We’re told that he was a chief tax collector, and he was rich.

A tax collector: a social outcast amongst the Jewish people.

This was a man who was seen as a traitor: a collaborator who cooperated with the Roman occupiers in the subjugation of his fellow Jews.

Worse than that, he was the chief tax collector. Unlike the junior collectors who Zaccheaus would have employed to do most of the actual work of collection, Zaccheaus had gained his position by bidding at auction for the right to collect taxes in the region. His bid would have been an up-front lump sum of total taxes for a time period, and now he had the right to collect those taxes and keep any profit for himself. And should anybody object to his extortionately inflated demands, he could call on the support of the Roman military to enforce them.

This was a man who not only collaborated with an intentionally opressive system designed to perpetuate injustice, he’d used his wealth to ensure the maximal benefit and profit for himself by working within that system and weaponising it against his own people.

He’d made himself very rich by exploting others, and so he was a pariah. He was viewed as a sinner on the level of a thief, which he was, or a prostitute.

But despite that, he had made himself incredibly rich.

But despite that, he wasn’t satisfied.

When Jesus was passing through Jericho, Zacchaeus wanted to see who he was.

And that doesn’t meant that he saw a crowd and wondered who it was for - Jesus’s fame had spread throughout the area and he undoubtedly knew the stories and the rumours. But he wanted to see for himself if they were true. Was this man really the miracle worker and great teacher that people said he was? Could he be the messiah?

Despite his wealth and status, it seems Zacchaeus was drawn to discover more about this man. Perhaps sensing that this could be an opportunity to witness something that was yet missing in his life.

And unable to see Jesus through the crowd due to his height, and with the crowd undoubtedly completely unwilling to allow the chief tax collector passage through to get a better look, he climbs up into a tree that he knows Jesus will pass.

And then, no doubt to his absolute astonishment, when Christ reaches that tree he looks up and he says “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.”

For I’m Coming to Your House For Tea

Once again, Jesus reverses cultural and societal expectations.

In the culture of the time, a visitor would have approached the town center and waited for someone to invite himto their house. Such an invitation would be seen to bring honour on both the guest -who was to eat at the house of a person of high status - and the the one extending hospitality, who was to welcome into their house someone of honour.

But instead, it is Jesus who imposes himself on the hospitality of another. And not someone of high status, but a social outcast! The English translation tells us that this caused the crowd to grumble, but it’s more accurate to say that they expressed mass disgust and disapproval!

“He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner!”

“He is granting this traitor great honour!”

Great honour indeed! With a few words, Christ has declared that the outcast is worthy of the highest level of respect.

And in doing so, they say, he has committed a great injustice.

Looking to our reading from Ezekiel, we see yet again the metaphor of God as shepherd. A shepherd who seeks out His flock that has been scattered, gathers them in, and feeds them with justice.

And what a justice it is: it’s a loving justice which binds up the injured and strengthens the weak. It’s a vengeful justice which utterly destroys the fat and the strong. And who could be a greater example of the fat and the strong than the man who has used the system to further the conditions which causes the weak and the broken to find themselves thus?

If Christ is truly the messiah then surely he will liberate the opressed from the opressor, tear down the tax collector from his tree and free the people from his tyranny.

But instead, he imposes himself on his hospitality.

And something in Zacchaeus stirs.

The man who has riches and status but yet isn’t satisfied doesn’t simply allow the good shepherd into his house out of some sense of obligation, but rather he joyfully welcomes him into his home. His heart is filled with delight that this man of God wishes to honour him despite his terrible deeds and his status as an outcast.

Perhaps he recognises that for the first time someone is respecting him not for his wealth and status, but for who he is.

So the Lord comes to the house of the chief tax collector.

And as they recline and they eat, and no doubt they talk, Christ’s love and grace works on Zaccheaus’s heart.

Whatever he experienced, it made him realise what is truly good and desirable in life - not the hording of wealth and status by whatever means neccessary, but the pursuit of a good and holy and loving life.

And so he dramatically rises from his chair to make an announcment:

“Lord, I will give half my possessions to the poor!” he says, and then, “and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.”

Under the law of Moses, the punishment for theft was to repay between one and a half and four times what was stolen. In volounteering to repay the full amount mandated in the law Zacchaeus not only acknowledges his guilt but pledges to ensure the maximal healing to those he has exploited.

He has fed Christ with food, but the good shepherd has fed him justice.

And he has shared that justice with those he once oppressed.

To Seek out and Save the Lost

Christ looks at Zacchaeus then, and he speaks words which turn our expectations of the nature of justice on their head:

Luke 19:9–10 “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.””

He too is a son of Abraham.

The Son of Man came to seek out and save the Lost.

The lord says, “I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak"

Where other saw a man who had turned his back on his people, betraying them to their opressors for his own gain, Christ saw a lost sheep who he had come to seek out and save.

Where some saw the fat and strong who were to be destroyed, Christ saw a man who although he was complicit in a system of opression was also a victim of that same system.

A weak man who had been led astray by the pursuit of riches.

A man who had been ensnared and spiritually wounded by a system that had given him everything at the cost of friendship and love and community.

And Christ came to that lost sheep, and he freed him from those snares. He bound up his wounds and strengthened him in his weakness so that justice would be brought about not as a punishment but as his own volountary movement towards recompense.

Friends, this is the good news that we see in the story of Zacchaeus: the Lord recognises injustice. He hates injustice, and He has a deep and abiding love for those who suffer because of it. One day, when Christ returns, justice will reign. He will gather his sheep together, and those who have suffered will be restored and those who have practiced injustice will be destroyed.

But as we heard last week, where we may only see the surface of people’s behaviours God sees to the heart.

And he recognises that opression is systemic. It’s embedded into our society through unjust laws and customs. It’s something which is carried out maliciously, but also enabled by those who simply don’t notice or don’t understand the full effects of their actions.

And God sees the way being enmeshed in that system harms us, and can cause us to further opression on others for our own gain even as we suffer the consequences of getting what we thought we wanted.

But the shepherd seeks out those who have been so harmed.

And he offers them the opportunity to be healed, to repent of that harm they’ve caused, and to make things right.

And just as Christ seeks out even those who we may despise and demand vengeance against, so too does he call us to reach out to those people in love, and to invite them to know him and to be fed justice and to be healed from the damge they’ve caused themselves. To be freed from the system in which they’re trapped, and which harms them even as they harm others.

Because justice is not just punishment: it’s restoration.

So who is your Zacchaeus?

Is there someone that has caused harm, perhaps to you or perhaps to others, and against whom you demand justice? Who, like the crowd in Jericho, you would react with anger when the great teacher showed them honour?

My friends, that person is ensnared by the system of sin just as every one of us and Christ calls on them to turn to him just as he does every one of us.

And so we must respond to them not with the scorn and hatred we think they deserve, but a recognition that all of the lost sheep are broken and weakened.

That the good shepherd wants nothing more than to seek them out and bring them to him and to make them whole.

And so it is our duty to react to such people not like the crowd, but like the saviour.

To show them love and honour.

To call them down from the tree in which they hide to avoid the crowds that would block them from the saviour.

And to pray that today will be the day that salvation comes to their house.