Jesus Finds Us

24th Sunday after Pentecost (All Saints Sunday)
November 3, 2013
Luke 19:1-10

While Luke and Matthew both tell the story of the lost sheep, Luke’s is the only gospel that includes the lost coin and the prodigal son. Lost and found is one of Luke’s favourite themes. People can get lost in many different ways: taking a wrong turn or getting caught in a sticky situation like a sheep in the field, willfully going far away while seeking independence and fortune like the younger son, or getting lost in the shuffle at home like the woman’s coin or the elder brother.

Another favourite theme in Luke is the acceptance of the outcast. It is linked because those who are lost are found. When you are found by Jesus, you are not just tolerated or accepted at arm’s length until you conform to a certain standard or behaviour. When you are found by Jesus, you are completely loved and valued and accepted.

We meet Zacchaeus up in a sycamore tree peering out through the branches as Jesus and his disciples go by. His eagerness, short stature, and this funny image have endeared many to him. He is a Jew who has taken a job with the Roman Empire to collect taxes from his own people. Tax collectors are known for cheating, exhorting, betraying and stealing. Zacchaeus has access to wealth that many of his peers would never see. He is viewed as a sinner and no one will associate with him. Being a tax collector is lonely. One lives at the mercy of both temptation and stereotype.

On the one hand, we have often interpreted this as a classic story of repentance. Jesus stops and calls Zacchaeus down from his tree. The tax collector pledges to give half his possessions to the poor and repay fourfold those he has cheated. At such repentance, Jesus declares him both saved and found. This reading of the story affirms the crowd’s assumptions about Zacchaeus, as well as the church’s expectation of those who come to faith.

But there is another interpretation possible. Some biblical scholars argue that Zacchaeus’ statement to Jesus is more accurately translated in the present tense. What if Zacchaeus said, “Half of my possessions I give to the poor and if I defraud anyone, I pay him four times as much?” Such a translation throws a wrench in our classic understanding of repentance that must precede forgiveness and causes us to consider whether we too have judged Zacchaeus according to a stereotype rather than the truth of his character.

Such a translation also strangely reinforces something that Luke has been saying all along: Repentance is not a prerequisite to being found and loved and valued and accepted by Jesus. Not even the prodigal son repents. Jesus finds us and loves us and accepts us. Period. If so, then the point of this story is not that Zacchaeus experiences a conversion and pledges an extravagant penitential plan. The twist may be that Zacchaeus is actually already a just, faithful person and even just, faithful people need salvation.