Soon, Christmas will be upon us, and we will hear words from the Fourth Gospel: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.’ That is the language of John. But today our reading comes from Luke, who was an illuminating storyteller. John couldn’t tell a story. As you know, John spirals off into all sorts of problematic, difficult, argumentative language,. But Luke loves telling stories. He collected them, and I think he invented a lot. And he says exactly the same thing as John’s statement, “Jesus came to his own, and his own did not receive him. But to those who received him, he gave the authority to become the sons of God.” But he says it by telling us a story.
Jesus was wandering around. As you know, he said, “The son of man has nowhere to lay his head. The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but I wander around homeless.” And Jesus, when he sent his disciples out, he actually made a thing of this going homeless. You’re to go, you’re not to take a great stock of things in your rucksack, you’re not to take money in your purse. You go and you tell them the good news of the kingdom. And if they receive you, then accept their hospitality. And as they receive you, penniless wanderers, they will receive the kingdom of God.
The thing is, that that kind of mission, you see, puts a real pressure on the people receiving it. They won’t just pick up an opinion. They won’t just hear a wandering preacher and think, “That was interesting.” To get close to what it’s all about, they have to make a venture of hospitality and receive this stranger who’s turned up on their door. And the missioner who appears on their doorstep, with no visible means of support, depends upon their welcome. And out of that, you see, there blossoms a reciprocating acceptance from one side and the other, this giving and receiving that makes for a rich life. And Jesus says, “That’s where and how the peace of the kingdom comes upon you.”
Zacchaeus had heard about Jesus. We don’t know what he had heard. Luke tells a good story, partly because he leaves gaps for questions and imagination. When you think about how this meeting with Zacchaeus happened, you wonder how they get from one step to another. What did Zacchaeus really know about Jesus? I think he could have heard that Jesus was making a splash, that Jesus was gathering crowds, teaching them, proving very popular, proving very controversial. Jesus was the entertainment of the day. The stuff for journalists, if you like. And Zacchaeus was curious. And this was a public movement – he, as a tax collector, had to keep his eye on events. And we may even speculate that all he was confident about was that Jesus with his great following, must be making a lot of money and ought to be taxed.
We can speculate. Luke doesn’t tell us. Luke just moves from one thing in the story to the next thing, to the next important thing. And if you want to, you can fill in the gaps, you can write a big novel based on this story, but it’s not in the gospel. The gospel simply says that Zacchaeus was interested in Jesus. He heard enough to be interested, and he wanted to see him. That’s what Luke says, he wanted to see Jesus.
But Zacchaeus had a problem. He was a very little man, the crowd was very tall and he couldn’t get near Jesus to see him. But Zacchaeus, of course, was a very successful tax collector which meant that he was very resourceful, very determined, absolutely ruthless. And if he wanted something, he went for it, and so he climbed a tree, even though he was maybe really too old to be climbing trees, he did it because he wanted to see Jesus.
And Jesus came along and -. somehow Jesus not only saw Zacchaeus, even if he was hidden by the leaves of the tree but noticed him fixed his attention on this one man, and fixed his intention on this man in the tree. Why did Jesus pick Zacchaeus out? Again, Luke doesn’t tell us. But Jesus got on with his business with Zacchaeus. Jesus didn’t say, like he said to some other people, “Follow me. Be a disciple.” He did not jump ahead too far. He didn’t say to Zacchaeus, “I can give you something. I can heal you. I can give you comfort.” He didn’t offer him spiritual magic, an easy transformation. Rather he said, I must come to your house today and stay with you.” You have got to entertain me. And the word is strong, “You must.” It’s not a question of, “Please, would you help me?” We can speculate that there might be an unspoken subtext: “Zacchaeus, you miserable, money-grabbing tax collector. You man, who gathered it all in for yourself and are very rich. I must come to your house today, you must deal with me at close quarters.” We don’t know what sub-text Jesus had in mind, nor what Zacchaeus hoped for. We do know that the driving curiosity of Zacchaeus meets this commanding invitation of Jesus, and they come together.
And so Zacchaeus comes down from the tree and takes Jesus home. We don’t know what Zacchaeus said to Jesus. We don’t know what Jesus said, much more to Zacchaeus. There’s no detail of that sort. And it’s almost as though there’s something that went on inside Zacchaeus so that this visit of Jesus had an effect on him. He could, of course, have been very proud of himself. He was despised as a tax collector. The people hated him, and he didn’t have a good reputation. But now, Jesus had come to his house, his was the only house in Jericho that Jesus visited and stayed in. Wasn’t that a feather in his cap?
He could have been like that, but he wasn’t. He’d obviously caught something of the spirit and generosity of Jesus, who went around, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, doing good on all sides, and loving enemies, even loving Zacchaeus. The people, some of the Pharisees said, “What’s this Jesus doing, going and eating with a man who is such a notorious sinner?” And it wasn’t just their snooty respectability that made them say Zacchaeus was a sinner. He really was. I mean, to be collecting taxes unfairly for the Roman occupiers, that is a nasty thing to be doing. They were right to be pretty scathing about him. He wasn’t a respectable citizen, Zacchaeus.
But Jesus went and stayed with him. Jesus chose him out. Did Zacchaeus in his heart get some sense that, with Jesus, there was coming into the world a kind of generosity and a love that he’d never found elsewhere? Did he catch the vision of the world according to Jesus, and say, “I don’t just want to have that for myself, I don’t just want to be a beneficiary of it, I must share in the giving of it.” And so he said,”If I’ve taken more than I should, I’m going to repay it, and I’m going to repay it four times.”
Now, I don’t know where he could have got all that money from to repay the things that he’d cheated people out of four times over. But maybe Zacchaeus the tax collector wasn’t as good at arithmetic as I happen to be. But there it is. He did say it, and it’s quite extravagantly generous. But the important thing to notice about it is that Zacchaeus is turning himself around. He’s turning his real self around by receiving Jesus, and by responding to the spirit of Jesus. And by saying, “I’m not just doing this in words of prayer and devotion. I’m not just becoming pious about this.” That’s what Isaiah didn’t want people to do. “I’m fed up with your prayers,” says God through Isaiah. “I want real action. I want real doing good.” (Isaiah 1.10-17; Isaiah 58)
And Zacchaeus says, “I must do good. And what do I do things good with? I deal with money. I’m a tax collector, and I get it in. And now I’m going to do good and give it out, give it back, do it justly, make a difference, make a real difference.” This is Zacchaeus. This is his real turning.
We have no clue what happened to Zacchaeus after this. We all simply have the Bible, the word of God, telling us in the words of Jesus that this one who was lost has been found. This man who was lost, he is also a son of Abraham. He ought to be included in the hospitality of God, and he is.
How this relates to you and me, that’s the question we may have to work out. But I think it comes in very simple, everyday things for a lot of us, one way or another. We have situations where people around us come with one need or another. And sometimes it’s easy to respond to the need. We have plenty to give them, and it actually works for them. But there are other times when it’s much more difficult. And when you really have to struggle with yourself and think, “Can I do this? Will I do this?” But this is the call of Jesus. This is the grace that God gives, that we give as we have been given, that we receive as we have been received by God, that we enjoy the hospitality of God in the world. But we only do so when we give, when we give hospitality.
A sermon preached at Stainbeck United Reformed Church, Leeds on 2 November, 2025
Revised transcript of recorded version.
You can listen to the original sermon here: