A Clenched Fist

Luke 19:1-10

 

        (sing)      Zacchaeus was a wee little man,

                        And a wee little man was he.

                        He climbed up in a sycamore tree,

                        The Lord he wanted to see.  (stop)

 

        How many of you have heard that song? Do you remember where you learned it? I first heard it the basement of Memorial Presbyterian Church in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1955. 64 years and I still can’t get it out of my head. Bill Haley was singing Rock around the Clock. Tennessee Ernie Ford was crooning Sixteen Tons.  Oklahoma was selling out on Broadway and I am still singing, Zacchaues was a wee little man and a wee little man was he.  WHY? Because before there was Randy Newman, before there was Napoleon and his complex, there was short little guy who liked to climb trees. In 1955 I was tall for my age but I was only five. Do you remember what it was like being five? You rode in the back of the family car and watched the top of telephone poles. You wanted to play baseball with the neighborhood kids but you are only tall enough to be second base. I don’t mean the position, I mean the actual base. And then along comes Zacchaeus . Like me, he was short. Like me, he wanted to see what was going on. Unlike me he lived in a land of low hanging branches.

According to the story word got around that a parade was coming. I hated it when the Christmas parade came to town. When I was three, dad put me on his shoulders and I could see everything. But when I was five my little sister took my place.  It was four more years before I was tall enough to see Santa and by then I didn’t believe he was real. 

Zacchaeus didn’t believe in Santa either. He didn’t believe in much of anything except himself. Yet when word got around that the miracle man was stopping off before heading to the capital, Zacchaeus made plans to see him. Was he curious? Did he think Jesus would make him tall? The story doesn’t tell us the reason. All we know is Zacchaeus would not be denied in his quest to see Jesus.

 You know the story as well as I. He discovered the parade route, picked the perfect tree, climbed up and waited. Jesus appeared, saw the wee little man, and called up to him. “Zacchaeus, I am going to your house for dinner.”

When you are five years old ……. and a member of the kindergarten Sunday School class …….. most teachers aren’t going to tell you that Zacchaeus was not a very nice man. Mrs. Cartledge was not the exception to the rule. She taught us Zacchaeus was small and so were we. But take heart. Jesus sees you, Jesus loves you, and Jesus will walk with  you when you enter the first grade.

A lot of folks were taught the Zacchaeus story by their own Mrs. Cartledge. A lot of folks remember the cute little song. But too few folks go to Sunday School long enough to hear the real story.  Zacchaeus was short on morals, short on integrity, and short on principles. In other words, Zacchaeus was a scoundrel. He is the used car salesman who sells you a beauty of a deal that two weeks before was hauled in with a blown engine. He is the guy who sells you a reversed mortgage and tells you not to worry about the fine print. He is the guy who always has his mind, and his heart, and his fist, clenched.

Zacchaeus was a tax collector. In other words he was a collaborator with an oppressive foreign government whose sole objective was to suck the very life out of the common citizen. This is the way the game was played.  Rome had an army to feed. Rome had roads it wanted to build back home. So Rome took thirty cents on the dollar and gave nothing back. As long as Rome got its thirty cents it did not care what the tax collector charged. A person like Zacchaeus often charged as much as forty cents on the dollar and kept the ten cents difference. Rome protected its collectors to ensure the flow of money was continuous.

The people of Jericho hated Zacchaeus. They hated the way he cheated them. They hated the protection he received from Rome. Most of all they hated his clenched fist which seemed to be both a threat and a symbol of what was being stolen from them.

Jesus walked through Jericho. He looked up and saw a pathetic little man way up in the branches. He hollered up at him, “Zacchaeus”. Everyone fell quiet knowing what was going to happen next. At the very least Jesus was going to expose him as a crooked little man. At the very worst Jesus was going to zap the branch of the tree causing the scoundrel to fall to his well deserved death. But that is not what happened. Jesus said, “Come out of the tree. I need for you to feed me dinner.”

I am not sure who was more surprised, Zacchaeus or the good folks of Jericho who hated his guts. Everyone looked up, except Zacchaeus, who stared down at the man who had invited himself to dinner. Zacchaeus had a choice. He could stay in the tree or he could have dinner with a stranger. Choice number two presented a problem. How could he get down out of the tree with his fist clinched?

Ever so slowly, Zacchaeus pried open his fingers. Ever so slowly, God pried open his mind. Ever so slowly, Jesus pried open his heart,  and miraculously, Zacchaeus was no longer a “wee little man.”

To God be the glory. Amen.