Those desires indeed make us “wee little men and women.” From that precarious perch, Jesus catches our eye and publicly calls us to “hurry down.” He introduces us to a liberated vision of life untethered to popular crowd desire, manipulative posturing and eventual scapegoating.
That same invitation is extended to us all-to climb down from our perches of rivalry and violence seeded by misplaced crowd desire. Jesus doesn’t point Zacchaeus to a way of salvation, his invitation makes it clear that He himself IS salvation. Instead of a tax collector going to God’s house seeking salvation, we see Jesus going to the home of the tax collector, proclaiming salvation through the sacredness of his presence. Instead of a Pharisee looking down in judgment upon a tax collector, we have Jesus literally looking up in mercy at a tax collector. The contrast to last week’s lectionary text is striking. “Zacchaeus received him joyfully…and stood and said to the Lord, Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.”
#Zacchaeus was a wee little man lyrics free
He is free from the rivalry of “needing to climb” and is invaded by liberating joy. His actions reveal the tangible effects of Jesus’ transformational declaration and loving presence. Salvation comes to Zacchaeus and his response, bathed in unexpected vulnerability, is beautifully captured in verse 8. Jesus simply stops, looks up to Zacchaeus, and publicly declares him friend instead of foe his time of isolation, shame and seeing the other as rival is no more. There is no need for a preliminary action on Zacchaeus’ part. Invitation into home was invitation into life. Jesus transforms from the celebrity the crowd gathers to “see” into the their scapegoated object of disdain (“And when they saw it, they all grumbled, ‘He has gone to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.'”)Īt great personal expense, Jesus publicly expresses an urgent need to dine with the hated tax collector-to enter relationship exactly where the corrupt opportunist is perched. As often happens in the Gospel narrative (think Emmaus Road), the supposed “guest” becomes, in actuality, the “host.” And this shift in roles is embraced at great cost. He calls Zacchaeus by name and invites himself over for dinner. While Zacchaeus looks down from his perch above, Jesus looks up from below. From what we know about tax collectors, physical attributes were likely the least of his concerns.
Zacchaeus, driven by desire, wants to see Jesus, but his line of sight is impaired. Thus he “climbs,” a manipulative act that has become his normative pattern of life, in attempt to forcefully get “above” those around him. The problem was, as the boss of the hated tax collectors, he was the disdain of the very crowd whose desire he shared. The lyrics focus on the smallness of his physical stature, a fact that presumably forced him to climb a tree to fulfill his desire to see Jesus-a desire borrowed from the crowd around him.
He climbed up in a sycamore tree, for the Lord he wanted to see…”
“Zacchaeus was a wee, little man, and a wee, little man was he. This week’s Gospel text is a narrative some people grew up singing in Sunday School: