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"Up a Tree"

I wonder if Zacchaeus was weary of the tangle of his life. I wonder if he was stung by his neighbors’ low opinion of him, their hostile whispers.


[1] “Zacchaeus” by Rev. Lauren Wright Pittman, A Sanctified Art, LLC
[1] “Zacchaeus” by Rev. Lauren Wright Pittman, A Sanctified Art, LLC

Luke 19:1-10

November 9, 2025

Dr. Todd R. Wright


We all know the story of Zacchaeus, thanks to a song many of us learned as children.


The basic facts of the story are simple:

Zacchaeus, a tax collector, climbs a tree to see Jesus.

Jesus notices him and invites himself to the man’s house.

The crowd grumbles because he is associating with a known sinner.

Zacchaeus repents and Jesus proclaims him redeemed!


No wonder we teach our children to sing this story!


Except, if you dig a little, there is a lot more going on!


(And you deserve the full richness of this story!)

So Luke says Zacchaeus is a chief tax collector – which is even worse!


Being a tax collector is a low skill, bottom rung job. No one wants it.


It involves working for the occupying Roman Empire; and standing at toll booths; and collecting money from neighbors who can’t afford to pay; and doing math; and there is always someone above squeezing you for more!


But Zacchaeus is a chief tax collector – the top of the local pyramid scheme – with lots of minions doing his dirty work.


The lower-level guys were the ones who knocked on your door, or blocked your cart, or demanded a cut of your catch or your harvest, but it was Zacchaeus who hobnobbed with the


Romans and paraded through town in fancy clothes, dripping in gold.


What a leach! No wonder people hated him!

So when Luke tells us he ran through town and climbed a tree, it is comical!


We enjoy laughing at those we scorn. The citizens of Jericho were no exception.


No dignified man in first Century Israel would have acted like that.


So why did he? What’s the rush? What is he doing up in that tree?


The song implies this wee little man is simply curious, like a kid at a Christmas parade straining to see Santa.


Or perhaps this short but rich man liked it whenever he could look down on people.


But Robert Frost offers another possibility. In his poem “Birches”, he tells of boys who swing on the pliable branches as a pastime. It’s a playful image, until he slips into the profound:


“It’s when I’m weary of considerations, and life is too much like a pathless wood,

where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs broken across it,

and one eye is weeping, from a twig’s having lashed across it …

I'd like to get away from earth awhile, and then come back to it, and begin over.”[2]


I wonder if Zacchaeus was weary of the tangle of his life. I wonder if he was stung by his neighbors’ low opinion of him, their hostile whispers. I wonder if he wished he could escape for a little while. And I wonder if he was searching for some way to go back and begin over.


Maybe that’s how he found himself up in a tree he once climbed long ago.


Luke has told other stories of people yearning to see Jesus – seeking healing, searching for forgiveness, hoping for mercy they do not deserve – people who are all mentioned in positive terms!


It’s as if he’s inviting us to put Zacchaeus in a different group – not the villains, but the seeking.


Frost sums up, “I'd like to … climb black branches up a snow-white trunk, toward heaven …”


Maybe Zacchaeus was climbing toward heaven too!

Jesus sees him up there, calls him down, and the crowd anticipates what’s next! They are hoping he will rebuke Zacchaeus, shame him for being a Roman sympathizer, repeat his words from the Sermon on the Plain: “Woe to you who are rich …” “What you have is all you’ll ever get.”[3]


But that is not what happens.


Instead, Jesus says he must stay at his house. As if they need time to talk, as if there is nothing wrong with associating with a sinner, as if his whole ministry requires staying with him.


And maybe it does. Earlier in Luke’s gospel Jesus describes his ministry this way: “Those who are well have no need of a physician … I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” Or “Who needs a doctor: the healthy or the sick? I’m here inviting outsiders, not insiders — an invitation to a changed life, changed inside and out,” is the way Peterson puts it.


Zacchaeus is an outsider – made so by his own choices and the scorn of his neighbors. He is exactly the sort of person Jesus seeks out.

The crowd grumbles at this development, but before the two even take a step toward Zacchaeus’ home, he says something that catches everyone by surprise.


Do you remember what he says?


Something like I promise to do better. Something about making things right.


That’s what I read from the NRSV which translates the verbs in the future tense: “I will give to the poor; I will pay back those I defrauded.”


It is a heartwarming scene! The sinner has encountered Jesus and seen the error of his ways!


Except that is not what the original Greek says. In it the verbs are present tense: “I give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone, I pay them back.” (That’s the RSV or the KJV or NIV.)


What are we to make of such a different translation from what we are used to?


Rose Schrott Taylor suggests, “Maybe [the point of this story isn’t] Jesus cleansing Zacchaeus of greed, but his neighbors of judgment.”[4]


That’s a twist! But of course, the scriptures are full of twists! And just when we think we know what God is doing, and who is in need of God’s correction, God surprises us.


Eric Barretto adds, “Thus, the ‘lost’ whom Jesus has come to save is not just a Zacchaeus, excluded and marginalized because of communal perceptions of his wealth and profession, but a whole community fractured by his absence. That is, it is not just Zacchaeus who is delivered, but his household and the whole of Jericho as well.”[5]

So we can go on singing about a wee little man, but maybe we need to come up with some lyrics about the people of Jericho.


Maybe, like them, we are too quick to see the sins in others and too slow to see the ways we fail at being a community that reflects the broadness of God’s mercy.


Maybe there are some rich folks who, without our knowing it, give generously to the poor.


And maybe God loves it when we get so excited to see Jesus, that we run and climb trees!

In fact, maybe trees have holy work to do.


Mary Oliver wrote, “I am so distant from the hope of myself, in which I have goodness, and discernment … Around me the trees stir in their leaves and call out, ‘Stay awhile.’ The light flows from their branches. And they call again, ‘It’s simple,’ they say, ‘and you too have come into the world to do this … to be filled with light, and to shine.’”[6]


May we join Oliver and Zacchaeus and shine in Jesus’ presence for all our neighbors to see!


 Amen


[1] “Zacchaeus” by Rev. Lauren Wright Pittman, A Sanctified Art, LLC
[3] The second part of the woe is Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase in the Message
[4] From “Looking into the Lectionary” for the Presbyterian Outlook, 11/2/25
[5] From his reflections on the text for workingpreacher.org, 11/2/25


 

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