He entered Jericho and was passing through it. A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. All who saw it began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.” Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” Then Jesus said to him, “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.”
Luke 19:1-10
I don’t know a lot of rich people, because I’m a seminary student, but I can understand why someone would want to get rich. It’s the same reason we all do so many of the things we do: to be recognized. To have someone recognize us as valuable, and even to hear that we are worthy of love. Someone I admire once declared that “the greatest pain in life is to be invisible.” I wonder if that’s why Zacchaeus chose to become a tax collector.
You know, you’re a short guy, you get picked on at school, and you feel invisible . And you think, maybe, if I get a big house, throw some parties Great Gatsby style, someone will recognize me. Maybe even love me. If I get a big enough house.
We know from Luke’s gospel that it didn’t work out that way. Zacchaeus did become rich, even got the house, but he remained invisible. One afternoon, a hot new celebrity came into Jericho, and Zacchaeus wanted to go see who he was—perhaps even to see how this celebrity had acquired the recognition Zacchaeus so desperately desired. But all of the people around him wouldn’t let him pass. Zacchaeus must have felt that familiar feeling of invisibility.
So, Zacchaeus jumps into a tree to get a glimpse. And the weirdest thing happens. When the celebrity, Jesus, walks by the tree, with all of those hordes crowded around him, he looks up into the tree where Zacchaeus is sitting, and says, “Zacchaeus, get down here. I’ve gotta stay at your house tonight.”
Now, I have to admit that it’s not “I’ve gotta” in the original Greek. It’s not even a first person verb. It means something more like “it is necessary.” It can also be translated as: “it is appropriate.” Or “it is right.” Jesus says to Zacchaeus: “it is appropriate for me to stay with you tonight.”
I’m not certain about what happens in Zacchaeus’ heart right in that moment, but I’m going to offer a guess. Will you explore this with me for a moment? (pause) Okay. So, Zacchaeus is looking down, maybe jealously wondering how this guy got all of the recognition Zacchaeus had been desiring, and the celebrity recognizes Zacchaeus, and says, “it’s appropriate for me to stay with you tonight,” and maybe just maybe Zacchaeus says to himself, “Darn right, it’s appropriate for you to stay with me! Finally, someone got it! Have you seen my house? There’s an infinity pool!” So, Zacchaeus joyfully gets down from the tree and welcomes Jesus to his home. And he does the MTV cribs thing: “Hey, what’s up, it’s me, Zacchaeus! Here’s the wine cellar, and that’s the private movie theater.” And he shows Jesus the infinity pool, and all those things that Zacchaeus acquired to avoid being invisible. And he takes Jesus to the guesthouse, and says, there’s a king size tempur-pedic in that room you can stay on. And we can just imagine that Jesus responds he’d be glad to stay on the butler’s sofa bed in the back.
And in that moment, Zacchaeus realizes that all of those things he had been attaining to merit recognition weren’t the reason Jesus came to stay. He realizes that the only thing that makes it appropriate for Jesus to stay with him is Jesus’ own free love for Zacchaeus.
So it is with us. The only thing that makes it appropriate for Jesus to be with us, to stay with us, is Jesus’ own free love for us. Nothing else.
You know, at first it seems like this lesson is a little stale. You know, “money can’t buy me love, doo-doo-doo”—we know this story! But we all have our own methods for trying to earn the recognition of others, to avoid being invisible. Obviously, no one here has taken the get rich approach, but we have our own methods.
For me, it’s academic success. I spend so many sleepless nights studying for exams and writing papers because I feel like that A means that I have been recognized as worthy. But there’s many ways: for some of us, it could be achieving award-winning marathon times, or putting on celebrated musical performances, or even in our preaching. We do it to earn recognition, to avoid being invisible.
And then, here’s what I do. I get my A, and then I go to chapel, and I hear Jan Ammon proclaim that Jesus loves me and I say, “Darn right, Jesus loves me! I’m an A student!”
But there are precious moments, when I find myself in intimate closeness with Jesus, when I come to know who he is, and I realize that, though he is proud of me, he is not impressed with my As. I realize that the only thing that merits Jesus’ love for me is Jesus’ own free love for me.
At first, that might not sound like good news. We prefer to be able to get the credit for it. But we would be in such big trouble if we had to earn Jesus’ love. We can’t. We’ve already messed up—sold out our neighbors to get rich, ignored our lonely friends to attend to our grades, maybe even skipped chapel to polish our sermons for preaching class. We can’t do it, but the good news is we don’t have to. The only thing that merits Jesus’ love for us is Jesus’ own free love for us. And we don’t have to worry that he won’t love us because he already showed us his deep love for us by giving his life upon a cross for us. Jesus has declared that it is right for him to be with us, and that he will stay with us until the end. And that is good news indeed. Thanks be to God. Amen.