What if we’ve been getting Zacchaeus wrong all these years?
He wasn’t just a short man in a tree. He was a collaborator with empire, a chief tax collector who’d built his wealth by extracting resources from his own oppressed people. Zacchaeus may have been “little” in height, but he was certainly also little in character and reputation. He was a beneficiary and enforcer of systemic injustice, his coins connected by chains of cause and effect to hungry children and families driven off their land.
And here’s the scandal in this story: Jesus sees him. Really sees him. Jesus’s first word to him is “Zacchaeus”, which means “pure and holy one.” In that moment, Jesus reminds this exploiter-up-a-tree of all he could be, of all that he was created to be.
Without waiting for reform or repentance, Jesus invites himself to dinner. “I must stay at your house today.” The Greek word dei carries divine necessity, as if God’s radical hospitality toward both the excluded and the exploiter is written into the very fabric of reality.
And Zacchaeus’s response is immediate and massive, wihtout any prodding from Jesus, he says, “Half of my possessions I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone, I will pay back four times as much.” If he follows through, he’s not just taking a financial hit—he’s dismantling his economic position entirely, opting out of the system that made him.
This is the joyful response of someone experiencing genuine liberation. Grace doesn’t just forgive us; it frees us from the prison of accumulation, from profiting off others’ misery, from the exhausting work of self-justification through wealth.
Here’s what makes this story so challenging: Zacchaeus is both villain and hero. Which means he’s us. We too have benefited from unjust structures. We too need to come down from our trees of privilege, respectability, busyness, or “we’ve always done it this way.”
The good news for Zacchaeus, and us? “Today salvation has come to this house.” Not when we’ve sorted ourselves out, but now, in the midst of mess and compromise. Jesus seeks us while we’re still figuring out which branch to sit on, long before we realise we should get out of the tree.
And that grace transforms everything.