A Reflection on Luke 19:1-10
Zacchaeus
was a chief tax collector in Jericho, which meant he was both wealthy and
despised. Tax collectors collaborated with Rome and were known for extorting
their own people. When Jesus came through town, Zacchaeus climbed a sycamore
tree just to catch a glimpse of Him, imagine how desperate that must have felt,
a powerful man reduced to scrambling up a tree like a child. The crowd
surrounding Jesus knew exactly who Zacchaeus was. They would have expected
Jesus to pass right by. Instead, Jesus stopped, looked up, and said something
that must have shocked everyone: "Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must
stay at your house today." Not a suggestion. Not conditional. Jesus
invited Himself into the home of the town's most notorious sinner, and He did
it publicly, in front of everyone who thought they knew better.
Here's
what strikes me about the sequence of events: Zacchaeus doesn't promise to
change before Jesus calls him down from that tree. There's no negotiation, no
"let me prove myself first." Jesus chooses him exactly as he is, and
it's that choice, that radical, unearned acceptance, that breaks something open
in Zacchaeus's heart. Only after he's experienced this welcome does he stand up
and say he'll give half of everything he owns to the poor and pay back everyone
he's cheated four times over. That's not someone trying to earn love. That's
someone responding to love they never thought they'd receive. We exhaust
ourselves trying to become worthy of God's attention, but Jesus doesn't operate
that way. He shows up at the base of whatever tree we're hiding in and says,
"I'm coming to your house today." Not when you're ready. Not when
you've figured it all out. Today.
The
mysteries of the Rosary hold this same truth in different light. In the
Visitation, Mary carries Jesus to Elizabeth, and the moment they meet, John
leaps in Elizabeth's womb, Jesus doesn't wait to be invited, He arrives and
everything shifts. When we move through the Sorrowful Mysteries, we see what it
cost Jesus to keep showing up for people like Zacchaeus, for people like us. He
didn't love humanity from a safe distance. He walked right into our messy lives,
let Himself be misunderstood, rejected, betrayed. He ate with sinners because
Jesus loves all of us equally. He touched the untouchable knowing it would make
Him unclean in the eyes of the religious. The same Jesus who climbed Calvary
first stopped under a sycamore tree in Jericho because seeking the lost wasn't
a side project, it was the entire mission.
"The
Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost." That scripture verse lands
differently when you realize Jesus isn't talking about people who used to be
lost. He means people who are lost right now. People who've made a career out
of the wrong choices. People who can't show their faces in polite company.
People who've given up on themselves. If that's you, if you feel too far gone
or too compromised, then you're exactly who this story is about. Jesus is still
calling people by name, still inviting Himself into places where respectable
religion wouldn't dare go. One meal with Jesus changed Zacchaeus's entire life.
Not because he finally got his act together, but because he came down from his
hiding place and let himself be found. The question was never whether you're
good enough. The question is whether you'll come down.
©2025 James Dacey, Jr., OFS
