Elementary Sunday Lesson

Two words can be used to tell Zacchaeus’s salvation story: seeking and receiving. We are told that Zacchaeus “was seeking to see who Jesus was” (Luke 19:3). But we are also told two other important details about him: “He was a chief tax collector and was rich” (19:2). Those weren’t good things. No one in town would have liked Zacchaeus. Why? Because he collected taxes from his fellow Jews for the Roman Empire. Paying taxes isn’t bad. What is bad, though, is what tax collectors did: they would lie about how much people had to pay. Then, all the extra money they collected they’d keep for themselves. It made them filthy rich! The other important detail about this greedy man is that he was short. He was so short he couldn’t see Jesus over the heads of the crowd when he came through Jericho on his way to Jerusalem. So he had an idea. He ran ahead of the crowd and climbed up onto a sycamore tree. Now he could see Jesus. Short, bad Zacchaeus was seeking.

As Jesus walked, he came to the base of the sycamore tree. He looked up. What a strange sight—a man in a tree! “Zacchaeus,” he called out his name. “Hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today” (19:5). The little man climbed down. He took Jesus to his house and “received him joyfully” (19:6). Receiving! He received Jesus with his emotions (“joyfully”) and with his actions: “Lord, half of what I have, I give to the poor. And all the people I have cheated I will give them back four times as much” (see 19:8). He received Jesus by giving his riches away in one day. Amazing!

What is more amazing is what Jesus said next: “Today salvation has come to this house” (19:9) because Zacchaeus believed in Jesus. The people grumbled that Jesus had “gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner” (19:7). But Zacchaeus, the big-time sinner, knew that Jesus came for that very purpose: “To seek and to save the lost” (19:10).