Zacchaeus Out of His Tree

Zacchaeus called down from the Sycamore tree.

He entered and was passing through Jericho. There was a man named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector, and he was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, and couldn't because of the crowd, because he was short. He ran on ahead, and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was to pass that way.

When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and saw him, and said to him, "Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house."

He hurried, came down, and received him joyfully.

When they saw it, they all murmured, saying, "He has gone in to lodge with a man who is a sinner."

Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, "Behold, Lord, half of my goods I give to the poor. If I have wrongfully exacted anything of anyone, I restore four times as much."

Jesus said to him, "Today, salvation has come to this house, because he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost."

--Luke 19:1-10

Zacchaeus is not a real person. The story of Zacchaeus is a parable. The image of little Zacchaeus climbing a tree is too obviously comic for real life.

Zacchaeus means “pure.” It is not really a name. His small stature makes him seem childlike. He climbs trees, as a child would. And as a self-conscious wealthy man would not. For it is publicly undignified, and likely to expose him to general scorn.

So this is a parable of innocence.

Zacchaeus is egotistic in an innocent way, just as a child is. His initial avarice is innocent, unreflective. Who does not spontaneously want to own nice things? Nice things are nice.

Jesus singles him out from the crowd. Just as Jesus elsewhere says, one must become like a little child to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. “Suffer the little children to come unto me.” Innocence is the key.

But only the key. Jesus opens the door, when he tells Zacchaeus to come down from the tree.

This act of immediate obedience is the test. It equates to repentance. “Get off your high horse.”

Because Zacchaeus does this, wholeheartedly, Jesus comes and dwells with him.

It is surely significant that all this is said to have happened in Jericho: the city that was the entrance to the Promised Land. With such repentance, the walls come tumbling down.

The good man, in sum, is not the man who does not sin. The good man is the man who repents when sin is pointed out. The bad man resists and denies. The difference is the difference between sin and settled vice.

Compare today’s first reading, from the Book of Wisdom: “Yet you are merciful to all, because you are almighty, you overlook people's sins, so that they can repent.” God’s own forgiveness is absolute, but conditional on repentance.

We all sin. We all have avaricious urges. A fundamentally good person, faced with their own wrongdoing, repents and seeks to make amends. A bad person demands “forgiveness” without repentance. That is the difference.

The critical moment in the Garden of Eden was not when Adam and Eve ate the apple. It was when they hid in the bushes, and tried to shift blame.